THANK YOU TEACHERS

 THANK YOU TEACHERS

 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

05/IX/2023

Teachers tried their level best to teach me subjects which I could never make head or tail of. My father was a teacher for English and I still am poor in grammar. My spellings get mixed up. I write ‘i’ before the ‘e’ so many times. I think in Punjabi and then translate it to English. Sometimes in Hindi just to see if I remember ‘Sandhi-Viched’ or whatever it means.

In NDA they taught us a variety of subjects, English was one. Believe you me, it wasn’t a cake walk. Prose, poetry, essay, precis writing, and what not. Out of all the poems in the world they taught us Byzantium by Yeats. What had an Army Cadet got to do with ‘Hades Bobin’ wrapped on a mummy, I haven’t been able to figure out till now. The poem haunts me till now.

Byzantium put me on the relegation warning list for being ‘hopeless’ in English. On top of that the stamp of St’Kaps, (my school) added to the misery.

I told the teacher during my interview that my father was the HOD of English and my name sounds English too. From an F he gave me an A+ when he saw the exchange of letters between father and son about Byzantium. Why didn’t you write what I taught you? I confessed, I was never awake.

Everyone studied in NDA. A ‘torchie’ studied hard to keep his academic torch on his chest but a chap like me who had to improve his grade studied much harder. A cadet with a CGPA of 7 plus also studied but the one with 2.5 devoted more time, not to study but to gather intelligence and make a ‘guess paper’. He would get it solved from a torchie, by heart it, then appear in the exam and write what he had mugged and not what was asked. This was after the instructors would tell the important questions and sure shot questions.

Maths and Physics were another waterloo. Boyle's Law and Archimedes Principle could never be calculated at normal temperature and pressure. Charlie Squadron used to be ‘hot’ and ‘pressure’ to pass your PT tests and Drill Square Test was more than running this country.

Your ‘enclosure’ in cross-country defined if you would you be studying in the study period or running around NDAs Periphery. The gravitational pull of the bed was so strong that ‘g’ shifted from the study table to under the bed sheet the moment one opened a text book. Books were like sedatives.

Class notes were ‘scribbles’ of a different kind. The complete academic term could be summarised in one notebook. It was an ‘assorted salad’ of every subject. Most of it was ‘knots and crosses’ played with your fellow bencher with meticulously maintained score sheets.

Depending on whether you slept with your eyes open or closed, the quality of notes never changed. Just to indicate to the teacher that you were awake, the pen was moved across the page. That ball point pen might not have a refill, as it would have been taken by a senior for compiling the ‘parade state’. But if  you were asked to produce a paper and a pen, you could, to avoid hundred bend-stretches.

 If you showed those scribbles to a chemist, he could give you medicines and even ask who is this fantastic doctor and why does a NDA cadet need medicines for Schizophrenia.

Ustads taught us to do ‘Dhawa’. The dummy was the only enemy besides the weapon training instructor one could put a bayonet through with ‘Ghop-Nikal’. Rifle ko ‘kholna aur jorna’ was taught for what? I was a marksman with a rifle and LMG but could not shoot a target five yards away with a pistol which was my personal weapon later.

Drill ustads were nuts of a different calibre and kind. They could catch you hiding in Byzantium also. Two hundred 'flat-foots' on the drill square in the morning left you running on flat feet and the PT ustad would insist on you to run on your toes. The ‘hand spring’ and ‘back flip’ one learnt could be done while being asleep which was the only thing one could do without being ticked off. It was to spring surprises for teachers and flip the subject on its back.

Life has been a process of learning and unlearning. This ‘taught’ became a teacher while still being a student. A big thank you to all my teachers and parents, my greatest teachers. What am I going to learn next and from who? I wonder!!!!!!!

WISHING ALL TEACHERS IN WHATEVER CAPACITY A HAPPY TEACHERS DAY.

JAI HIND
© ® NOEL ELLIS