AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 172 of 332 .......... The list is endless. May the colours of Chennai greet you and grow on you day after day! JAI HIND Humour in Uniform Wg Cdr C Ravishankar “Wholly Dependent on Me” The year was 1980. I was posted to a frontline forward support base near the LoC. One fine morning, as I was returning to my Office from the HQ complex, I heard a ruckus in the Clerical Bay located alongside my Office. One of the Airmen of my Unit from Bihar was almost going to bash up my staff when I intervened to bring the situation under control. It turned out that the Visitor wanted to apply for an advance from his Provident Fund and the reason stated by him was "To supply fish for my pond ". Indeed a very valid head of expenditure for someone who was into farming but not a reason covered in the PF rules. The dealing clerk explained the rule position and helpfully suggested that the Visitor change the reason to the most frequently used and the ubiquitous "Mundan Ceremony of Son", which was the reason for the commotion. The Visitor, a simple, upright and with an air of self righteousness about him, took my clerk's suggestion as a personal affront to his integrity and took it upon himself to correct the system that was unabashedly prompting him to state a lie. I pacified the Visitor and took him to my Office and explained to him the rule position in my presumptuously stylish Hindi, as best as a Tamilian drawn from the Dravidian pedagogy could ever explain. The Visitor seemed reasonably convinced that the system was not as bad it was and there was a clearly thought out method in this madness. My suggestion of resubmission of his application was taken well, or so I thought and was very proud of my multi lingual and problem solving skills. As he was preparing to leave, I suddenly remembered a recent directive that any one applying for an advance from PF for any function pertaining to a member of his / her family must invariably state that the subject member of the family is "wholly dependent on me" in the application. I explained this provision too to the now compliant Visitor who now looked even more convinced that it is the way it should be. He gave me a "khadak" salute and went back to the Clerical Bay. About 30 minutes later, I again heard a massive commotion and I rushed to the scene. The Visitor had indeed resubmitted his application with a modified reason, which now read as " To supply fish for my pond who is wholly dependent on me "!