Drill Class - 1

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Every red-blooded student who has a semblance of individuality hates the Drill Class.

Sorry if I hurt anyone with this sweeping generalization but I won't retract it.

This afternoon I took out my car from its parking lot intending to drive to our Township's Supermarket for replenishing my stock of cool drinks.

And then I saw the Officer of our Security Staff bellowing commands on a 3-line array of his subordinates whom he collected for a Drill Class...and my blood rose and I was feeling sorry for the poor blokes.

I could have taken the left and avoided them, but by an impish impulse, I took the right turn, approached the Class and honked. and felt happy for them when the Officer shouted a command at them to give way and possibly disperse...his spell was broken and I felt I did my duty.

In our Village School we had a Drill Teacher called Jessey sir (I guess it was a common name for all Drill Teachers in all schools at our time).

Jessey sir was as reluctant to drill us as we were to be drilled. So, he gave out Games after Roll Call; and I believe got rebuked by my HM Father.

Anyway we became so expert at Games under his benign supervision that we were selected for the Finals of the Annual Griggs Memorial Tournaments.

And I was the Center of our Ball Badminton Squad.

Jessey Sir collected the 'cash' from the HM and we all (about 25 of us) were led by him to our District HQ, Nellore on a bus. Jessey sir parked us all in the student's hostel, whispered something in the ears of our SPL (School Pupils Leader) and vanished.

We never saw him again for three days...SPL and us managed somehow with the pittance of 'cash' that Jessey Sir pushed into the pocket of SPL.

By the way we lost narrowly to the Town's RSR Badminton Squad (I suspect the linesmen, who were from Nellore, cheated us).

We made our ignominious way back to our Muthukur sans Jessey Sir, who was discovered in a stoned condition in one of the hovels of Nellore and fetched back...I think his 'case' wasn't settled till my father's retirement.

My next encounter with the Drill Class was in the Final Year of our M Sc at AU in 1963. The Chinese 'invaded' our country and gave us a bloody nose which rankles still and frightens our Leaders whenever the Dragon wags his tail (Do dragons have wagable tails? I have to check).

The upshot of this one-sided affair was that all students at AU were forced to enroll for NCC with the sweetener of a 5% grace marks in the Final Exams. So there was this mass upsurge in the NCC Classes whose Teachers were unprepared for anything more than giving Drill Classes by the thousand.

But we were in our Final Year and the Teachers were our Juniors who had enrolled voluntarily in their First Year and rose to become Colonels or stuff. And they depended heavily on our Text Books, Lecture Notes and Lab Manuals in their Final Year.

So, we all pleaded sick by turns and were left out to mug up and prepare for our Exams...I don't think I was 'drilled' for more than 5 minutes in my life.

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Fortunately I am not alone in my aversion to Drill.

I don't know if you have read PGW's Performing Flea. It is not a widely read book. It is semi-autobiographical. Almost half of it is 'instructions' on 'how to write' to a friend of his. The rest of it is a hilarious account of his imprisonment by the Germans in a Camp for English senior citizens caught napping in France during the Second World War.

PGW apparently had a not-so-bad time and was asked to broadcast about the nice time they gave him for propaganda purposes by Goebbels. PGW, not knowing what nefarious things were going on outside their Camp agreed to deliver three or four talks on radio and got into serious trouble in England and had to shift base to the US.

Anyway the only unpleasant task that the Germans imposed on their senior citizen prisoners was to attend Drill Classes morning and evening, more for the Roll Call to see if everyone was in and ok.

At the end of it all, PGW writes in his Performing Flea, the only wish he had in his retired life was to buy a German Soldier, put him up in his house, drag him every morning and evening to his garden and bark at him...Left, Right, Left, Right, About Turn, March, Double Up...Achtung!!!

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