THE DAILY OBSERVER-63

 😎THE DAILY OBSERVER-63😎

Wed 3 March 2021

 (10 days left)

      Some Basic Truths,

         Soul  Searching

                AND

       Golden Memories

Come this thirteenth of March, we all would  be completing 39 years and more of interaction.

Years back,each one of us cleared the SSB and Medical tests and signed up for a gruelling 10 months of training.During that,some of us were lucky enough to bump into each other while there were those who mutually remained total strangers.if they happened to belong to  different Platoons.The first two names from Platoons other than my own which became familiar in the very start were those of Geeceee PC Jha and Geecee Alan Clarke because they made it a point to air their genuine doubts at every Lecdem. Whereas Ikkruthi Prabhakar's name cropped up all of a sudden only last year ( this i say with due apologies to Prabhakar).

At the end of it all,having qualified; on that unforgettable day,we marched out shoulder-to-shoulder  to the strains of Auld Lang Syne in the background.

The same sacred oath was taken by each and every one of us, so there is absolutely no way anyone's patriotism or loyalty can be questioned. All the same, there are bound to be differences in individual perceptions and thought processes which ought to be treated with mutual respect

The awards,commendations and medals won by batchmates are ample proof, if any was needed.

After the pipping ceremony,some of us set out on our new careers with one star on our each of our shoulders while others got a head-start with two.

The first amongst us to hang up the uniform did so in 1987 as Captains and the last few called it a day about three to four years back as Brigadiers and Generals.

Meanwhile,brothers who left the Army at different stages, have continued to excel  professionally and otherwise in the private and public sectors in India and abroad in varied fields.

We even have the honour of having a VC in our midst, not to speak of stalwarts who continue to serve till date with great honour in different capacities.

The high quality of learned and often heated exchanges on all topics under the sun from agriculture to economics

and geopolitics,space research and 

marine biology to deep-sea diving, pandemic research, linguistics, archeology and astrophysics among other things bear ample testimony to the wide range of intellectual calibre of members of our group. At the same time, the readiness to take offence and get into brawls with free trading of insults shows that we have not lost our human touch either.

And not to forget,so many of us have left for happier hunting grounds.Those jolly good fellows too are surely doing well there and awaiting our arrival with welcome arms.

 The rest of us free birds, in the Autumn and Winter of our lives keep each other occupied on this forum on a daily basis from dawn to well past midnight in one way or the other.

An invisible thread has kept us bound together through all global,personal and official landmark events over the years and it continues to do so. 

That could be called the spirit or soul of SS-33/24 which is like a deep undercurrent flowing through all.

With time,individual souls have been covered up by the dust of layers and layers of achievements, failures, learning, ignorance, politics,religion and so forth.

Just remember how proudly we used to scrub our hard-earned first

lone stars with Brasso till the gleaming metal surface showed up from below all the grime and dust. A similar scrubbing of our egos would reveal the same shining soul underneath.

.So let us try and not post stuff which seem to suggest that some souls are lesser souls while others are superior.That would keep us all going together a long way.

The TDO on its part tenders an unconditional apology to any readers whose feelings may have been hurt by the words put out in its columns during the course of about a year of its publication.

The actual day of passing out of OTA was exciting enough, but even more so were the months and weeks spent in anticipation of the Big Day. The countdown of the last ten days was markedly unique. Each year since then, these ten days bring alive the spirit of March 1982. Time for a fall-in of the entire Course and a head-count.Time also for the Annual Stock Taking Boards and clearing of all accounts.

A reminder of the days when brand-new berets were being wetted and pressed into shape by tying a towel around the head. The toes of the drill boots being given a final rub with the chindies by dedicated batmen. Talking of the batmen, they seemed to be even more excited about the upcoming P.O.P. than us.If memory serves me right, they held some joint "high"- level conferences of their own in which they came with latest techniques of imparting that special extra shine on the leather and metal.Of course, these techniques involved special magic ingredients that cost money. It was touching to see the pride with which these dedicated souls looked upon their own GCs, after all they had contributed in no small way to the finished product.Between the PT,Drill,WT ustads and the batmen, young lads fresh out of college had been transformed into smart officers in a short time.New peak caps and crossbelts were being carefully adjusted to accomodate heads and bellies in a comfortable way.The air was rent regularly by Words of Command bellowed out by  appointments  in the bathrooms. I distinctly remember the late SK Sharma doing so throughout the day out of sheer josh , even though he was not at all required to do it. The band could be heard warming up in the background in the pre-dawn darkness, with a soft Sa-re-ga….. How we looked forward to the days when we would no longer have to put on those strange things called hose-tops and other such paraphernelia that went with the OTA uniform.It was also around this time that our Course finally got rid of the " extraordinary " training it had been subjected to in the penultimate days.

 Our in-house ML specialist, Navnit is now requested to elaborate on the  subject of espirit-de-corps of the Course as well as on anything else that he deems fit on this occassion and thereby enlighten further this congregation . It is presumed he has been  silent for long due to preoccupation with his legal studies. 

The ML's effect should be such that its tremors are felt from Swami Sanjayananda in the North to St. Patrick in the West ,and from Chuchan Chin in the far East and Lawrence of Arabia deep South touching all other souls that lie in deep Samadhi State in- between. Come on GCs, mark your attendance and relive the joy of those unforgettable days yet again.

After all, where else can you expect that kind of freedom to speak your minds out freely if not here ? Keep those black and white mug-shots with chest numbers and other pieces of priceless memories like time spent in jail coming in-between the heated exchanges and expert comments on the latest national and international controversies. Maybe it might even be better if we all pretend we are back in SSB time and will fail to qualify if we do not mark our presence in the Group Discussion with knowledgeable comments.

I swear i just heard the rumbling of that wheelbarrow with bed-tea and snacks. Let me get that aluminium mug which brings out the best flavour in coffee, tea or cocoa.A flavour of Brasso, Blanco and that liquid which repelled everything except what it was meant for ( mosquitoes).No Starbucks or Coffee Cafe Day can come anywhere near that with their Latte or Mocha or whatever.