 Academy becomes egalitarian
July 1972
 To the disappointment of many a bright young officer, I arrived in the National Academy wearing an engagement ring. (I was engaged to a doctor from Madras who was doing his MD in psychiatry in A.I.I.M.S). Things got so ridiculous that some of them suggested that I break my engagement in their
favour.
I shared a room with Sudha Sinha whom I had met in the Academy bus, during the journey from Dehradun to Mussoori. Those days there were hundreds of servants in the Academy. Each room had a personal attendant who brought our morning tea and did other odd jobs for us.
Sudha was quiet and physically frail while I was robust, aggressive and outspoken. Together we made a great pair and had a friendship which has survived till date. She always urged me to do things and take up causes while standing quietly by my side.
One day Sudha mentioned that Bahadur our room servant, had been coughing constantly. We told him to go to the academy doctor. He said academy doctors did not treat servants. He would have to go three miles away to the government dispensary and would lose a day's wage as he was on a daily wage. He also said that everybody was coughing in his neighbourhood, as all the servant quarters were leaking and damp.
 We were very upset to hear this. Servant quarters were down the steep hill. Sudha suggested that I personally go down and check for myself. I went down the slippery path and saw the pathetic squalor in which the servants lived. I suspected a lot of chest infections and tuberculosis. I also found that the small children simply loitered around as there was no nursery school nearby.
Next day I reported the matter to the Director. I insisted on an immediate medical checkup for all the servants and their families, for the academy dispensary to be thrown open to them, repair of their quarters and a nursery school to be opened on the premises and the question of making casual workers permanent, to be examined.
I must give entire credit to Mr. Sathe I.C.S. the Director, who was equally shocked to know these facts. Soon a medical camp was organised, the cases of tuberculosis put on treatment, the Academy dispensary was opened to all in spite of the protests of the doctors who only wanted to treat the 'Bada Sahibs'. Estimates for repairing the servants quarters were included in the Academy Budget. Mrs. Sathe arranged a fete with the help of trainees to raise funds for the nursery in which I sold Kashmiri food (We sold mutton balls with roti) and raised 500 rupees. Totally about sixty thousand was raised by the joint effort).
For the first time in the Academy a social welfare association was formed and I was invited to be its convener. This was the only organisation for which no elections were held. I kept visiting the servants quarters often and made friends with the children and arranged sports, games and cultural activities for them. One day, I arranged a picnic for them at Bhatta falls.
This lead to great excitement. I managed to get the permission to use the Academy bus to get lunch packed for fifty kids from the officers' mess.
On the day of the departure, the problems started appearing one by one. First of all, three volunteers who were to accompany me deserted me for various reasons. I did not give up. Then the bus driver came up and told me that the bus would not start. All the children were looking at me expectantly. They did not want me to give up.
At that time the Academy truck appeared with vegetables from Dehradun. I immediately decided to go in the truck. I rushed and got the permission to use the truck.
As the children started climbing in the truck joyously, I saw my fiance, Dr. Rajkumar, trudging up the path towards us. For once I was not happy to see him. He had suddenly decided to come from Delhi to surprise me. (In any case the phones between Delhi and Mussoori hardly worked those days).
He saw me seated next to the driver in the truck and was horrified. I told him I could not back out now. His ego was totally hurt.
Here he had come all the way from Delhi and I was off in a silly truck. Why could not someone else take my place? I made a last ditch attempt to request some of the boys in the Academy to go in my place. Since they were cheesed off by my engagement, they refused to help and wished it broken for good.
At last I suggested that he should come along. It was too much for him, so he refused the offer and with a sullen face went to the guesthouse to read. In the evening when I came back, he was still sulking. It took me another twenty-four hours to get him back to normal. Next day, he took me for a ride in the rickshaw till library point and said he was proud of me.
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