Soon the habit of making one’s bed kicked in and it became second nature to me … and have carried it till today … my wife Zarina and kids fail to understand why I remain paranoid with an unmade bed – and why I hurry to make the bed even as the sun is only just rising!! Some of us left hastily, only to return from PT to find our matron frowning upon the ‘les miserable’ who had left his bed in the same state of rest!!!! To me a more important lesson was that of making the bed as one got up early morn each day – at school as Reji said we had to make our bed and cover it with the ‘Counterpane’ before even we got to get going with the morning routine. Veteran General PM Hariz ( Roll No 579, 1974/Pallava) writes: – The legacy of counterpane continued right through our lives I would say … just that over the years it got transformed into a bed cover with greater elegance than the one we had at School …the purpose was the same!! In later years at the military academy, Karunakaran’s training kept me safe from the Divisional Officers during cabin cupboard inspections. He always found out the exact one item we tried to hide under the mattress or at the bottom shelf of closet. There was one scoundrel we feared the most: ‘Karunakaran.’ In 1967, he was with Chola House, and in 1968 became a shared one between Chera and Chola Junior houses. There were some good wardens like Krishnaswami, Narayanaswami and Govindarajan. Dusting of closets and bookshelves, sweeping out the dirt, hanging all dresses rolled and thrown under the beds and the over mosquito nets, tight hanging of the mosquito net, washing the socks that smelt like dead rats, blancoing the canvas shoes that were white two weeks ago, changing the pillow case and bed sheet and hiding away unauthorised toys, bugs, pets that lived in the closet…the list was endless but always ended up with the neat spreading of counterpanes over the well-made bed without any wrinkles. Every alternate Mondays, the dorms and cabins were inspected by the Principal, Headmaster, and the dorm staff. Lieutenant Colonel AC Thamburaj, Principal, introduced the system of inspections. As they grew older, the counterpanes again covered the sins of some of the adolescent kids, who had adolescent dreams or indulged in porn. The counterpanes were a great cover up, though sometimes the smell gave them away. Some of the nine- and ten-year-old 5 th and 6 th grade boys, still wetted their beds. Veteran Colonel T Ravi (Roll No 556, 1974/Chera) reminisces:- In the late sixties and early seventies, counterpanes in school dorms came in varying colour combinations, but the patterns were pleasant and same. Next morning, we had to neatly spread the counterpane on our beds, tuck it in at the rear end, ensuring that the four red lines ran all along the mattress border and leave our dorms for the Physical Training (PT.) Our mornings commenced with making our bed, spreading the counterpane and the last action before going to bed was folding the counterpane.
SAINIK MOVIE SONG SKIN
It was a sin to use it to cover our body at night with it – all because it may lead to skin rashes due to aberration with the dust particles it carried. We had to fold our counterpane every evening prior to retreating to our bed. Blame it on climate change or global warming, most military stations now are authorised air conditioners. Most military stations were established by the British and were at cooler and greener hill stations. In those days many military stations were not authorised fans.