The Legend of Room No. 420

The year was 1995!

I was posted as G3 near Bikaner and was preparing for my Staff College Entrance Exam! This was my 2nd attempt, having missed out in my 1st attempt by a whisker!!

Since I was posted on Staff I could not be spared to attend the pre-staff course!

However, the BM, that time, Maj Pillai, from The GUARDS was kind enough to spare me from the morning and evening parade!

I was permitted to study at home and attend office from 8.30 to 1.30 only! He also offered to help me in my preparation for Tac B paper by checking my practice appreciations and guiding me!

Otherwise, I was struggling on my own to cope up with the syllabus for the exam and prepare for the big battle ahead of me.... Like a lone ranger!

Though, I did have the benefit of having the hand written notes, meticulously prepared by Kler Sir, which helped me a great deal in my struggle! Especially for SMT and Adm & Morale.... the entire syllabus reduced to two answer sheets each! So one did not have to read the entire study material for these two subjects again and again!

I remember having used to lock myself inside my study room for hours…... trying to study for the exam and adhere to time table that I had prepared for myself!!

Those days, my son Gaurav was about six months old and had just started crawling around the house! He would wait outside my study room for hours, piling up all his toys in front of the door as if planning an ambush! He used to wait for me to open the door and the moment I came out to take a break he would immediately rush inside the study and try and wreak havoc with my books and study material!! Shivani used to have a tough time controlling him!

Fortunately for me, the regt was at Jaisalmer those days and Rocky Thakur Sir was also preparing for the same exam! He was also lucky to have attended the pre-staff course at Secunderabad where Saby Sir was one of the Instructors!

That is when Col Das, who was the Comdt those days, asked me to come down to Jaisalmer. He said he will make me practice writing the appreciations for Tac B, check the same and give me some valuable tips and guidance in my preparation for the exam. In addition, I could also interact with Thakur Sir, go through the material from pre-staff and exchange notes with him!!

So, during my leave, I along with Shivani and Gaurav took the night bus from Bikaner to Jaisalmer and went to the Regt for a week!

And there I was.... practicing writing Tac B appreciations under the watchful eyes of Das Sir and also personally being mentored by him!

In the meanwhile, Mrs Sinha, who was staying in the Offrs Mess temp accn, used to look after Shivani and Gaurav! She also took them for the city darshan and for meeting with the other ladies staying in the offrs colony!

In addition to my studies, we also had some fun moments spent with our extended Gladiators family.... The married offrs were staying in the ONGC Complex on the other end of Jaisalmer! So, a few evenings were spent in calling on them and proved to be a big morale booster for me!

Thakur sir was staying in a rented house closer to the regt location!! So his house was our abode for the balance time available to us.... studying together, exchanging notes for each subject and trying to soak in as much knowledge as possible! Plus some fun moments for the ladies also!

That one week of my business cum pleasure trip to Jaisalmer proved to be very useful and raised my confidence level tremendously!

The nearest Exam Centre was Bathinda, but one could write the exam for any centre of his choice! So Thakur Sir and I decided to write the exam from Delhi Centre! We booked a guest room in ABHM at SP Marg, starting one week before the commencement of our exam so that we could do our final revision together and be ready for the battle ahead of us!!

I landed up in Delhi, at the ABHM, in last week of Aug, as planned. Thakur Sir was already staying at Mayur Vihar with his parents and he came down from there!

But to our horror ..... we found that we had been allotted Room No. 420!!! Our first reaction was .... "Gaye kaam se!!" We requested the Mess Havildar if he can shift us to some other room!! Obviously he expressed his inability to do so as all rooms were booked! So Room No. 420 was our abode for the next few days!!!

We began in the right earnest, trying to revise the syllabus of all subjects seriously and clear our last minute doubts as much as possible!

And then the day of reckoning arrived! Our first paper was GK & Current Affairs. While going through the newspaper to brush up on our current affairs, we read about the Ebola Virus, which had broken out in South Africa, in passing! Thakur Sir said that this seems to be a hot topic and we must read about it! And when we opened our Current Affairs paper in the exam hall.... there was a 50 marks question on Ebula Virus!! So it was like a blessing in disguise and boosted our morale and confidence tremendously!!!

Thereafter, one by one we went through the motions of studying and revising each subject and putting our knowledge and pearls of wisdom on paper during the exam! The notes prepared by Kler Sir for SMT and Adm & Morale turned out to be a savior for us for our revision!!

On the evening before the Tac B paper as we went to have our dinner in the mess, we found Go Sir, who was commanding WARDEC those days and staying in the temp accn in ABHM, waiting for us in the lobby! He had come to boost our morale and offered us a drink, which obviously we declined because we had to study for the most imp paper -  Tac B!

Go Sir told us, "Guys! Tac B is one subject which either you know it or don't! You will not be able to learn anything extra in 2-3 hours!” So we had a couple of Solan No. 1's on his behest before dinner to relax our mind a bit! Before leaving he wished us Best of Luck for the Tac B Paper!!

According to the grapevine, everyone was expecting the setting to be attack in mountains in the Tac B exam!!!

When I opened the Map for the Tac B paper in the exam hall, instead of mountains the setting was that of the deserts!! Two things struck me immediately.... Ghesura village and the Hanuman temple next to it which was the objective to be captured!!

Suddenly my confidence was boosted, because this was the exact location where I had done my first Sqn exercise as a troop leader under Bhatti Sir!

In that exercise, I was informed by none other than Thakur Sir, who was the adjt those days, that the sqn cdr has become a casualty and the then Comdt .... HC Sir has ordered me to lead the sqn for capture of our objective, Hanuman mandir near Ghesura Village!! Which the sqn did successfully and very valiantly!!

It seemed like Bajrang Bali was with me in my battle of Tac B paper that day and I came out of the exam hall after finishing the paper quite satisfied!!!

But alas, when we exchanged notes, my confidence went down a little bit because my plan was different from Thakur Sir's and I realised that I had also missed out on a few imp things!

But anyways, nothing could be done about it, other than keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best!!

We both returned to our respective locations, expecting that Room No. 420 will turn out to be lucky for us!!!

Finally, on 7th Nov 1995, while we were celebrating Gaurav's first birthday, we got to know that the Staff College entrance exam results have been declared! As luck would have it, both Thakur Sir and self had made it!!!

So, Room No. 420 had actually proved to be lucky for both of us!!!