And then, for a movie-crazed nation, we have filmi IPS officers. Take Bollywood, Tollywood, or any other wood for that matter, our IPS officers played by popular heroes are made of stuff which only our comic Superheroes like Superman, Batman, etc. can have, and no ordinary man can ever have. Their style, swagger and ability to dodge bullets and turn them to vanquish the enemies is the kind of imagination a budding comic writer prays for.
In the IPS academy, the “Ustaads” are the Lords and masters of the outdoors and the real “Dabangs”. They may not have the pompous-sounding degrees and a UPSC-clearing pedigree, but they are masters of their craft. Masters like nobody else. Whether it is PT, Parade, Armsdrill, Field Craft, sports, Shooting, or horse riding, they are the masters of it all. Plus, they have the onerous task of converting the most indoor and studious types, who are unfit nerds, into fit, athletic figures who can withstand the rigours of the job in the Police.
I remember our Chief Drill Instructor (CDI), Inspector Rajinder Singh, a tall, lanky figure from Haryana. Now, CDI may be an inspector, but he is the Lord and master of the field, more powerful than any commissioner or DGP, for it is his instant command that all the geniuses of the world come to attention. He asks no one and shouts his orders when he wishes, in the manner he chooses. He may bark it out, lace it with irony or be downright insulting, the IPS officers, probationers, as they are called, have to put up with it. The first lesson of obedience is learnt in their hands. Now, as for Inspector Rajinder Singh, I have marvelled till this day, within just 3-4 days of joining the academy, he remembered everyone’s name. A week and he knew each one’s habits. Who had a drinking binge last night? Who is likely to miss a step while parading? Who is the smart aleck who cracked the joke even when the Ustaad was some 200 meters away – Kya Verma Sahib bade “Chutkule” yaad aa rahe hain – his voice would boom. He was a quarter master cum intelligence operative. A month gone, and one felt he knew our personal problems, and one could consult him. His memory and his native system of information gathering among a batch of over 100 officers were a lesson worth emulating by Directors of IB or RAW.
Then there was Sub-Inspector Hanuman Singh, our chief horse-riding instructor, originally from the interiors of Rajasthan. He was a smartly turned-out figure in Khaki breeches, a thin man, but with eyes so fierce as to melt your arrogance if you looked into them longer than necessary. A menacing handlebar moustache to top it all, and his presence alone made both the horses and IPS officers instantly obedient. Now, a horse knows if a rider is scared or confident. It is not for nothing that such an ability to figure out things without much information to go by is called “Horse-sense”. Otherwise, it may well have been“dog-sense”, “cat-sense” or, for that matter, “Ostrich-sense”. No, Sir, it is Horse Sense, the most superior sense of all, or one can say, the sense of senses. Once the horse senses the rider is scared or even mildly tentative, it bolts. It was not an uncommon sight for the future SPs and IGs with their backsides thumping over the recalcitrant horse, and they trying to save both their ass and dignity to shout pleading “Ustaad bachao, bachao….”. For his part, without flinching an eyelid, Ustaad Hanuman will nonchalantly declare, “ Kya Sahib ek ghoda nahin chala sakte to Zilla kya chalaoge?”
But then our Ustaads came in all hues. Not all were shrill and shouting kinds. There was Inspector Vasudev Singh from Lucknow, who had the gentlest of manners. Now I am from the mountains with an ingrained fear of swimming, and with all the attributes of a sinking stone which Physics could describe. Inspector Vasudev Singh, while dunking you in the pool, recited a gentle lullaby, “Arre Shridhar sahib Bada aasaan hai, kar lenge,” and with that, in a few weeks, one was able to swim the whole length of the swimming pool. The same pool, which till the other day looked like a “Padhadi,” looked like a ferocious ocean out to devour you. And all this was done with the gentlest of prodding and persuasion. Instinctively, Inspector Vasudev Singh, with a humble high school education, was, in fact, a master at persuasion and motivation done in a manner so sophisticated that it could teach a thing or two to some of the best professors in our fancy MBA courses.Another Ustaad from the interiors of Barmer, Purnima Ram, was 50-plus but could outrun most of the 20-somethings in us on any given day. The Keralite Pillay Ustaad, with his Malayalam brand Hindi, could rip apart a rifle and reassemble it in 30 seconds, just as the brightest mechanical engineers amongst us from the IITs would still be struggling for minutes to put the pieces together.
These teachings stay with you and become ingrained in you as practical skills. We may have had fancy Post-Graduate degrees, but our“Ustaads” had double PhD from the most difficult of all the universities- The University of Life. They taught the lessons that stay with you and become a part of you for life. The least we can do is to salute these masters. Our gratitude to them for shaping us in ways we were too young to understand.
