Sawdhan! Vishram! Left, Right, Left!
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In the mid-1960s, our Jesuit school celebrated Independence Day with proper reverence and with all the solemnity and drama we could muster. The brass flagpole was polished bright enough to dazzle, the vast courtyard was swept thoroughly by the ground-staff, the concrete floors were mopped, and the walls lime-washed until they gleamed. The faint aroma that screamed Clean! with a capital C hung in the air.
Sister Carmella was in command. Her head-dress snapped around as she strode briskly with clipboard in hand, chanting:
“A left! A left! Left, right, left!” Often followed by,
“Boys, stand straight! The Nation does not march like waddling ducks! Sawdhan! Vishram (Attention! At ease!)
The practice drills could best be summarized as The Hapless Parade of the Hopelessly Uncoordinated. Each year, the 4th graders were pressed into service for the parade, and it was our turn that year. Picture, if you will, a bunch of wiggling monkeys, most of us seemed convinced that left and right were interchangeable. The courtyard echoed with our erratic footfall, sounding like the hiccuping of an out-of-tune tabla rendition.
At the head of this disorderly battalion was Sri H. N. Singh, our history teacher. Slender, with a sharp nose and pencil ’stache, thick slicked-back hair shining with oil, he swung his arms with a self-importance that might lead one to believe he was leading the parade on Rajpath. He had been in the NCC at some point, so he was deployed by Sr Carmella for the task, and he accepted it dutifully. Behind his back, we knew Sri H.N.Singh by the unfortunate moniker of Ainchan Singh, Aincha meaning cock-eyed, for his cross-eyed gaze. He could pin two misbehaving lads at once. He didn’t seem to like me, but looking back, I think he didn’t much like any of us at all.
A couple of days before the event, a mild panic arose. Sr Carmella, normally ruthlessly organized, had apparently forgotten to invite a Chief Guest. During one ragged practice session, I noticed a quick exchange of looks between Sri Ainchan Singh, his eyes darting both east and west, and Sr Carmella. She, in turn, scanned the uncoordinated swarm staggering in the courtyard, and then her eyes rested briefly on me. There was an imperceptible nod between the two, and I was given a letter to take home. To my father.
Noticing the terror in my eyes, and ignoring my muted protests, fervent appeals to her merciful side with profuse apologies for every past indiscretion, and heartfelt promises to behave in the future, Sr Carmella smiled and said something like, “It is all good, don’t worry.” Somewhat reassured, but not fully, I delivered the letter to my father that evening.
A well-respected member of the community, stern with us at home but genial with others, he had been approached by the school to be the Chief Guest, with all the tact and urgency of a small crisis. He accepted graciously. And so it came to pass that on that 15th of August morning, he would be the one to hoist the flag and address the gathering.
The flag went up, flower petals came down, Jana Gana Mana rose wavering but with full-throated sincerity, and my father, garlanded and dignified in his rarely worn ensemble of khadi kurta and bottom, with a Gandhi topi, spoke with quiet warmth, delivering a short speech. Vande Mataram, Sare Jehan Se Accha, Aao Baccho Tumhe Dikhayen followed (NOT the IIT version). Down below, the parade of the unwilling shuffled and stumbled in imperfect unison, a comedy of two left feet and mistimed turns.
But here was the thing: we were a ragtag squad of boys drawn from every part of the community, H, M, S, and, of course, Catholic. In that moment, we were just schoolboys, no other qualifying labels. United by our crooked lines and our earnestness. We didn’t think in terms of any differences in those days amongst us. Only of pride, pride in our flag, in our school, in our still-young nation striding confidently ahead.
I caught my father’s eye on the dais. His smile was half amusement at my stumbling, half pride at the spectacle, not of precision, but of spirit.
When I look back now, that is what stays with me. The togetherness. The innocence. A nation that felt ascendant, hopeful, united, bound by shared dreams rather than divided by suspicion.
I am saddened and pensive on this Independence Day, at the noise, the shrill boasts of รผber-patriotism, the chest-thumping flood of WhatsCrapp forwards, the blame-storming that passes for discourse. Pride seems to have been replaced by competition of who can shout louder, who can brand the other side more viciously as traitors.
Worse still, the unsocial media has turned it into a zero-sum game, one where no one truly wins, because one side is not satisfied until the other is ridiculed, maligned, branded a loser, a nitwit, a moron, a crook, a foreign-funded fraud.
My sisters would later tease me that my marching that day was the only thing more crooked than Sri Aincha Singh’s eyes. Sigh. It didn’t improve much at IIT either, where my seniors quickly gave up on me for some parade of freshmen right after our ragging period (15 Aug 1976?)
We could laugh then. Beneath that laughter, the memory of a day when national pride wasn’t performative, when community meant something simple and real. And deeply personal.
That unique aroma of lime-washed walls remains etched in my memory. Those innocent times were without hashtags, WhatsCrapp forwards, or flag-emoji laden selfies. We were simply a group of boys stumbling in zig-zag lines behind Sri Aincha Singh, cross-eyed, off-rhythm, yet somehow moving forward together.
That crooked little parade seems so precious a memory that I wanted to share it before it faded away completely from my faulty memory. We may have marched badly back then, but we marched as one.
