AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 183 of 332 Even in those days, the Passing out Parade (PoP) was held on Saturdays. The main difference was that the cadets to be commissioned had to spend a day extra – as the commissioning was done at midnight and they could leave only on the following Sunday. And of course, the date of commission was on Sunday and thus losing out on a day’s pay and allowances! However, cadets of the junior courses - all those who were not being commissioned – would leave soon after the PoP – generally by trains leaving Dehra Dun after lunch. In our case, we were to leave by the Doon Express, which left late at night and reached Delhi station the next morning. Our special bogie was attached to this train. On reaching Delhi, we saw off all those cadets who were living in Delhi or in the surrounding areas. Those of us, who were occupying the Military Special compartment and were south bound, had to wait patiently for the train to empty itself. That took about one hour or thereabouts. Our connecting train was the Madras bound Grand Trunk (GT) Express, which was to steam off from New Delhi railway station. The bogie would be shunted to the yard and placed there till a shunting engine was available, when the bogie would be hauled off to New Delhi station. Cadets had the option of staying in the bogie itself or going out into the City to meet friends, relatives or just ‘time pass’. We were responsible for the security of the compartment. Thus, we could lock up the bogie from the outside and get back into the bogie at New Delhi station. I believe that a couple of cadets stayed back and looked after the safety, while the rest went out in the cold wintry morning to meet up or do shopping – it being Sunday, shops only in a couple of areas were open. PZ who was to become a Sergeant (Sgt) in the coming final term was designated Cadet in Charge (CinC) of our train. He and a few others had joined IMA after spending six terms at the National Defence Academy (NDA), Poona. There were a number of cadets from Technical Graduates scheme. They had catapulted from the first term to the fourth and final term. Some names which come to mind were – two Pillais – one a Tamilian and the other from Kerala, KAS Rajan, Rajagopalan, Kannan, Balasundaram, Satyamurthy, Vijay Kumar – the last two were bound for Bangalore like self. The GT express was scheduled to leave from New Delhi station around 5.00 pm. Hence PZ had told all of us to be seated inside the compartment latest by 4.30 pm. We still had not got over the hang over from the Academy – hence all of us were back by 4.00 pm itself. Another point about the trains those days was that many of them still used steam.