Crime and punishment

I was a schoolboy many aeons ago, in the previous century to be precise. The rule that applied to us then was based on ‘Crime and Punishment’. If you committed a crime you were punished and if you did not commit any crime, you were not punished. It was as simple as that.

I attended a convent school, run by Catholic nuns. The school principal ruled the school with two tools. A whistle and a cane. The whistle was to draw the attention of the offender and the cane was obviously to dispense quick justice.

Once she blew the whistle, the entire school would freeze. Cricket balls and footballs would continue to roll on merrily, unheeded. Some of the boys, poised to kick the football would be frozen in time, with one foot on and one foot off the ground. I believe that a few of the faint-hearted would even wet their pants.

This silence would last for a few seconds and then everyone would look around for the offender. Once identified, the offender would be pushed towards Sister Claudia and he would receive three hearty strokes of the cane. Life would then carry on as usual, until the next time Sister Claudia blew her whistle.

We also had the concept of mass canings. If the entire class had committed a crime, we would be told that we would all be caned the next day. In anticipation of the event, a lot of us would wear two or three pairs of shorts under our trousers.

Many years passed and I was posted as a Regimental Medical Officer in an Infantry Battalion. Life was completely different, after having suffered school and five years of medical school, here I was treated with utmost respect and deference by the jawans. Life was perfect until one day, I found the Commanding Officers’ (CO’s) stick orderly outside my tiny clinic. The stick orderly was the person who carried messages and generally did all the odd jobs in the CO’s office.

“Sahib ji, CO sahib yaad kitta,” he said. Roughly translated, that meant that the CO wanted to meet me. I was immediately apprehensive. Life flashed backwards and I imagined that I a young offender facing Sister Claudia again. “CO sahib ke paas cane hai kya?” (Does the CO have a cane?) I asked

The stick orderly remembered that the CO always carried his baton around with him, everywhere he went. “Hain ji Sahibji” he replied with a wide grin, which, to my nervous eyes, appeared to be particularly malevolent.

That grin did the trick. I was convinced that Sister Claudia had come to haunt me again. Without any further ado, I went back to my room and pulled on two pairs of shorts and then pulled on my uniform trousers over them.