Games People Play!

Games People Play!




Military school nostalgia always occupies a special corner in a cadet’s heart wherever he may end up in adult life----of which the guts and glory of rule-breaking has pride of place.

Ours was a defence ministry.-run military school in a provincial town in Maharashtra. And owing to its dependence on erratic government funding, the School would have to come up with innovative ways every now and then to generate funds on its own.

One such idea that must have been a real ‘flash of inspiration’ and which, surprisingly, had got the go-ahead had been a small pisciculture project on some unutilised land on the campus----the idea being to supplement the school funds with the income generated by the produce in the local market.

We cadets had seen the project take shape from its conception to its operation before our very (hungry!) eyes and had long dreamt of the day when we too would partake of its benefits in the school mess. But as soon as the project became operational, an order was issued that the project was meant to benefit the cadets and the school, not directly (!), but only indirectly.

Seething with indignation, the senior cadets immediately called a council of war. A resolution was passed, a motto ("Fish or Perish!") adopted, measures and contingencies discussed and a plan of action drawn up.Theres no such thing as margin for error in some parts of the world.

Come Sunday night, 0000 hrs, and our mock Special Forces (SF) units---the martyrs to the cause---swung into action. Since the doors of the Houses were locked for the night, the exit had been planned through the grill-barred dormitory windows. After preliminary examinations, suitable windows were chosen for the escape. Within minutes, all but two of the screws fixing each of the grills to the window-frames had been taken out---so that the grills could now be turned around a vertical axis like revolving doors. Out jumped the troops noiselessly and the grills were swung back into position leaving no room for official suspicion.

Evading the watchmen doing their rounds and keeping well away from tar roads and street-lights, the units made their way to the pond. Armed with nylon mosquito nets (taken down from dormitory beds), a few troops from each unit entered the water. A few sweeps of the nets and a few minutes later, the units were hauling the catch back to the dormitories.

Gaining their entry the selfsame way, the units handed over their prize catch for further action---preparations for which had already been made. Covert operations in the cadets’ mess had yielded knives and seasoning ingredients. Stoves had been smuggled into the campus during the day from local acquaintances in the city. Hidden and camouflaged in large buckets (which cadets bought for washing clothes), they had successfully made it past the check-posts without any casualty.

That night, amid muffled cheers for the intrepid SF units and their logistics support, the whole school had a bada khaana---much to the unimaginable chagrin of the authorities the next day!