A March from the Past

Remember those army ads that they've been showing before the movies? The ones where there’s a doctor parachuting down a hill to save lives, or a woman is doing rock-climbing type adrenaline junkie stuff, all as part of their everyday jobs? The ones that go on to tell you that if you want to live a life less ordinary, the army is the place to be? I guess one of the reasons why the army puts out ads like these is to appeal to the privileged, bungee jumping, skydiving, river rafting, zip lining, swimming with the dolphins, maxing every moment, thrill seeking yuppie millenials bored with the humdrum state of everyday life. The sort who would share life-affirming travel quotes about how it broadens your mind and makes you a better person and teaches you life-lessons you’d never learn otherwise and why everyone should quit their jobs and spend their lives traveling because that’s the only way you can really be a complete person and yes it has nothing to do with privilege or the fact that travel is the new social currency for a generation that’s generally had it easier and therefore isn’t so hung up on that house or that car and likes to consider itself less materialistic.

Sure, there is all that, but the other reason for these ads is to undo years of damage that school education does to the ordinary child’s perception of army life. Seventeen-odd years of school life teaches you that you’ll be solving parabolic equations if you’re an engineer, balancing equations if you’re a scientist and marching all the time if you join the army. Of course there is a lot more to army life than marching, but that’s not what the schools would like you to believe. The only bit of army life that you were exposed to in school was the march past, which, to me, was among the most mind-numbingly boring and pointless things one could ever do. You’d spend hours toiling in the sun, getting yelled all manner of abuse because your arms weren’t stiff enough or rising up and down in unison with the rest of the group. And to what end? So that parents and a chief guest would land up on sports day and spend an afternoon that was equal parts mild tedium, gentle boredom and humdrum monotony. I mean, if there was some grander purpose to the march past, I may still have taken it more seriously. But to practice relentlessly for weeks on end, striving for pointless perfection, all for the purpose of 20 minutes of marching around a field that your parents couldn’t really care less about? It isn’t like they ever told me I marched brilliantly and would take me out for a special dinner, or would forgive other transgressions like low marks or getting into trouble. “Even though you flunked Maths and sneaked a cigarette into the bathroom, we’re willing to overlook that because by God, your marching skills are simply divine!”

The best that you can do through great marching skills, the absolute pinnacle of marching achievement, is to march during the republic day parade. In theory, this sounds like a big deal, but if you think about it, it really isn’t. It’s just a grander, adult version of sports day where you’ll be marching past a bored president and an even more bored visiting head of state. Yes, the whole country may be watching on TV, but really everyone’s just waiting for those motorcycle stuntmen to do their thing. Granted that everyone loves motorcycle stuntmen and there’s no shame in being overshadowed by them, but you’re also overshadowed by all manner of weapon systems and missiles, planes flying in formation, and, worst of all, a never-ending series of eccentric tableaus put up by each of the 29 states!

But coming back to the army, it wasn’t just schools that made the army look bad – it was Hollywood as well. Unfortunately for the army, we were the first generation that was exposed to Hollywood movies, and that didn’t help matters. Until it was just Bollywood, everyone would’ve been scrambling over each other to join the army. Army people were honest, patriotic citizens who fell in love with beautiful women, only to then get called to the border. But the affair continued in the form of long, passionate letters written in the midst of blowing up Pakistani tanks, performing acts of great heroism and forging immense bonds of camaraderie with your fellow army men. Who wouldn't want all that? You could really do no wrong by joining the army, was the general Bollywood consensus. With Hollywood though, the army was an entirely different cup of tea. You could see that your entire lineage would be insulted in highly colourful language while you were getting yelled at and being asked to crawl through a muddy trench and do a hundred push ups in the middle of a heavy downpour simply because an angry superior didn’t like your face and wanted to show you that he was the boss.

What better way, then, to remind you that the army isn’t just march pasts and getting yelled at than just before the start of a Hollywood movie? And if that doesn’t do the trick and get you to join, hopefully the national anthem right after will!