“Timmy, let’s go for a walk,” ordered my new boss, one evening while we were in a sparsely populated operational area. We were about a kilometre into our walk and he was using me as a sounding board for his plans. Suddenly he froze after a cat crossed our path. “Let’s wait here,” he said.
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I then realised that he was superstitious person. He wanted someone else to cross the path rendered “inauspicious” by that wildcat.
“I will cross the path, sir. I am not superstitious,” I cheerfully volunteered and was about to step out when he held me by the arm and thundered, “Don’t be stupid.” I, then a captain, was happy over his concern for me. “What a great example of following Chetwode’s credo,” I said to myself. We armed forces officers try to live by Field Marshal Philip Chetwode’s words which enjoin us to ensure that the honour, welfare and comfort of the men we command come second only to the safety, honour and welfare of our country. Here was my new boss so concerned about me. But he threw cold water over it by adding, “If anything happens to you, it will still be my problem.”
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Though he seemed reconciled to waiting there, I started feeling fidgety. I conveyed my concerns to him, “Sir, this area is uninhabited. Only our unit personnel are likely to come this way. Maybe, the despatch rider or the stores collection vehicle. If they cross this…” He shushed me down, “Shubh shubh bolo.” (“Say something auspicious”, which stems from another superstition that one must avoid saying anything inauspicious lest it comes true.)
In my exuberance to help the boss overcome the predicament he was in, I offered another solution, “Sir, who knows when anyone will come this side, why don’t we return to our unit location, if going any further is not allowed?” Even this was not acceptable to him, for it meant Cat-1, Boss-0. He was getting irritated by my suggestions when suddenly the same cat, chased by a dog, darted back to where it had come from.
“Now what, sir,” I queried. “What happens now?”
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Probably he had not encountered such a situation earlier and was unaware of whether a cat going alone one way and returning the same way with a dog at its heels was auspicious or inauspicious. Plus no human beings had yet crossed the path. Seeing the confused state he was in, I hammered the last nail in, “Sir, this is like two negatives making a positive. So the original crossing gets cancelled. The dog chasing it is another positive sign, let us go, please.” Though not entirely convinced, he reluctantly agreed as this peculiar situation was not covered in his superstitions rule book. We were on our way, though he was not his normal self thereafter.
Later, before retiring for the night, he called me up on the field telephone to check and was relieved to hear from me that all was well and nothing untoward had happened anywhere around us. I lulled myself to sleep humming the lyrics of Rod Stewart’s iconic rendition of one of my favourite numbers of the late 1960s, “I ain't superstitious, But a black cat crossed my trail, Bad luck ain’t got me so far, And I won’t let it stop me now.
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