That morning, after the fall-in, when the Zojila LCs were told to report for PT, they were clueless about the troubles that awaited them at the grounds.
Dressed in spotless white outfits and shoes, they reached the ground expecting to be taken through some simple exercises. By then, they had learnt to execute dozens of front rolls, cream rolls, and push-ups. The thought of exercises didn’t faze them anymore. The muscles, which had earlier protested and groaned, had become obliging. The joints that had been inflexible and adamant had turned pliant. Each night, they went to bed feeling like train wrecks, each morning they sprang up fresh and ready to face the day. They prided themselves for their achievements, berated themselves for their failures.
It was a pleasant morning, the energy levels were high and the PT ground seemed inviting. The huge field was fringed with a variety of ropes and obstacles. Undeterred, the LCs looked forward to an enjoyable session of warming up. The ropes and obstacles would come later, they mused.
However, Ustad Sultan Singh, their PT instructor, turned out to be absolutely unlike the lackadaisical PT instructors in their schools. The ustad, a towering man with a handlebar moustache, craggy face, barrel chest, and the loudest voice they had ever heard, managed to strike terror in the first-termers on the very first day of PT. Every command was an ear-splitting experience, every look a smouldering fire.
While all the cadets knew that they were expected to perform incredible feats, they thought those would come much later.
The PT period began with some warm-up exercises. They ran along the perimeter for a distance, jogged for a few minutes and stretched themselves to loosen stiff muscles. It seemed easy enough.
After the initial warm-up exercises, the squad was made to line up in front of the vertical ropes. A bit apprehensive, Nutty slithered towards the end.
Wondering if they were being taken through a demonstration of his skills, the LCs watched as the ustad took them through the technique of gripping the rope and then climbing up the rope in slow motion. He made it look simple and effortless.
‘Grip the rope firmly with both hands,’ he instructed. ‘Wrap your feet around it, and then reach for a higher level with the right hand. Follow it up by gripping the rope at the same level with the left hand. Now pull your body up. Continue the same actions.’
Having finished the demo, the ustad ordered them to line up and repeat the feat. ‘It’s not difficult,’ he told the hesitating LCs.
He won’t expect us to climb ropes in the very first PT class, Nutty assumed. This is madness. She crept farther from the rope.
The ustad, however, exhibited no intention of letting go. With a menacing gleam in his eyes, he beckoned, ‘First two in the line,’ he barked. ‘Climb karega.’
Get real, man! We are not magicians performing rope tricks. Shiny was indignant.
Anxiety etched on their faces, and hearts palpitating, Billi and Cockroach steeled themselves for the ordeal.
‘Up,’ shouted PT Ustad, as they loitered near the ropes. The two of them grasped the ropes, which were much rougher than they had imagined. Trying to emulate the ustad’s example, Billi gripped the rope with both her hands and pushed her unwilling body upwards. She went up by a couple of inches only to find herself slipping down.
‘Go up!’ the ustad commanded.
Lips clenched, she hauled her body up by a few more inches, but holding on to the rope with clammy hands was proving to be a challenge. All her life, she had prided herself on possessing an athletic body, but now the same body felt heavier than ever before. It would be humiliating if she failed to haul herself up even a few feet above the ground, she decided.
Stunned, the others watched as the two LCs struggled with the challenge. Cockroach, who had shimmied up a few metres, looked down triumphantly. All she had wanted to do was to prove her superiority to the LCs. While Billi was struggling at two metres above the ground, she had managed to go up to the top of the six metre rope, thanks to her brother’s efforts. Her brother had passed out of the academy a couple of years back and had spent his annual leave training his ambitious sister. The rope had seemed easy to climb, and she had done well till she looked down derisively at the other LCs. She froze. Hit by a dizzy spell, she felt paralysed and could neither move up nor down.
With a determined last-ditch effort, Billi managed to haul herself up another few metres. Her shoulders felt as though they would leave their joints, and her palms were beginning to blister with the effort of hauling her body up. Using sheer willpower, she had climbed up that much, but now the same willpower seemed to desert her.
‘Very good, cadet,’ the ustad shouted encouragingly. ‘Go up!’
Having exhausted all her energy, Billi paused for some rest and found herself slipping down the rope. Surprised by the change in situation, the ustad shouted once again, ‘Neeche nahin, upar jao.’
In the meantime, Cockroach was facing a different kind of problem. Having reached the top, she could not descend.
Ustad Sultan Singh had handled more situations than he could remember. Each and every batch of cadets went through the same issues in the beginning. Fear was at the root of the problem, and he had mastered the techniques to make them shed fear. By the end of the fortnight, he could make them shimmy up the ropes like monkeys.
Stepping forward, he grabbed the bottom end of both the ropes, and began to shake them violently. There was a loud gasp as the LCs watched the rope swaying dangerously.
Didn’t he realize that his actions would make the two girls fall and break their bones?
Surprisingly, it produced the desired effect. The ustad’s actions brought desperate screams from Billi and Cockroach. ‘Sir, please, I will fall,’ shouted Cockroach.
‘Then come down,’ he shouted back.
There was only one way to escape the situation. Closing her eyes, and muttering fervent prayers, Cockroach slid down the rope and hit the ground. Billi, who found herself following suit, found her rope being shaken violently by the unforgiving ustad.
‘LC, upar jao,’ he shouted, continuing to tug at the rope.
Desperate, she willed herself to climb further and further till he stopped jerking the rope. ‘Shabash!’ came the approval. A minute later, he ordered, ‘Ab neeche ayega!’
One by one, everyone went up the rope, with the unrelenting ustad goading them to go higher and higher. There was no escape. The carrot at the end of the stick was rather satisfying. The LCs knew they would never forget their first climb.
…and the first drill.
To their surprise and delight, the LCs found themselves under the wings of capable seniors. These guardian angels, known as overstudies, were assigned to help the first-termers cope with the hazards of training. They would henceforth supervise the newly minted cadets, instruct them on etiquette and help them achieve their aims. On their frail shoulders rested the onerous responsibility of moulding the greenhorns into smart cadets. An overstudy was supposed to guide her charge and help her settle down. She was to tutor the first-termer about the expectations, norms, privileges, and infinite-plus-one traditions of the company. Like a mother hen, she was expected to protect her ward. She was the senior who occupied the room right across the corridor and so she could keep an eye on the first-termer under her charge.
In short, an overstudy was a wet nurse to a junior. Right from teaching the understudy to shine their buttons, to eating with a fork and knife, it was all the responsibility of the overstudy. Even an itsy-bitsy mistake, like a truant loose thread waving from the uniform of the jungoo, was enough to invite trouble for the overstudy. They were put in the line of fire for every error committed by their charges.
Little wonder, most seniors were not happy with their portfolios. This was especially true when the charge was someone like Nutty, who was an ace at erring.
The day after the overstudies were assigned their juniors, the four friends got together to discuss the matter. It was a balanced discussion, with two of them praising their overstudies and two criticizing theirs.
To Nutty’s chagrin, she was assigned a senior called Dipti Duggal. Although everyone called her DD, Nutty referred to her as Didi. Didi was an expert at dadagiri. She criticized, harangued and punished Nutty for every petty act. Not just that, she kept a strict watch on her ward, much to the Jalna girl’s annoyance. Worse, she had forbidden Nutty to use cuss words. Not that it cured the girl of her habit. Her habit of bloody-ing everything wasn’t easy to quit. ‘I am not a bloody two-year-old,’ she raged. ‘One of these days, I am going to turn the tables on bloody Didi.’
Lucky, with her petite physique and gentle smile, brought out the protective instincts in her overstudy, an Amazonian Sikhni called Jagjit Grewal. Some called her Juggy, and some Grewal. But Lucky called her the Grey Wall. Soon, the Grey Wall became the Wall, a wall with a large shadow, under which she felt secure. The Wall took great care of her charge, tutoring and counselling her on each and every aspect of the training. ‘I am sure the Wall trained with Geeta Phogat,’ Lucky told the others. ‘She has the muscles of a bodybuilder.’
‘You are really lucky,’ said Nutty. ‘The Wall is shielding you against the seniors. No one wants to take panga with her.’
For easy-going Shiny, her overstudy, Roshni Sharma, was a true angel. Ever accommodating, generous and patient, Rosh was the epitome of a guardian angel. ‘Ask and you shall receive’ being the watchword. Like a true guardian angel, invited or not, Rosh was sure to show up during the pivotal moments in Shiny’s life, as well as all the little moments in between. ‘Roshni and Shiny are synonymous,’ the happy girl told her friends. ‘I couldn’t have wished for a better overstudy.’ The two of them got along like a house on fire.
‘Mine is a big snob,’ Billi declared. She had no love lost for her overstudy, Jyoti Thakral aka Joe. ‘She barely speaks to me, except to order me around or send me on errands.’
The truth was that Joe, just like her charge, was an ambitious girl, who had set her heart upon winning the Sword. She had little time and patience for the aggressive and outspoken junior.
‘I wish we could choose our overstudy,’ Nutty sighed. ‘It would be so nice if we could have a GC as our overstudy.’ Her imagination was going haywire.
‘Half of us would be pregnant by the time we passed out. At least, you would be,’ Lucky laughed. ‘Just imagine a heavily pregnant Nutty waddling around like a duck, during the POP.’
No matter what the juniors felt, the overstudies were to prove a big boon in the coming days.