From Chapter 5 : Building Memorability

In January 1975, I was selected as part of the state NCC contingent for the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. It was an exciting opportunity for me, a chance to visit the country’s capital. Equally exciting was that this gave me the chance to compete to be selected as the best cadet of India. Each participating state nominated its best cadet and all the best cadets competed with each other for the national honour. The fact that it was a contest among the best made it obvious that each cadet was as good as the other when it came to the basic skills of drill, discipline and turnout. The final choice was really made based on two rounds of interviews - first with a panel of senior defense officers, after which only four short-listed cadets were presented before the director general of the NCC. He chose the best cadet of the year. The honours that followed included receiving the trophy from the prime minister, and a ceremonial breakfast at the prime minister’s official residence where the best cadet received a sandalwood cane of honour. Then, there was a formal introduction to the President of India at Rashtrapati Bhavan. All in all, the stuff dreams are made of.

Following tradition, no best cadet of any state is told that he is a nominee till an hour before the all-contestants’ line-up. All you knew was that you had contested at the state level before coming to Delhi. So, when an officer came and told me to don my uniform and report for the selection panel in fifteen minutes, I was both pleased and anxious. After the contestants had gone through the basic drills, they were called into a tent where a three ¬member selection team sat. These were officers who had prior experience recruiting for the armed forces. The interview was similar to that for aspirants to the Indian Military Academy. When my turn came, I marched into the tent, saluted and took my seat. The chairman of the panel, a colonel in the army, shot the first question: What did I know about Diego Garcia?

It was 1975, four years after the Indian Army had gone into the then East Pakistan to help the Mukti Bahini rebels who were fighting the Pakistani Army to give birth to Bangladesh. Following large-scale refugee exodus into India, the Indian Army had to be sent to resolve a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions. The United States, as an ally of Pakistan, had moved its famous Seventh Fleet into the Indian Ocean to checkmate India. Around that time, in another act of balance of power, the United States substantially increased its presence in the Indian Ocean on an island named Diego Garcia with rapid deployment strike capability in the region. It was a continuing sore point in the Indo-US bilateral relationship.
I realized the panel was checking my knowledge of current affairs. I told the panel all I knew about Diego Garcia - the history of the largest island in the Chagos Archipelago that was transferred by the British to the Americans; about its strategic military importance; the exact distance of the island from Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India; the length of the runway and about its proposed extension to twelve thousand feet; the number of B-52 bombers stationed there and how long it would take a long-range B-52 bomber from Diego Garcia to reach New Delhi and return without refueling.

The panel did not ask me any further questions. My years of reading the front page of the newspaper first and then reading the editorial out loud to father every morning as a child had paid off. I got shortlisted as one of four cadets to be interviewed by the director general the next day. He had to choose the best of the best on the basis of an unstructured meeting with all four cadets at the same time. The meeting with the director general was easy but left me wondering about the outcome. There was no knowing who the chosen one would be. Finally, the day before the Republic Day parade I received the news that I had been chosen as the best NCC cadet of the country.
My purpose in recounting this story is not to talk about my achievement. It is to emphasize the importance of creating memorability in your first meeting with anyone. Most people we meet do not have a special reason to remember us, nor are they interested in what we have to say or what we actually do. We live in a world of information overload and attention deficiency. People we meet are often looking at us but thinking about something else. Given that, it is important that in every situation one has to be not only well prepared but razor-sharp to create instant engagement. Be it a job interview, a presentation, or a meeting, we all have a very short window to make the right impression, and unfortunately most of us miss it. The question on Diego Garcia had given me that short window to make my mark. It is what I call the Diego Garcia moment of my life.