Belatedly (before that I couldn’t be spared), I had been sent to the DSSC or Defence Services Staff College in Wellington (Nilgiris) in the year 1990-91 to qualify as a Staff Officer, if anyone needed me.
One of the most important things that you learn during the Staff Course is Appreciation. The process involves looking at the Situation, considering its various Factors and then arriving at likely Courses of Action for the Enemy and then coming up with Own Courses of Action to best counter the enemy.
After the Staff Course, I was appointed to Warship Work-up Organisation (WWO) in Vizag.
One Sunday, Lyn, my wife, asked me to fetch fresh vegetables from Scindia market whilst she was busy cleaning up the house and washing clothes.
I told her that I would as soon as I finished with newly learnt Appreciation about how to go about getting the vegetables.
“What’s there to Appreciate?” She asked me, “All that you have to do is to put down your crossword, put on your foot – wear, start the car and go.”
I told her that one thing that DSSC had taught me was that life’s situations are not as easy as they initially looked and that after a proper Appreciation I would come across best course of action and then make an action plan.
She gave me that look that only she could. Meanwhile, I was applying Principles of War to all available Factors including Flexibility and Surprise.
After sometime I heard the front door bang and decided that she had chosen my best course of action, that is, to go to Scindia market herself to fetch the vegetables.
That enabled me to solve the last clue of the Crossword: India’s ace spinner (7, 6). After unsuccessfully trying Bishen Singh Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrashekhar, it turned out to be Mahatma Gandhi!
However, there was total silence at home. Surely, she could have returned long time ago with the vegetables. And where were Arjun and Arun?
Another fifteen minutes and then I got up since I couldn’t take it anymore. There was no lunch at the dining table. There was only a note that read, “If you have finished your Appreciation and feeling hungry, please join us at the club. Since you didn’t get the vegetables we can all have lunch there.”
And to think that Staff College teaches you that you can apply Appreciation and Principles of War to every situation.
P.S. Those of you who are from Chennai can confirm to me if the girls of Holy Angels are also taught Appreciation and Principles of War because it was she who gave me: Surprise! She had accurately predicted Enemy Course of Action and chosen the best suited for her!
P.P.S. Very soon we had a bonfire when I burnt my Staff College dockets for being impractical!
