ONE SIZE FITS ALL/ DOES IT ??? - 463

                         ONE SIZE FITS ALL - DOES IT ??

Yesterday's post 462 , regarding the Republic Day Celebrations and my own reminiscence of being a part of it as a School Kid in the early 1960s at Bhilai in the then Madhya Pradesh and the  present day Chattisgarh brought back many more  funny memories .

The picture of the Boy Scout now ( as in the picture above) was very different in  in the 1960 s . 

The Scouts  Uniform then was of Coarse Cotton Khaki Material which consisted of the Shirt , Shorts , Scarf with a Badge , a Cap , Belt with a Clasp  at the joint  ,  Brown Canvas Shoes and Socks . This was provided to all the Students free of cost and the Government bore all the expenses .

There however was this small  problem , the dresses were simply segregated in a  haphazard manner into bundles of 

SMALL , MEDIUM AND LARGE ,

All the items did not arrive  at the same time . Different items would come on different days and were distributed by a person whom we all feared .

These were distributed by the PT MASTER who went by the name of Shri Ram Kishan Yadav . Now , Yadav Sir  had this odd habit of carrying a long stick in his hand wherever he went . Any slight disorder that came to his notice had him loose his cool  and  make use of his  stick to good effect and leave  a very badly hurt , teary eyed student facing the brunt of his anger .

What all the above combined to mean was that , we the student had to be satisfied with whatever was handed out to us . A small  sized shorts with a large sized shirt and canvas shoes 3 sizes too big or small was a common feature The shoes were more in line with what Charlie Chaplin is famous the world over .

The dresses could always be altered at the Local Subhaan Tailor , barring a very few , no one ever took this route . Money in the 1960 s was always in short supply and besides that who would ever want to spend money on something which was doled out to you  as free .  

So here we were , all the Johny Walkers , Mehmoods , Keshto Mukherjees and Jagdeeps pretending to be Dev Anand , Shammi Kapoor ,  Joy Mukherjee or Dilip Kumar and  happy to take part in the Republic Day March Past .