Dua · Reveries
Bhatiary, ChattogramThe Uniform I Never Wore
The truth about the Bangladesh Military Academy was explained to me in a restroom.
I went down to Bhatiary today for Tomal's Parents Day. His parents and his siblings came, Anish came in from Dhaka, and what was meant to be a visit quietly turned into a Sylhet Cadet College reunion held on a parade ground. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.
Tomal joined on the first of July. His six week regimentation had ended only a few days before we arrived, and he was so cheerful about all of it that I was astonished by his mental capacity. Everything I heard about BMA during my own cadet college years was that it is horror, and that regimentation is the worst part of it. Sitting there listening to him, I thought, well, clearly things have got easier.
They have not. He took Anish and me off to roam around, we ended up in the restroom, and there he cleared it all up for us.
The correction
The horrors were real. Eighty kilometres on foot, five in the morning until eleven at night, carrying heavy loads. Three days straight without sleep. Sleeping standing up. No proper food.
He regrets leaving university. Then we caught up with Ibrahim, another SCC classmate. Same reaction. Hell, and regrets university. Two for two.
Looking back
Here is the thing. Cadet college is the best place for someone who dreams of being a military officer. Not only for the pre military training, but for the advantage of skipping all three preliminary tests and appearing directly at the ISSB. I had the shortcut. I was standing on it.
Until ninth grade I was really motivated. I saw military alumni with medals and insignias shining on their uniforms. Their stories of adventure, their motivation. So motivated was I.
Then came covid. We only spent two short terms back at college in 2021, and that time slowly started to drag me away from the military mindset. Punishments at cadet college felt too heavy, which made me think about what BMA or BNA or BAFA would feel like. If this was the practice version, I did not want to see the real one.
2022 was my worst year at cadet college. I was always a critic of its traditions, and the thought that I would have to embrace them for a lifetime started to feel too unfair to myself. That is when I decided it was not for me. I wanted to explore. I wanted to go abroad.
The adjutant
In eleventh grade a new adjutant arrived. An alumnus of Rangpur Cadet College, and a commando. Commandos are famous for being cracked in their head. No mercy mood, always. Rangpur had a bad reputation among cadet colleges for having the weirdest traditions. Excellent news for all of us.
Within a week of his joining we left on our nine day excursion to Chittagong and Cox's Bazar. We visited BMA, BNA, a navy ship ride and an airbase. As usual they were beautiful, but we knew what was behind the screen. Cadet college had looked beautiful in exactly the same way, right up until admission, after which we got the real taste.
He then spent two years showing us how nasty a person can be, which made sure most of the cadets became demotivated from ever being someone like him. And fatefully, he was the only military person we got to observe in those two years. One man. That was the entire sample.
At our ISSB, fifteen cadets from SCC, including senior prefects, deliberately failed the basic IQ test required to screen in. Sit with that for a second. They chose the wrong answers on purpose. Most of them never appeared again. I did screen in, got a red card, and never appeared again either.
I always found the military a barricaded place. Nowhere to flourish. Nothing to explore. Just a robotic life under command. And I find that unfair for a life I get to live only once.
My parents still regret that I did not try again. I never do. I have college seniors in the Air Force who I text at midnight only to find them still at their office. Seniors from the Army call on Eid night to say they are on field duty. Miserable.
I know their worth and I respect it, because they are necessary. But on a personal level, it is a waste of an entire life.
Dua 004 · End of entry