Welcome Home Cheetahs

The cat family has a new addition in the country their cousin Cheetahs who were unfortunately hunted down to extinction in the pre-independence era are back with a bang. The PM himself released them into Kuno Sanctuary in the Hindustan ka Dil, Madhya Pradesh. MP has been a home to Tigers, Leopards, Panthers and were keen to host the Lions too, unfortunately Gir did not want to part with their exclusive preserve. But well now they have the Cheetahs! Although we are ignoramuses, when it comes to wild life, but we do enjoy seeing them in their habitat and as aware gentry we would like all the species to flourish. We have a connect with the Cat family of sorts. We had a pet wild cat many moons ago, it was she who adopted us, injured, she was cared for by my mother, thereafter she became a part of the family, but on her own terms, i.e. she would come at her own will demand her share of milk and affection and disappear. But this connect was with Cheetahs, Lions, Jaguars…..

We had the Cheetahs, Jaguars and Lions on the wild side alongside the natives of Americas Apaches and Injuns. We also had the Eagles, Foxies along with Hunters and Killers living together, not always peacefully. We would bay for each other's blood in the ring but at the end of the day we would smoke the peace pipe even though smoking was officially banned there. My friends would have guessed as to what exactly am I referring to, for those from the civilised world, it was our alma mater the National Defence Academy. Divided into twelve squadrons those days; each deriving its name from the phonetic code used for alphabets, with Alpha denoting the letter "A" and Zulu for "Z". So we were Alpha to Lima, twelve squadrons and sure enough not enamoured by the rather mundane phonetic code names, our ancestors in the academy rightly adopted the more ferocious sounding epithets. So Alpha became Apache and Charlie became the Cheetahs. The Cat family of NDA had Cheetahs, Jaguars who were otherwise known with the  feminine  Juliette and Lima adopted Lions or may be Loins after yesteryears villain Ajit's iconic," Sara shahar mujhe Loin ke naam se janta hai!"( The whole city knows me as Loin). We had the Head Hunters for the rather hospitable Hotel and Killers who believed in "Kill'em Kut'em, but Kneel Knot" for the  dour sounding "Kilo". Apaches were not satisfied being the numero uno in this list and had adopted the Apaches while their cousins from India too followed suit with Injuns, wisely they stayed away from Incas lest they fade into oblivion. Bravo were happy with being Brave, but Delta were Daggers drawn with everyone, Echo were soaring high as the Eagles and Foxies despite their scholarly aptitude wanted to believe they were equally cunning. Golfies responded to just the war cry of "chiki laka chiki laka!".  

There were more squadrons added after we passed out way back in 1986 as part of the expansion of the academy, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa and may be even Quebec, rumour has it that the girls in the academy have been allotted the Romeo Squadron. Frankly I haven’t kept track of the monikers adopted by these Johnny Come Lately variety. For us the Deadly Dozen that we were, were the best!