This is a very early post because I really needed to get this done so that I will not be sitting with this at night. I will be having practice early in the morning for the next two weeks and I need to start sleeping early. It is a mess. But this whole early morning practice reminds me of my days spent in an NCC camp. I was a part of my school’s NCC for two years, during my eight and ninth standard. I held the highest rank in my school when I was in ninth standard. It was called CQSM- Cadet Quarters Senior Most and I also cleared the A certificate exam.
But don’t get me started on the sham that was the A certificate exam. It was honestly horrifying to see the amount of malpractice that went with it. The question paper was out a few days before the exam, the invigilators helped the students with their answers and it was a poor excuse of an exam. But I did try my best to do my best in it, I did work hard to study for it. But the taint of the cheating that went with the exam, I guess, will never leave my certificate. And it is not a very comforting thought, trust me.
But anyway, I am digressing from what I started with. The camp was of 2-week duration, in a school campus in Katangalathur. The facilities were terrible, we all had to stay in classrooms, some 20 of us in each classroom. The toilets did not have lights and most of the time, they didn’t have water either. We had strict routines and it was very difficult at first to get used to it all. Our day started at 5 am. All of us bleary-eyed girls and boys (strictly separated, mind you) would have a morning run from the campus to a ground 2 kilometres away. Once we reach there, the time would be 5:30 am and we would spend the next one hour there. There would be exercises and activities and then at 6:30, we would start the run back to campus. We would then get an hour of respite in which time we would have to take a bath (most of us didn’t because it was useless) and eat breakfast and clean our plates and utensils and then report back for marchpast. The day would then be divided between marchpast, interacting with officers, lecture sessions, everything out in the open under the scorching sun. Finally, our day would end in the evening when we would have an assembly and then reports would be read out, attendance taken, the NCC song sung and the NCC clap sounded and then we would be let free to go and change into night clothes and take a bath and report back for dinner.
Phones were not allowed, we had to deposit our phones with the officers. But of course, most of us didn’t. Our NCC teacher (?) helped us and we all managed to escape unnoticed. The phone was my only source of comfort. I could talk to my parents and grandparents (who were in Singapore at that time) and especially when I fell sick, they were my source of comfort. The days spent in the camp are days I will remember for a lot of time. It was a time where I learnt a lot about how to handle things by myself and how to take care of myself. When I fell sick, I learnt how to take care of myself even more. I learnt to adjust to problems. And I realised that I had pretty fond memories of the place. There is a saying that even hell gets comfortable once you stay there long enough. But then, I guess staying there long enough made me realise that it wasn’t really hell in the first place. And I think, that is something I should keep in mind for a long time. And maybe, once I start realising that the ‘hell’ I seem to inhabit is not actually ‘hell’ in the first place, I will stop my search for the devil?
And that’s my memory for the day.
The Memory Of A Storyteller 