AFVOA Newletter August 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2020 Page 87 of 237 6 Kissa Call-On Ka Ms Pankaja Srinivasan Genre: Life in the Forces s I write this there is a faint flutter in my tummy. I don’t exactly remember, but that flutter must have been a quake in 1987 when Raju came home from work and informed me that we were going to “Call On” the AOC. He then proceeded to explain to me what “Call On” and “AOC” meant and my jitters grew. I understood there was something significant in those words by the look on the young Flight Lieutenant’s face and the tone of his voice. I remember feeling a tad rebellious as I thought this ritual was rather feudal (this was before I was ‘Ladies clubbed’ into deferential resignation). I feel nervous again after all these years because my son (also in the IAF) and his bride will soon be ‘calling on’ on the Commandant. It is his first as a ‘married officer’. So, we took ourselves off and arrived at the AOC’s house a full fifteen minutes before Call On time. We hung around there in full view of the world (in this case Hakimpet); a difficult thing to do as there is no scope for anonymity when the transport is a Bajaj scooter. A