They say LIVE LIFE LESS ORDINARY, and we still see ourself in that environment, marching,saluting and making ourself men from boys. Its a well saying that you can kill a fauji but u cant kill faujigiri in his heart. Perhaps this cute but shitty thing makes us love this profession more day by day But. . Who are we? We are not 1 or 2 ..but MANY…….many who joined the prestigious Military training institutes to wear those shiny stars,strips. We are those whose parents were proud to give their “CHILD” to defence forces.
But, perhaps fate was not with us, some among us lost lives during training, some lost arms, some got paralysed and some had very minor injuries and ultimately had to leave the forces and end up this career before it started and many like us who still survive , have to LIVE A LIFE “”LESS ORDINARY”” but in some other ways, . We are now dependent on parents. Some among us cant walk due to loss of legs, some of us cant hug our parents due to paralysed arms but perhaps its our “courage” which was assessed in 5 days of ssb interview,that we still face these challenges with a lion’s heart.
Whenever i used to travel with my mother,whenever she used to see a mother carrying her son and begging on streets, she often used to help her, just by saying “she may be from a beggar mafia,but for me she is a mother in need”. She is a teacher by profession. I saw N number of her students who were not able to pay the fees for studies and she often payed for them from her Not So Enough salary, saying that Blessings from such souls always stay with us. But ………..Why no body cares when such mothers cry for their own sons? Who wants to push her son’s wheelchair for life???
Or Which mother does not wants he son’s left arm on her shoulder?????
I was already injured when i was forced to do some tasks on the name of military training by my instructor which made me disabled from left arm. But still i was following the ORDERS ,the very first thing which we learn in our training. Then why we are disowned badly?
THEY say- that we were just cadets and not Officers so no benefits can be given to us …but wait does that makes a difference? Officers were also cadets at one time, please dun judge us by Merely the time which we spent in training academies that we were doing training only and were not commissioned officers. Instead see us from the vision that WE chose to dedicate our lives for Army Navy and Airforce. So what if many of us cant walk, or use our left hands, our will power is still strong and we are emotionally and mentally fit enough sir, we are still able to make decisions fast and accurately as per the qualities which were assessed in SSB’s and can be adjusted in many desk jobs or administrative works. Infact newly passed Disability act says to pursue this decision of adjusting ppl like us in the suitable employment which we can do, but unfortunately Defence forces donot follow it. Where should we go sir? In front of whome we shall cry??
Many of us need medical treatment though on papers we are not cadets anymore but we are denied with that too. Though we were selected to be officers in Armed Forces, but we still feel that jawans are the Base of our forces and we respect them from bottom of our hearts. But why such parity?- If a jawan on the very first day of his enrollment , during training he gets injured like us and has to leave army navy or airforce, he is counted as ex serviceman ……….but why not us sir? If we were not trained enough to be officers, he was also not trained enough to be a jawan.
You claim that you work for us,you care for us and you are available for us in hard times, Sorry sir, many of us tried hard to approach you, wrote you and your N number of ministers but never got a hand to help us, never got a person from your side to hear our grievances.
But as that Sikh Havildar of 14 ssb used to say – “”Gentlemen, ssb clear ni hui to niraash ni hona….kya pta aapme se kaun kal ko SHEHRUKHAAN (SHAH RUKH KHAN) ban je”” we also moved on, somewhere sometimes feel pitty on ourselves, somewhere we still hope that you ll realise that MORALLY ITS NOT GOOD TO DISOWN US LIKE WE ARE AND SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE FOR US. So what we are disabled now, we ended up like this during our service for the nation.At least give us a life of dignity to live.
We are Ex OFFICER CADETS.. ! Jai Hind