A flat tyre in NDA meant extra fatigue. One had to lug the bicycle even if the tyres were flat. The main culprits were cadets who used to ‘manage’ valves. Punctures were there but a valve going missing was very common. I still remember the number of the Bicycle when I joined NDA. It was numbered ‘C-5’. She was a darling. Many cadets must have ridden it, but she served me as new. One day, I fell into the trap of the ‘missing valves’. The squadron cycle repair man, who had taken a liking towards me and gave me a handful of spare valves. Thereafter, one never had to go on a hunt for cycle valves throughout my stay at NDA. When I was about to leave for my second term break, the repair man told me that “cadet aap ka cycle main overhaul kar ke rakhunga”. He did a fantastic job. I must thank that man from the bottom of my heart. He was a real “bicycle doctor”. I noticed that NDA bicycles have gone tubeless when we visited for a course get to...
Long-long ago when I was a newly promoted Barsati Captain, posted in the golden sands of ‘Ja-sale-mer’. Our company along with our BMP-Is and BRDMs was deployed for annual training in area of ‘Khiyan-Danwar’. We youngsters had no other work but to recce our operational area inch by inch, dune by dune till we became masters. Believe you me, we could go blindfolded and tell you where we had reached when our vehicles turned or went over a bump on those desert tracks. We learnt map reading on a map which had no landmarks. BOPs (Border Out Posts) were manned by a ‘camel battalion’ were the only reference points. Tracks were few and far between. All movement was mostly cross country. The border fence had not been conceived by then. Boundary pillars were often missed. We would cut across to the Paki side between pillars routinely. The only thing one understood was that we were supposed to fire our missiles onto the oncoming enemy tanks/mechanised force...