Understanding Human Relations
It was early October and we had been given an option to either go for jogging or for horse riding in the morning. That there were about 15 horses in the Academy shows the low preference of riding amongst a 220 strong batch. The reasons were obvious, already a few persons had fractured their bones by falling from the horseback, and those who escaped with minor injuries were in much larger numbers. But I liked riding to the limit of madness.
From the horseback I felt I was the lord of the earth. Controlling the horse is not easy; the reason is that the horses don’t believe that the rider should ride them. It had happened on a few occasions that the horse ran away with the rider, breaking from the group, towards the sheds. At times, in the process the riders had fallen from the horseback. Some horses were naughtier, as they could change their stepping to produce more jerks and would toss riders off their back. The moral of the story was that all the riders who had gone to riding ground with romantic thoughts of riding horses while whistling a song had been terribly disappointed, if not hurt.
On the other hand, our quest to tame the animal had just begun. As I already had had pet dogs at our house, I knew that the animals have their intelligence, pride and ego. And in case of these horses I discovered, since they had been ridden by officer trainees, they had come to realize that many riders were not up to the mark. So we were handling a huge animal that was continuously contemplating strategies of throwing us off its back. So there was no friendly relationship between the horses and the riders. And if anyone had to be seated on the horse back, he/she had to establish his superiority over the animal.
With that realization there was a stiff struggle between the riders to identify the better amongst the horses and defend their ownership. I instead was always slow to develop an understanding and so was riding a new horse every day. With all that said and done, I actually was enjoying whichever horse I was riding. The biggest reason being that I hated jogging in the cool winters and drowsing on the horseback was any day a better alternative, even if being riskier. And when we crossed the joggers some would even push their backs to the mountains while making way for us, because that was the farthest they could go from the horse.
I, for one, always felt like offering lift to those who hated jogging, as I did, but it was not possible. So we would pass the joggers in a flash of seconds and leaving them huffing and puffing. While some used to have signs of appreciation in their eyes, others had that of jealously. And jealously there was for certain, because we had automatically been identified into a group that was seen as more daring and macho. There were many who had objections to that but the only way to deny that was to join the riding team and mastering a horse and that was ‘dangerous’.
Another advantage that had come across us was that we were exploring much larger geography compared to the joggers. There were different tracks for the riders through unknown mountain roads and we would often go to some old school or bungalow and break for a cup of tea.
In the evening also the horses would come to the riding ground and the more enthusiastic one’s like I was, would go out again. And since there were few academic assignments- after the riding I would invariably end up in badminton or squash court. The Director, Joint Director and all the Deputy Directors were continuously asking the Officer Trainees to be on the sports fields in the evening.
So one of those evenings when I was sweating on the badminton court and as usual was one of the few who would Lord over it, we had a new guest to the court. She was one of the toppers in the Examination. The lady had come with one of our batch mates and wanted to play singles with him. As we were already out of the steam, it was a good offer and we sat by the side of the court and watched them play and wait for our turn. Somehow their game was not building up as the gentleman was one of the better players in the batch so he offered to play doubles instead and asked me and my partner to play with them.
The game was sort of into few points when the lady suddenly walked out of the court with her friend shocked and chasing her. Owing to my utter ignorance I asked my partner that why did she leave. He had only said, ‘You took her name’. And then when I could not make out head or tail out of that also, he explained, ‘Didn’t I tell you some of the toppers are talking only amongst themselves and obviously she doesn’t know your rank and you took her name to address her’. True, there already were discussions that some of the toppers were not willing to ‘descend’ to talk below a certain AIR or were talking within their service only. But then I had no such complexes and wouldn’t address anyone ‘Ma’am’ and anyway I was ranked 15th, so she had missed to identify someone whom she should have known by her own logic.
It was one of the important lessons I learnt about a profession identified as highly snobbish in attitude, that people had started believing they were superior only due to certain ranks in an examination. If religion, regions and castes were not sufficient- services, cadres and ranks were forming new invisible barriers. Not surprisingly some people posted in distant and difficult states (cadres) were feeling cold shouldered. And people in better cadres were drawing maximum friends from those from distant cadres. I learnt that in the All India Services (AIS) there is a provision called the Cadre Based Marriage (CBM) where if both the spouses are in the AIS then they can be allotted a common cadre. And hence this popularity of the better cadres or the people posted there or the meanness of human relations.
But as carefree I was at that time, I and my friend were by then moving to the basketball court. It was a challenge to us as we had been told that the previous evening a few basket ball players of our section had been hurt on the court, as a gentleman in the other section was playing rough game.
But on the court who drew my attention more was a lady of their section who was shouting at the pitch of her voice, trying to motivate her team as she played (meddled with) the game. More then her game her spirit was worth noticing. And as the fate would have planned the lady IPS officer was by the next year to become my real sister in law, whom my elder brother would marry during their training at Sardar Patel Academy at Hyderabad. Though that day on the court she was very upset with me for my rough game but in future I was to make amends by introducing her to my brother. While another lady who had just walked out of the badminton court had actually walked out of the life of a person as soon as she had entered; someone whom she was so desperately to need in days to come.
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