Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  Like all the other young boys, I was curious about life and keen for some adventure. However, the fear of rustication and being sent home always stopped me from engaging in misadventure. School was very strict about personal conduct and language etiquette. Our principal K.D. Singh reacted sharply to the use of the word ‘bloody’, warning us of dire consequences if he ever heard anyone using it. On another occasion someone stole something from the tuckshop. His identity was uncovered and he was given a stern warning. Wing Commander Singh came down heavily on the guilty boy and demoted him from a senior school position he was then holding. These were major scandals in school and I remember how terrified I was. I did rather well in extra-curricular activities like theatre. The special parade was another. I was fortunate to attract the attention of the school authorities and was selected for the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. I looked upon that as an important landmark during my Sainik School days.

  Trekking was another activity close to my heart. I was sent to a cadets’ camp in Bhubaneshwar and to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) in Darjeeling for an adventure course. School opened my eyes to an entirely new world of adventures. These trips revealed the different faces of India and the diversity of its culture. On my way to the camps, the train passed through many states of India where I observed different ways of life hitherto totally unknown to me in my insulated life as a village boy.

  Four years flew by in study, sports, theatre, and camps. I was ready for the next phase in my life. By the time I was fourteen, having spent just two years at school, I was cast into a new mould but was totally unaware of it. One of the curricular objectives of Sainik Schools is to prepare boys to join the National Defence Academy (NDA) in Khadakvasla, Pune. One becomes eligible to join the NDA only after passing a tough exam and facing an interview. There is also a test of the physical, mental and emotional strength of the candidates. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) conducts these exams and thousands of candidates appear for it every year. In those days there was a good deal of glamour and prestige attached to the army, and it was also considered a great career option, the armed forces a genuine alternative to the IAS and the IPS. The NDA, the principle training ground for the armed forces had—and continues to have a world famous training curriculum and has created within its expansive confines an awe-inspiring world of its own. Other boys in my school too were preparing to compete for the NDA. We were painfully aware that not being selected would bring ignominy; sound a death knell for our careers. It did at the time seem a question of life and death.

  Life in the village was still something I cherished, but didn’t want to return without having accomplished my task. I did not wish to become a doctor or an engineer, so it seemed quite natural for me to think of the army as my immediate goal. I was obsessed with the idea and studied hard.

  I was visiting the home of one of my uncles when the NDA entrance exam results were announced. I walked 5 km to the next village to make a telephone call from the office of the electricity board. After a long wait I learnt that I had cleared the exam. Excited, I returned to my village the next day and quickly prepared to join the NDA.

  My NDA Days

  The NDA was the second most critical stage in my life after Sainik School, but this time I was much better prepared. The NDA campus is one of the most spectacular military school campuses in the world. The sprawling 7000 acres of lush green had horse-riding tracks, several swimming pools, squash courts, a gliding course, yoga club, nature club, photography club, gyms, sailing school, shooting ranges, and several kinds of intricate obstacle courses to test the mental and physical agility of cadets. At the end of the rigorous three-year academic course at the NDA, in order to be commissioned as an officer in the Indian Army, one needs to spend a year at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun. The navy and the air force have other centres of specialized training. I chose the army and looked forward to the next four years before I became an officer.

  The NDA offered the most advanced, exemplary, and well-rounded training. It offered the best in academics, among the best librararies, and a fine movie hall where they screened the latest and best selection of international films every week. There were of course practises at the NDA that normal civil decorum would not approve of. The campus idiom, for example, was freely peppered with four-letter words. Gradually, I grew accustomed to it and began using it myself!

  The practise of ragging at the NDA too would not be looked upon positively by normal civilian society. In plain terms, it was excruciatingly painful. I was as much a victim of ragging as were the other cadets. Once I wore a shirt with one button missing. That was cause enough for a senior cadet to leap up and rip the remaining buttons off my shirt. I obviously could not go to class button-less, so I rushed back to my room and put on a new shirt, ensuring it had all its buttons intact. As I headed for class I realized that the shirt I was wearing had not been ironed. Nobody attends class in NDA in a wrinkled shirt. I was, therefore, late for class and was punished a second time. My tormentor had more in store for me. He asked me to take out a handkerchief and stitch buttons on it so that there was not a single spot left. I counted 500 buttons that I bought and stitched on to a handkerchief. My persecutor got time for some more creativity when I was busy embroidering the hanky with buttons. He asked me to appear outside his cabin at 11 p.m. wearing my swimming trunks. I had to obey him. He emerged and ordered me to knock every hour on his door till five in the morning—the hour when cadets get ready for the day’s curricular activity. The punishment that day, therefore, spilled over to the next. I passed the night sleepless, standing out in the cold in my swimming trunks. My oppressor had a change of heart by five in the morning. He asked me simply to ‘disperse’. I ran back to my room, shaved, got ready for class, and carried on. That was just another day!

  During those three years, cadets went through a series of physical and mental rigours that steeled them to face extreme conditions in the future as servicemen. The day I was forced to stitch 500 buttons on the handkerchief, I knew I would never again wear a shirt that had a button missing.

  Our early mornings were packed with activity. There was physical training or horse riding, or weapons training, or games, or swimming. We barely had twenty minutes to gulp down breakfast. We rushed back to our rooms, changed and readied ourselves for classes. Lunch was at 2 p.m. That done, we headed out to the grounds for more sports. We had just half an hour after sports to bathe. Sharp at seven the bugle sounded. By then you had to be ready, dressed formally for dinner, and seated at the desk in your room. The rooms were on either side of a long corridor. Windows opened out into the corridor and the tables faced the windows. And on each table was kept a copy of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling.

  You had your books spread out on the table. The reading lamp would be on, shade turned inward. The windows and doors were opened ajar. Between seven and eight in the evening, you could study or dream or stare vacantly into space. Whatever that might be, there at the table you must sit in silent and obedient observance of NDA rules. One of the divisional officers would be walking the corridor to check on us. By eight that evening we would receive some punishment. The probability was high and the hit rate considerable. It would be a long action-packed day and the chance of a goof-up was immense. Any trifling mess-up, from a sloppy salute to a gaffe at the dinner table, was sufficient for another round of punishment. Some seniors made us roll down the stairs on our backs before the day was over. Our backs ached all night.

  The first term was the most challenging. It was an ordeal to stay awake in class, but the vast curriculum had to be mastered. We had to make superhuman effort not to fail. One or two cadets did not make it. Some gave up and went home and some got injured during training or ragging. Sometimes ragging events became downright degrading. On those occasions first-term students were made to eat socks or do vulgar things like masturbate in public. Some senior guys were demented and took pleasure in harming juniors. The authorities handed out severe
punishment to the tormentors and even expelled some of them. I was fortunate not to suffer such humiliation.

  There was another aspect to life at the NDA. There were frequent night raids by the cadets on the orchards just outside the campus. As these raids entailed a closely coordinated effort, they helped generate bonding and camaraderie. I took part in one of these expeditions for the thrill it provided. The raids formed part of a strict honour code among cadets. A cadet who passed out from the NDA without having ever taken part in a raid was not considered by his peers to have passed with ‘honours’.

  Farmers lay in wait to protect their farmland and capture cadets plundering their orchards. They caught anybody they could lay their hands on and took them to the police station. A cadet who got caught on two or more occasions faced the prospect of expulsion from the academy. Nothing however deterred the boys. They gathered in bands of twenty-five or thirty and planned the raid. The sweet-lime orchards adjoining the campus were the most frequently raided. The orchards were 7–8 kms away so one had to run cross-country to the ‘battleground’ in the middle of the night, in battle fatigues and military boots. It was besides far from a mock military attack, where you knew that the whole thing was a fake drill and your ‘enemies’ were your own batchmates.

  On my first expedition, all the raiders returned unscathed in the first round, but the farmers had been alerted and were ready for us. They nabbed a few cadets the second time and tied them up. There was a scuffle and a brief but intense battle. A couple of raiders were beaten up along with some farmers who were also roughed up. The farmers took their captives to the police station. I was fortunate to return safely from all the raids in which I participated. Adventure lurked in every corner. On another occasion, the cadets plotted a campaign against the canteen contractor, who they believed was exploiting them. One night a senior decided to ransack the canteen. The raiding party turned everything upside down, emptied the contents of soft drink bottles, and created havoc. They took away sweetmeats and distributed them in my squadron!

  The three years at the NDA were filled with fun and frolic, and I learnt a great deal during my stay. I was, however, beginning to hate the regimentation and my mind rebelled against army straightjacketing. I found solace in literature; in the writings of great thinkers and in poetry. I spent hours in the library reading; I had also begun to entertain a secret disdain for conventional education. However, I passed out of the NDA without losing a term and went on to pursue my military training at the IMA in Dehradun.

  On graduating from the IMA, I was asked to choose one of the three wings of the army: the infantry, the artillery, or the engineering corps. I was certain I didn’t want to be in the engineering corps; infantry beckoned with the promise of adventure in the mountains; but the guns and the armoury proved the most attractive and I joined the artillery as a twenty-year old officer. It was the realization of a dream that had taken shape in Gorur many years earlier.

  The passing out parade at the IMA is a great ceremonial event; an impressive parade of military pomp and regalia. When I took part in the ceremony, I became aware of the one single emotion that had become deeply ingrained in all of us, drilled into us from the very first day at the NDA. That piece of motivation has stayed with me even after I left the army. It has given me abiding strength and support. This was the credo emblazoned on the main auditorium:

  The safety, honour and welfare of your country comes first, always, and every time

  The safety, honour and welfare of the men you command comes next always and every time

  Your own safety, honour, and welfare come last, always and every time.

  The second lesson in leadership came from Capt. J.S. Verma of the armoured corps, who was my instructor and divisional officer. He later retired as a general. Capt. Verma told me:

  In everything that you do, if you want to earn the respect of your men, you have to be professionally better than them. You have to work harder than them. You have to stretch yourself more than them. You cannot spare yourself. Do not spare your men but more importantly do not spare yourself. If you ask them to work six hours you must work eight hours. If you ask them to walk ten miles you must walk twenty. If you tell them to go without food, you must go without food and water. Whatever you do, you must ensure that you are better than them in the quantum of your effort and competence. Whatever you do, you must put them before you. Putting them before you will always show you the way. Whether you are in the army or in civilian life, putting your men before you—will always lead the way for you.

  As an officer cadet, I went to the Artillery School in Devlali, near Nashik. I was proud of being an officer but there was a deja vu of village life with its social hierarchy. The army is hierarchical, with a three-tier hierarchy. Officers occupy the top rung. Junior commissioned officers belong to the second, and jawans occupy the lowest. At twenty, I had people with twenty to thirty years’ experience reporting to me. I was conscious of occupying a position of formal superiority, yet I knew I was in no way superior to them. I did not know how to resolve this conundrum either. Officers took their meals in a separate officers’ mess. The jawans ate in the langar. I was proud of my training and upbringing, I held aloft the values of honour, service, and welfare, yet I could not help noticing the unfair advantage an officer enjoyed.

  2

  The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and the most common quality of human nature.

  —Edward Gibbon

  My Stint in the Indian Army

  T

  he life of the army jawan is the toughest in comparison to the lives of people in other professions. It is very difficult to imagine the hardships he faces. During long and difficult postings jawans do not have their families with them. There is no accommodation provided to them on the front. When they return to a peace station, less than half of them get housing. I was aware of the hardships ‘my men’ faced and a sense of guilt preyed on my mind. I did not however know how to resolve it. Even as this dilemma troubled me, I continued to live the life of a regular young officer, following the traditional army lifestyle of working hard, drinking and playing hard.

  During September–October 1971, I was training at the School of Artillery when the Bangladesh Liberation War broke out. The training was cut short and I was dispatched to my unit stationed in Sikkim. I had no idea at the time that my close buddies at the School of Artillery, Capt. Sam, Capt. Jayanth Poovaiah, and Capt. Vishnu Rawal, would play such a major role in my future career and life.

  From Devlali I travelled to Bagdogra by train, and from there by jeep to Gangtok. My unit was stationed in the field area on the China border, and from there it had been moved to Gangtok. Orders had been given to mobilize troops for war. There was palpable tension in the air. When a country is about to go to war, there is excitement and tension among the troops. When war is in the air there is excitement because war is what you have been preparing for; there is tension because there is adventure in the offing and the possibility that you might not come back alive. Everybody feels it but nobody talks about it.

  While preparations were afoot for the impending war, the daily newspapers were full of rumours. The Pakistan government had sent troops to occupy East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh. The reason for the troop movement was to quell the dissent that was brewing among the people of East Pakistan against the Pakistani establishment. The Pakistan army had begun a violent campaign to crush the opposition, its principle target a rebel organization called the Mukti Bahini, which was fighting for independence from Pakistani rule and had the support of the local people in East Pakistan.

  There was a state of civil war in East Pakistan. The violence unleashed by the Pakistan Army had resulted in a massive exodus of refugees from the east to India, over ten million people having crossed over. Meanwhile, the Indian Army was training the Mukti Bahini to overthrow the Pakistan Army and to ensure that the refugees from East Pakistan (formerly East Bengal in undivided India) were able to return safely to t
heir country.

  My unit had guns, medical and signal resources. When you move for war, you leave non-essentials behind at the base. The movement of a division entails a massive exercise in logistics, planning. First, surface transport such as trains and trucks move the men and materials of the unit. The unit carries only the bare essentials to fight the war. The officers need to know how much a railway wagon or truck can carry, and having calculated that, decide how many trains will be required to transport the unit; in some kinds of terrain, mules are used for transportation, and again a calculation has to be made of the number of mules required to carry the mountain guns and other supplies.

  When mobilization is ordered, all army leave is cancelled and soldiers’ families are sent home. A unit on move order, begins an operational drill that works with clockwork precision. I realized that effective management and administration of resources and people are the principle criteria of a good army. When I reached my unit in Sikkim it was night. I had been told at the base station that I would be attached to the commanding officer, Lt. Col. K.L.K. Singh. The commanding officer wanted an ‘intelligence’ officer to be attached to his staff.

  As intelligence officer, I shadowed my commanding officer (CO) and closely observed the entire planning process. Lt. Col. Singh was part of an infantry brigade commanded by a brigadier. He was a great soldier. Honest and courageous, he had a razor-sharp mind in conceiving a sound strategy and taking instant decisions. Decisions had to be taken in a split second because they concerned men whose lives were under threat. I couldn’t but realize that we were no longer engaging in mock battles.