These gentlemen cadets are going to passout from the academy on 11 June 2016, this is the exclusive interview done by rediff.com’s Archana Masih and Rajesh Karkera.
Gentleman Cadet Bharat Sethi, 24
24, a graduate from Delhi’s Hindu College who left McKinsey after seven months to join the IMA. The son of a naval pilot, the articulate cadet says he left the corporate world because he realised that what he was doing was not tangible or real like what the Indian Army does.
“What we do in the army makes a difference to the men you command and to the nation. So there’s a greater feeling of success,” says Bharat, sitting in a room, the entrance to which is flanked by honour rolls of Gentlemen Cadets of the past.
Junior Under Officer Anirudh Joshi, 23
“What every cadet worries here is if we will be able to be like the heroes who adorn this academy… will we be able to lead our men like they did,” says Junior Under Officer Anirudh Joshi, 23, when I ask him what are the thoughts criss-crossing his mind just weeks from graduating from the IMA.
The son of a colonel, the Almora boy is a great admirer of Major General Ian Cardozo, who amputated his own leg with a khukri after being wounded on the battlefront in the 1971 War.
Gentleman Cadet Prashant Mishra, 22
“What I take away from here is character, commitment to my profession and loyalty to service,” says Prashant Mishra, 22, from Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh.
“Whatever I am today — the way I talk, walk — has been given by the academy,” says Prashant who who wants to join the Grenadiers regiment.
Under Officer Nishant Philip, 21
“We make strong bonds — right from training to punishments to the performance of your company,” says Senior Under Officer Nishant Philip, 21, who heads one of the 16 companies at IMA.
“The best thing is the uniformity you get which actually starts when you join the NDA. The first thing they do is give everyone the same haircut. Everyone looks the same, are issued the same clothes, eat the same food, do the same things — it does not matter who you are, where you come from, what you do — all are equal and you have to prove your mettle on the ground,” says Nishant.
He joined the NDA at 17 and was the silver medalist in the overall order of merit when he graduated last May (after three years at the NDA, cadets slated to join the army, spend another year of training at the IMA).
Academy Cadet Adjutant Rajendra Singh Bisht, 21
I ask one of the highest ranking cadets at the academy, Academy Cadet Adjutant Rajendra Singh Bisht, 21, if he thought respect for the armed forces had diluted in the country.
“No, ma’am, I don’t believe so,” says Rajendra, the son of a civilian employee in the Indian Army and a bronze medalist at the NDA last year.
Born in Bareilly, home to the Jat Regimental Centre and reared in Ranikhet where the Kumaon Regimental Centre is headquartered, Rajendra grew up dreaming of a life in the army.
“I went to a Sainik School whose main aim is to send students to the NDA, but some students also clear the civil services or IIT. If a student who has joined IIT comes back to visit the school and at the same time a lieutenant or trainee cadet does the same — the respect that a lieutenant gets cannot be compared to the IIT student,” Rajendra adds.
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