Tikki Love!

Term breaks meant a lot to me when I was at NDA; tikki end-o-term break however was one of its kind. I remember the bright sunny day clearly which I had chosen to finally propose my love for a beautiful girl.

The girl I had fallen for head over heels the very day I had seen her enter the classroom of my new school, the girl I had day dreamed of in every wake-eyed reverie, the girl I had a picture of secretly tucked between the pages of my textbook which I would pretend to be reading during the ghastly open door study periods at academy, the girl I was hopelessly moonstruck over…..

Hey, I would go on endlessly lest we move to the very day this article/blog is about. Consequently I had planned quite cunningly this very crucial move; her house shared a common boundary with one of my classmate’s whom I had taken into confidence; I also knew that her working parents would go to their respective corporate offices and her elder brother would be at college.

The modus operandi was to ‘shock-n-awe’ by climbing the wall using a ladder through my friend’s house; reach out and take a chest touch over the balcony and into the verandah just outside her room on the first floor; knock on her window and be waiting with a rose bud and open arms while on my knees ready to say the much rehearsed words of “I love you” soon as she opens her door.

When we are young and especially when in love our wisdom is so clouded with unreasonable hope and optimism that even meticulously thought plans are only but dreams until their effects be tried and tested.  

Even my plan sounds perfect ,however this was not be; as soon as I climbed on the boundary wall I found to my horror that it was implanted with protruding shards of glass which made me lose my foothold ,rip my jeans and fall over and into her backyard! Now I was stuck there with no way of reaching her balcony neither any to climb back on the wall, moreover if someone heard me on the ground floor I posed the risk of being taken a thief….Hopeless.

Suddenly I heard a movement in the house, maybe her parents were back or even worse her huge dinosaur for a brother was taking a day off, with my heart pounding in my chest and my pulse racing I broke out into a cold sweat, it was now or never; I took my shoe off and threw it at her window hoping only she would hear it, but in my anxiousness I threw it a bit higher and it took a rebound off the ceiling of her verandah and into her balcony making a loud noise.

Her scowly frown first turned into an adorable giggle and then into peals of irrepressible  laughter on seeing me standing in her backyard with ripped jeans, all dirty and bruised up with a wilted, broken rosebud in my hand and wearing only a single shoe!

As the saying goes “nothing happens unless first a dream”; she said yes and eventually we got married. However her brother still wonders how a size nine Reebok footprint had landed on her sister’s balcony ceiling!

Dukki Camp!

The feeling of being born in the squadron is ever exhilarating, because only after nine months of joining NDA and completing the second term Camp-Greenhorn, you finally become an Injun (or a Jaguar...or as per the squadron you belong)!

When I was a dukki undergoing the camp, me and my coursemates followed a simple trick.

This trick was PCK from our overstudy tikkis who held the previous term’s plaque. They taught us with great arrogance “As you move along in pitch darkness of the night, each of you must whisper the name of any obstacle to your coursemate behind in a chain, so that no one would be surprised and utter a cry that would disclose your position and most importantly, avoid getting hurt.”
 

During the runback, which is the crucial finishing event of the camp, we clambered about with various DP-type fakes for SLRs, RLs and other weapons around our necks and mammoth packs across our shoulders until we could finally organize ourselves with the skilled Assamese cadet in the front.

The distinctive lead man in our single line meandering rod-like formation effortlessly moved to the fore with me and the rest behind, following him like sheep to a shepherd.

As we moved along through the thick undergrowth in the jungle our hero occasionally turned around and whispered to me "Lakdi" or "Pathhar” or “Kaante” which I would pass along.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash ahead of me and then, from several feet down I heard a single meekly whispered word filled with pain—"Guddha!"

Ikki dope!

  Loud shouts of “Savdhan Chall ” from CTW (pune) cadets in a bicycle squad to every passing officer has made me confess to an ‘Ikki Dope’. I’m not being cynical but the peculiar salutation really sounded like “Sudan Chall “ to me when I had spent only a couple of days at NDA.

I clearly remember the first ‘D1’ of my first term at NDA when I was riding my ‘India-24’ bike to class in a squad of four, the other three being seniors of severe consequence in what was to happen only moments from now. My thoughts of home in an open-eyed reverie was brought to sudden alertness by loud successive shouts of “savdhan chall” from the squads leading my own, intermittent with the ominous roar of a bullet driven by a DS approaching from the opposite direction.

  “Oye ikki, say savdhan chall” warned the squad senior from behind; but here I was stuck between the grave tussle of the gospel truth and the customary trend being followed by cadets all around me.

With every passing nanosecond the DS was adventing nearer, the dug-dugging of his bullet was becoming louder and as he approached the squad just in front of ours, it was a moment of reckoning, of decission, of…cold sweat!

“Oye ikki,say it NOW!” threatened the senior from between his gritting teeth.

I knew it was now or too late and I took the side of the truth. Since I was not going to the Sudan block, I shouted “SCIENCE BLOCK CHALL”!!