Sandwiched

Posted bymudsmitPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , , , , , , , , ,

“I am the fifth generation soldier in my family”, said the walrus ‘stache gentleman sitting in front of us. Awestruck, both of us applauded him. Towards my right sat my clean shaven husband – neither his parents wanted him to join the Indian Army nor his two children were motivated to go Papa’s olive green way.

An Indian Bihari’s IAS Dream

My husband and I belong to a place where people primarily understand what Indian Administrative Service is. A man in uniform from Sepoy to General is a Havildar. Sparked by my husband’s marvelous academic wins at school, his father had seen the next Triloki Nath Chaturvedi (the famous IAS) in him. His only mistake was to let my husband appear for entrance exam of Sainik School Tilaiya. My husband proved his mettle and instead of civil services, the soldiering started.

My helpless father-in-law had to perforce see his prodigal child get through NDA, and then IMA. But Bihari parents remain undeterred (in some cases until the ‘child’ is 32 and has tried UPSC 6 times already, depending on their caste of course!) They never stopped coaxing him for civil services – “Shaadi kaise hogi? Who will marry you!” Finally my husband decided to behave like a true Bihari. After four years of Indian Army, he thought to resign indeed and start preparing for UPSC in India’s Capital city.

The decision to leave his military career gave a jolt to his father. Reverse psychology helped. His father, who worked on the accounts of Bihar Government, realized the arithmetic behind his son’s decision. He gave up on his dream to send his child to Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy.

With the aim to stop my husband from leaving the lucrative pensionable Indian Army job, he decided to cover a train journey of 2000 km and a hilly drive of 400 km just to show his son a photograph, an important photograph. He fought his motion sickness through the winding roads to reach his son’s field station. The moment my husband saw that photograph, he decided to not leave his IA job in the aspiration to add an S to it.

That life turning photograph was a picture of me (so yes – a very important one!). Coincidentally, my parents were on a lookout for a prospective husband and had approached them.

Somewhere in Bihar, my family and I were deeply in love with the Indian Army (retrospectively, we didn’t really know a lot about the Indian Army). We were and are a family of nationalists. Thanks to Pakistan for losing the wars. Yes, China’s debacle was there, but Nehru had saved Indian Army with his Himalayan Blunder. Any patriotic song would swell us up in tears and fill our hearts with an even greater love for India. As far as Army was concerned we understood only one medal, Param Vir Chakra and we knew only one army man, “The Khan, Shahrukh Khan” (thanks to television series of late eighties, which my family never missed.)

This proposal of a real Indian Army man just bowled us over and the icing on the cake was our first meeting. I had never seen or met anyone like him before. We got married.

Indian Army needs Advertisements to motivate.

After marriage, my husband’s offensive strategy to change his parents’ perception of the Indian Army shifted to OUR defensive way – ie lure them. Our advertising techniques were:

  1. Canteen Stores’ subsidized goods – Though they never paid for any of these items – it lifted them to cloud nine when they calculated the money their son was able to save while buying those items (#consumerism). Extra saving on one item made you purchase more non-essential items. After all, humans are nothing but item collectors. Very soon they realized this.
  2. Mess – Seldom we missed opportunity to party with them in our Mess, unfortunately they were teetotaler.
  3. Access to exotic products across India – We gifted them exotic products of our vocational training centre, but my mother-in-law herself was highly skilled.
  4. Military Hospitals – A sneeze or a bad tummy – military hospitals were there for them. Free treatment and free medicines lured them to our place but very soon their third son became a doctor. So even the medical tourism stopped.
  5. Religious tourism – We made them travel with us to religious places including those unthinkable spots where only a soldier could go. From Vaishnav Devi to Shivkhori, we seldom missed any temple. But even the Gods and the beautiful temples could not divert their attention from our untold stories of bullets and guns and mines.  

IIT just a gateway to becoming an IAS.

After an uneasy calm of fifteen years my father in law again traveled 1,840 kms to reach our place in a peace station to motivate our two children to prepare for MBBS or Engineering and forget National Defence Academy or Officers Training Academy.

Knowing my millennial kids, I never let that ‘motivation’ session happen under my roof. But unknowingly, they did oblige his dream when both of them joined prestigious Indian Institute of Technology to become ‘engineers’. In Bihar, IITs are just a gateway to IAS, certainly not Innovations.

My old father-in-law did try his best to push his grandkids into civil services. But both had their own mind, which was disillusioned from this grand old service of India. They kept themselves away from the UPSC – IAS craze. They chose to be a CIVILIAN, with all soldierly traits, but certainly not a soldier themselves.

So back to present where we were speaking to a fifth generation Indian Army officer. Our heart was filled again with patriotism and inspiration. It was indeed a proud moment for both of us.

But suddenly we felt sandwiched. Sandwiched between two generations who could and would only understand Param Vir Chakra!

Published by mudsmit

An Educator with experience of teaching in various Army and Public Schools. A Tree-Hugger & A New Naive Blogger

66 thoughts on “Sandwiched”

    2. A very good read n a different discription of an account most of the salaried / upper middle class families face today while deciding on professions for their young . Enjoyable ! Good wishes n ever Tagra Raho mam 👍

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. What an article Smita !! The blog tells your beautiful journey of life in very crisp and lively way. Very interesting to know the events and his right intervention from time to time to be in the army.( Definitely your photograph played miracle here)
    Quite understandable babuji’s wish and dilemma about the three letter service. After so many years this is still common with the parents but children of this generation have their own mind and way out. ( May be the work options are more OR closely they have watched the political intervention and stress related to it) Being a wife of an IAS officer this service definitely has a charm. The beauty is to serve the people of the country at different levels.This is the biggest source of happiness and satisfaction which motivates them.
    Excellent write up !!! Very true we are sandwiched but feel proud in whatever we do .🥳

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. Beautifully described…. Smita…. quite interesting…… loved going through each word…. the colourful picture added beauty to the write up…..
    Even my son didn’t try a single time for civil services…. though he had a deep understanding of polity, people and places of the country. Our generation believes that children should follow their mind & dreams.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. Very well written Smita ! . A good read .

    My father an old timer from the Army did not put us through Sainik  or Military Schools but when the time came all three of us were sporting the OG , unluckily there was no women entry otherwise my sisters would have also joined the bandwagon . Was it the chocolates from CSD or the Coke at the Club which did the trick and lured us but some halo of the desh ki izzat led to our baptism in the fauj . All of us left the Army at various stages of our career to join the Corporate world – the grass is always greener on the other side? The perks were missing but privileges still on . The next gen had a dekho of both worlds and when the million dollar question was thrown to them – How about joining the Forces ? There was total silence.  None of them wanted to be any where close to  sporting a uniform . They all ventured on   professional journeys but in the civvies- the free rations , single malts , echs or the glamour of offrs Institutes was no big deal nor a temptation as the corporate bag had better ingredients. . Gone are the days when coy girls are  enamoured by the fauji – a la Sharukh Khan , today it is DINC culture and the laurels of the bravados and martyrs do not motivate the kids . For them a plush office in an AC environ is the pedestal to their next aim – to be an entrepreneur ! Unless there is a media blitzkrieg or a change in our Govt policies , it would be a distant dream to get the youth in the  Forces fold .

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Great write up 👍🏻Smita
    Every Army family has so many interesting stories to share .. and it’s really nice to read yours n the way you jotted it down beautifully 😊👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻Tagra Raho🙏

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. Very well written and a story that each one of us faces. In fact leave IAS, IIT, MBBS and other famous jobs, the new generation of millennials are also interested in Youtuber jobs, Gamer jobs the ones that surely raises our eyebrows, imagine reaction of our upper generations. So really we are sandwiched. In fact not only sandwiched, sometimes totally sidelined. Millennials are having their own dreams that are far far from our imaginations and even our limited wisdom and believe me they may be right.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. very well written and very lively. very true and one can relate it with own experiences. Many times we are sandwiched between the 2 generations not only in choosing careers but in other things also. 👌very nice

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  13. Well written Smita.When you read the blog it seems as if one is experiencing everything live.And how very true that CSD only lures you to buy more not so required items.But all said and done you miss all the mess parties and the ladies club and so on and so far once you retire.
    Brilliant write up.keep going👍👍Tagraraho

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you for liking it .. it will always inspire me to write more ..
      .. army is a place where we are connected forever .. any time you party friends are there to give company 😁

      Like

      Reply

  14. You have an excellent style of writing and this article of yours is going to attract masses as it deals with a problem which is so common in each and every part of India. I have seen how children commit suicide when they dont meet their parent’s expectations of competing engineering and medical exams. It’s sad😢 The movie, “Three idiots” deals with a similar kind of problem in a humorous way.

    We are the learned class so we give our children the freedom to choose and take decisions. Now this becomes another problem because they become so independent that they dont listen to us so we really are sandwiched😂 But this problem exists as we are few.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  15. Smita, your unique awesomeness and positive energy in your writings inspires me every time. I really take out time to read your blog. Because the simplest things also made to mean the most important and close to heart. You are great communicator and relate to our lives. Hmmm…you touch our hearts 💓 thru your writings. Keep up. I m waiting for more.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. Enjoyed this write up too… looking for somemore unique articles from you…. Please continue to pour your heart into the true facts of life…These can guide few and can be eye-opener for few.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  17. Dear Smita
    Vivid and interesting description of your fauji journey .
    Enjoyed reading it.
    Could relate to the feeling of being sandwiched.
    At one point if time, army was a very lucrative career but the present generation does not think so.
    Although we have thoroughly enjoyed our journey in the army, we could not motivate our son to choose armed forces as a profession..

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  18. Very well written. I would like to make one point though. The charm of civil services was already gone by the late 80s for most of India (except Bihar and a couple of other northern states). The charm of Armed services was also limited by then to only a few northern states. When I went to Mumbai for my undergrad, coming from a Bihari family, I was surprised that many people had no idea what an IAS was. None of my friends (barring those from Bihar and eastern UP) had any interest or even much respect for civil services. One of my friends told me (in the late 80s) that only his grandfather (not his Dad) wanted him to join civil services.

    What is described in this very well written blog is a Bihari phenomenon which is delayed by 30 years compared to the majority of India. We are behind by at least a generation and just catching up.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  19. Another gem of a write up from you! Fluent, humorous and very well articulated 🥇
    Kudos to the inspiring yet difficult journey of the beautiful couple! I do feel your photograph was a pivotal moment and it seems to have done wonders 🤩

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  20. So truly expressed,the charm of civil service was never so important for me,but I have seen the older generation is still crazy for this IAS tag.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  25. Oh my God Smita how beautifully you’ve written on such simple & relatable topics. You really know how to draw the readers into a story & keep them engrossed in your world. Looking forward to some more…..

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  27. How beautifully you write? I keep reading and reading; have lost track how many times I would have read so far. Waiting for many more to come and wishing more readership for you. Best wishes.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  29. It was amazing reading it and personally felt being a part of the journey.

    Being in uniform was an exciting journey and every moment a cherished memory.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a reply to Namita Cancel reply