I came across an article by a Harvard Professor recently, which stated that human beings have not evolved to exercise. I am sure he would have put in years of diligent research to come to this conclusion, so who am I to disagree. As a matter of fact I agree wholeheartedly. Just look around the world. Have you ever seen any other animal exercise? One doesn’t come across a group of hippos for example, going for a jog just to keep fit. Similarly, I have yet to come across a porcupine willingly undergoing calisthenic contortions to gain a supple frame or to improve it’s core strength.

And pray tell me, why do we have lifts/escalators, vacuum cleaners/washing machines, vehicles/microwaves if not for the purpose of avoiding all physical labour!  Hence it is no surprise that  amongst us, I guess about 5% enjoy exercise (or PT as we call it in the Navy). And when this PT is at 0630 hrs in the morning, this percentage drops to 0.5%. This 0.5% includes, paraphrasing from the same learned professor, those annoying people who are up and about at 0530 hrs every morning, full of enthusiasm and with a seemingly sole intention of making us feel bad about whatever it is that we do. 

As can be imagined by the other 99.5%, this 0.5% comprises ‘different’ people. Let me paint a picture of one. After I joined the Navy, I, along with another coursemate, was appointed as a Midshipman on one of the corvettes in Visakhapatnam in the late eighties. (The Midshipman is a strange rank in the Navy. You are almost, but not yet, a fully commissioned officer. You are still undergoing training, but you need to act like you are not. Basically, a Midshipman knows very little, but needs to act ‘like an officer’). Well, traditionally the Midshipman phase is for six months followed by a short period of leave before one is ‘commissioned’ into the Navy as an officer.

On completion of our six months, I solicitously asked this coursemate what he intended to do during the following months’ worth of leave. His reply truly flummoxed me – “I’ll get up in the morning at 0500 hrs and go for a good run. The afternoons would be for a massage and the evenings will be reserved for weights”.  Now this plan, in my logical mind, could be only be called self torture. Just hearing him made me feel unwell. My plan on the other hand was aligned with the thought process of the 99.5% and was at considerable variance from his; it basically included movies, food and lots of sleep; in keeping with the good professor’s findings. But then, each to his own and the only reason I brought up this dialogue was to describe the psyche of the 0.5%.

But let us stick with me. I was a posted on a ship based in Mumbai (then Bombay) a couple of years later. The ship formed part of a larger ‘squadron’ of six ships, all of the same class. The Navy often groups ships in this manner for operational and administrative reasons. Thus the Navy has Patrol Vessel Squadrons, Mine Counter Measure Squadrons, Missile Vessel Squadrons, submarine squadrons, etc. When squadrons are so formed, the ‘’seniormost ship” is for ease of Command and Control , usually commanded by an officer a rank higher than the other Commanding Officers and acts like the ‘Squadron Commander’ (Sqn Cdr).

Now the ship that one is posted on in the Navy, is, especially for bachelors, your home as well as office. Yes we, before COVID made it fashionable, worked from home. Get up, get ready, have breakfast, commute 20 feet to office, break for lunch, another commute of 20 feet, etc, etc…. You get it.

We call it WFH nowadays. Unfortunately, the Navy in its zealousness for wholesome living has, with scant regard for late night revelers, included a major irritant called morning PT into the daily curriculum. Now theoretically, though bachelor officers too needed to participate in the morning PT parade (yes everything in the Navy is called a parade), they were largely allowed to look after their own health and no one took the morning PT parade as sacrosanct. But that was only till we got a new Squadron Commander; also a ‘bachelor’ by virtue of the fact that his wife was away. Being a bachelor, you will recall from the above, meant that he too, ‘worked from home’. This Sqn Cdr being in the 0.5% bracket, was a stickler and insisted on all officers being there on time at 0630 hrs every morning for PT. He would attend the PT parade himself and by 0631hrs, announcements could be heard across all the six ships on their respective PA systems, for officer so and so and officer so and so to report to the jetty. This would see visibly disgruntled officers crawling out from various nooks and crannies of the six ships and scurrying across to the jetty to be accosted by a baleful glare from the Sqn Cdr. 

Now, one would imagine that our Sqn Cdr, being such a stickler for PT, would be an amazingly fit looking man, right? Well wrong! Our Sqn Cdr was a roly poly human. When sitting, he had this indescribable shape where the head rested on his chest, his chest on his paunch and his paunch on his thighs. I am exaggerating a bit, but you get the drift?

One winter morning which had been preceded by a night of perhaps excessive revelry, me and my co-reveler, the ship’s Gunnery Officer, had nothing further from our minds than PT. So, we stepped out in the morning darkness onto the jetty and went and sat on a bollard thoughtfully provided by the Navy I think, for just this purpose. Meanwhile, the duty officer having mustered the sailors and sent them off for PT, a certain calm descended on the jetty.

Me and the co-reveler were talking desultorily about this and that in this calm when the brightening twilight brought to my notice, that the adjoining bollard (at a distance of about 40m), had a strange suspicious blob on it. Being a keen observer of bollards and blobs, I focused on the bollard/blob combination and came to the realisation that the blob seemed to be wearing PT shorts and a T shirt. Four eyes always being better than two, I nudged my co-reveler and a certain uneasiness started creeping into both of us. When the closer scrutiny that four eyes allow revealed that the blob was in fact our Sqn Cdr in flesh and blood, the uneasiness was superimposed with an “oops” feeling. Being nimble of mind however, we immediately got into a vigorous PT regime, with me commencing frog jumps and the co-reveller going one better by opting for crocodile jumps.

When we, in this awkwardly athletic (some would call it comical) fashion, drew a little nearer to the adjoining bollard (and never one for forgetting service courtesies), we yelled out a hearty “good morning, Sir”.  It was only then we realised that our Sqn Cdr, having seen off the PT parade was having a refreshing snooze on the bollard (perhaps after his own night of revelry) and our ‘good morning’ seemed to have caught him by surprise. Awoken from his reverie he was in a startled bind. But then I guess he was, even more nimble of mind, as he almost as if by instinct, started doing toe touches while still sitting on the bollard.

And so is life.