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Deccan Herald » Living » Detailed Story
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Breaking barriers within the mind
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Whether it’s ballroom dancing or battle training, the man in
uniform has to know it all. On the occasion of the MEG’s 225th
anniversary, Rachna Bisht Rawat checks out the lifestyle and training that make a defence forces person the man he is.
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Sometimes it starts with knowing that you are being paid to die for your country. At other times it just ends with it. Though every man in uniform hopes there is no bullet with his name written on it, he also knows that if there is one, he should not flinch in facing it. That is to the credit of the lifestyle and training the forces give their people. Because not only do the forces teach their men how to die, they also teach them how to live in style.
It’s a fresh young boy who walks into the academy with stars in the eyes. By the time he is dined out, to the loud and robust singing of “He’s a jolly good fellow”, he is a man who has given the best years of his life to the service and taken, they say, a lot more from it.
He learns not only the age old traditions of valour, respect for seniority and women, discipline and integrity. He also learns which hand holds the knife and which one the fork; that bread is always broken, never cut; formal trousers touch the second lace of your shoe, and while ball room dancing, your right hand should rest on the base of your partner’s back and her right hand on your left shoulder.
All in the mind
Table manners and waltzing are just the frills. The man is basically taught to kill and to survive. “The training we get as well as give our men is meant to build physical toughness and break barriers in the mind. Once that is achieved, physical limitations do not matter. You don’t say I can’t run 30 kms with a 22 kg back pack after a strenuous day, you are made to do it, so you believe you can,” says Col K C John, a Sapper officer, explaining how the man in uniform goes on to achieve seemingly unbelievable acts of bravery in times of war and war like situations.
Make a man so tough that he can face anything that comes his way. That is the essence of all those days and months and years of tough physical training, he explains. “At the end of it, a man is able to say ‘yes, I can do it. I can stand up and fight for my country, I can cross a raging river, I can break every barrier’,” he says.
That is the spirit that makes men in uniform jump into burning tanks to rescue trapped comrades, climb up treacherous hills in the face of enemy shelling, make bridges standing in freezing water, fly planes into enemy territory with a complete disregard for personal safety and interest.
“Our training makes us so robust mentally as well as physically that we never find any situation tough in life after that,” agrees Squadron Leader Puneet Parikh, a retired fighter pilot of the Indian Air Force.
It’s a different world
Eighty-four year old Squadron Leader Tony Dias says he goes for a walk every morning and has a drink every evening. “I retired way back in 1973 but it’s something the Air Force taught me and has been a part of my lifestyle ever since. Throughout my life in the Air Force, 7.30 pm meant time to go to the bar. It was a time to unwind with the boys. Whatever we talked was to be forgotten the next morning and we were not supposed to discuss women,” he chuckles.
Enter any Defence Forces station and it’s a different world out there. With its own set of rules. Two wheeler drivers need helmets, littering is simply not done, you won’t hear bad language, unless it’s instructors giving their men a dressing down on the training grounds.
It’s where men are being prepared for the battlefield. But also where the basic foundations of behaviour and etiquette are being laid down. Where doors are opened and chairs pulled out for ladies. Where age and seniority are respected. Where unwritten rules make the senior most officer pay respect to the junior most officer’s wife. Where even the Army Chief will get up and offer his chair to a young lieutenant’s 20-years-old wife.
Moral values still reign supreme. Stealing the affections of a brother officer’s wife is a punishable offense, dealt with just as sternly as an act of cowardice in times of peace or war.
What makes this man stand out?
“It’s the uniform,” says Inderpreet Kaur, wife of a Sapper officer, who has spent 21 years of her married life in the Army. “The man in uniform doesn’t look like an ordinary man,” she says. “The uniform denotes valour, selfless sacrifice, fairness and honesty, discipline and integrity, comradeship, fidelity, honour and courage,” adds Squadron Leader Parikh.
How do they strike this balance between suave man of the world and a lethal killing machine? “That’s why the expression `an officer and a gentleman’,” smiles Commander BS Jayant, retired naval officer, now working with HAL. “As an officer you don’t question orders and as a gentleman you do what is expected of you,” he says.
It’s a tough life
These people are like gypsies. They go where their work takes them. Not only the men, but also their wives and children.
“You might be living in a beautiful bungalow in one station, a make shift bamboo hut in another,” says Lali Sajeev, an Army officer’s wife. Sometimes there are postings at metros like Delhi or Bangalore, at other times small colonies in the border areas where generators supply electricity a limited number of hours a day, televisions have no reception and internet is simply not available. “In the smallest of villages, we have spent happy evenings around a bonfire in the evening. The unit becomes your family. These bonds that form living together in lonely places never break,” adds Inderpreet. “A defence officer’s wife is an event manager, an educationist, an interior designer, a counsellor to the soldiers’ wives. We learn all this through experience and without doing any certificate courses,” she adds.
And that is life with its various shades of green, blue or white, depending on which force you are reckoning with.
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Friday, October 7, 2005
English
for you
