ED

Academies are run in a simple manner where they follow the Newton's Third Law in letter and spirit, i.e. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; you commit a breach of laid down rules and regulations, you are immediately rewarded with due punishment. Punishments are scaled and are appropriate to the misdemeanour, so major transgressions land up the perpetrator with something called  Restrictions, which has a punishment run in full battle gear, FSMO(Field Service Marching Order) and includes reporting to the authorities in uniform at different times of the day. The lesser ones get you an ED, you must be wondering what has ED got to do with the training academies of Indian Armed Forces. Enforcement Directorate or ED in short is reserved for those who indulge in most corrupt kind of financial deals. Unlike Enforcement Directorate, this ED was almost inconsequential Extra Drill. But the scare of ED did get most of the cadets to toe the line, but not all cadets cared about it;  some were prepared to  take a risk and took a chance once in a while. Then there were some tigers who derived some sort of pleasure in flirting with danger, if they got away, it was fun and if their luck ran out, then just too bad. To make things worse we even had a Drill instructor by the name of ED Chand, who was responsible for the conduct of these EDs. 

 Those of us who enjoy horror movies get a kick in getting scared and revel in it, but then there are very many who don't relish this genre and stay away from them. Be that as it may, while growing up our mothers would often scare us with the proverbial "Baba" who would come and kidnap us if we did not behave. This "Baba" was a figment of our imagination and we refrained from crossing the limits. In India today, that Baba has emerged in a new avatar and it is the politicians and corporates who are supposedly erring in their dealings and the Govt as benevolent mothers do, just scares them with  "ED" Enforcement Directorate. This ED though is not imaginary, it is an organisation which has a lot on their plate. Its mere mention sends the supposed defaulters scurrying for cover, they utilise all possible tricks up their sleeve to keep this ogre like force away. The ED is devouring everything which comes under its sway, and boy, there are some very big names who have finally succumbed. 

As a consequence the letters E and D of English language have taken an offence, as now a days merely uttering ED together sends shivers up the spine of many. “ed” together was such an innocuous suffix which just converted the verb to its past tense.  Those were the days, so relax”ED” that people just roll“ED” their eyes when things got out of hand and enjoy”ED” their lives. But unfortunately these days some of the verbs just do not have the heart to accept any summons to ‘change the tense’ despite nudges by the dictionaries and grammarians. The opposition parties have thus decided to just use the present and future tense, as the past leaves them very tense, “ED” only worsening the issue. The ruling party revels in utilising “ED” as they have a lot of issues of the past which they feel need to be brought out of the closet. As it is their sense of the past is not restricted to the last 75 odd years, they talk about a whole millennia so there is plenty of scope for exploiting “ED” although in its present form it is the “ED” which they intend to let loose to correct the  perceived wrongs.