Horse sense

The only horse I was close to before joining NDA was chirutha which drew Chinnan’s carriage. When we visited our grandfather during summer holidays in the late 1950s, we were always received at the railway station in the wee hours of the morning by Chinnan with his carriage and Appukuttan with his cart drawn by a single bullock. While the former was for us to travel, the latter was for carrying our luggage. Chirutha was a perky skinny creature well looked after by Chinnan who would order us to alight and cross the river at the ford on foot to relieve the stress on the filly.

It was in NDA I saw a real good horse as seen in the movies. There we were seated in a semi circle in front of a huge horse tended by a burly ustad who was explaining the anatomy of a horse. Starting at the tip of the nose he traced the pointer along the complete length of the horse until the tip of the tail and beamed “cadets, isko pure ko kahatehain goda”. He then went on explain all body parts et al. I was impressed as this creature which was many times more magnificent than Chirutha – “Iska nam hain Ravan aur isse aap aur milenge” he concluded. How ominous was that ‘warning’, we realised only once we were well into our equitation training. Ravan was reserved for late arrivals and the errant pupils. This I suspect Ravan knew through his horse sense.

He would never hold on to a rider. After a couple of attempts this cadet (let us call him SS; he left the NDA in a later term) who was perpetually late with a punctured bike, could be seen holding the reins and going in circles along with Ravan. This became a constant sight in our first term equitation classes. SS parted ways with the course after the first term. Then he was probably never late for the classes. Ravan passed away in action during the following year…did he miss SS? One will never know. I too fail to recall vividly the last days of Ravan.

Though I did not excel in equestrian sports, I learnt a lot about horse sense in NDA.