Date: 26th Jan, 1996
Event: Republic Day Parade
Venue: Marina beach, Chennai in the presence of then Chief Minister, Dr J Jayalalitha
THE SELECTION:
It was a winter morning of January 1996 when our RSP (Road Safety Patrol) teacher incharge informed us of an opportunity to participate in the Tamil Nadu's State Republic Day parade in the presence of our TN Chief Minister, Dr J. Jayalalitha. I personally didn't gauge how big this event was. Till then I had only witnessed the grand Republic Day parade on TV live from Rajpath, New Delhi only to have goosebumps seeing contingent after contingent marching along with the heart thumping beats. My favorite was always the Indian Navy contingent although there is very little to differentiate between the synchronised marching of each of these contingents. Since I was part of my school's RSP (Road Safety Patrol) troop, I listed myself among the bunch of other guys and girls who enrolled. Then followed the rigorous part -
We were asked to report to the RSP Chennai HQ the circa first week of Jan'96 around 6 am. My school mates joined, around 12 guys and 6 girls and so did 300 other students from all over the city. We were asked to march in batches of 8 made up of random guys and 3 officers watched over and selected the best among these. At the end, most of our school guys made it including Sanjayan, Santhana Krishnan, Nagendran, Saravanan, Vijayababu, Venkatesh, Vijay Sharma, Prashanth, Sharmila, Kavitha, Jayashree. I remember Sumitha weeping over getting rejected. The rest of us were asked to report every morning at 5.30 am for the marching drills. Our RSP teacher Mrs. Jayalakshmi congratulated all of us, this was one of the largest group ever to be selected from our school. Our previous stint as NCC cadres definitely helped us here.
THE DRILLS:
This was the part none of us looked forward to. I had to literally wake at 4.30 am every morning, get ready and take the 5am bus and I diligently did it all the days, so did rest of my school mates and so did the 80+ selected finalists from the city. We were an army of white and white boys and girls marching to the thumping beats of the drum and our shoes kicking in sync hard on the tar roads. We were initially pathetic in terms of coordination, but as the days went by, the entire troop marched extremely well and the officers seemed happy too. Still they did not relax their scrutiny every step of the way, literally. The girl contingent marched ahead and we were next inline, so we had to pace accordingly. We practiced for 18 straight days, an hour drill every morning until the D day.
THE D-DAY - REPUBLIC DAY, JAN 26 1996.
My dad, being an ex-Indian Navy officer always had a couple of uniforms in his suitcase. Mom being an excellent tailor decided to tweak one of his shirt and trouser to fit me. I felt privileged to wear an Indian Navy uniform on the RD parade. I ensured my shoes were shiny black after an hour long polishing. This time we had to report at 4.30 in the morning as we had get everything in place for the march on time. I was super excited and started from home at 3.45 am and there were special buses from all over the city. Managed to reach Marina beach before 4.30 am and was surprised to see the hustle bustle this early in the morning.
All contingents were dressed up in their crisp uniforms and so was I, in a crisp white double pocketed Indian Navy uniform customized for RSP and shiny black leather shoes. Some of my contingent boys were already there and slowly the boys and girls trickled and in no time we were a full house. In the final adjustments to our contingent, luckily or coincidently all our school boys were placed in crucial posts. Nagendra was leading the contingent, Santhana Krishnan was the right corner man, means he didn't have to salute to the CM and had to continue with his marching, it's a privileged position. Rest of us were in the side rows either facing the crowd/tv cameras or facing the CM. I was on the crowd side. There was a contingent of Black Cats- the special forces right ahead of us and we were awed at their army, all standard above 6 ft tall, with their advanced guns and all black uniforms - boy and they stood apart. Our group rehearsed to the bands and we were all pumped up and the fishermen crowd around us cheered us and enjoyed watching us march on.
THE MARCHING:
Around 5.30am, I witnessed the best sunrise of my life, was a clear morning and the orange ball rose slowly from the Bay of Bengal. Not many know but Chennai has one of the best sunrises you can witness. Around 6am we began our marching. And at the instruction of our RSP officer, off we took, marching hard to the thumping beats of our band and to the loud cheers of the public around. We crossed the CM stage in about 20min and it was a goosebump moment for us. All our efforts of the past 20 days came down to this moment and we did good! We were all on a high and pumped up and thanks to the crowd cheering all around us, it kept our adrenaline high. What we weren't prepared for was the distance, it was a 3km long march through the full stretch of the Marina beach starting from the fishermen huts behind light house until Madras University. We thought we just had to march past the CM dais and then we could relax but with constant wave of crowds all along the Marina stretch, we couldn't rest until we reached the end point and eventually we did. Our officers applauded us for our effort and we ended our stint with a loud -
HIP HIP HURRAY!
HIP HIP HURRAY!!
HIP HIP HURRAY!!!
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