All Caps!

Srichand Arora (left) must have been a very happy man today. Many moons ago he had observed a group of early risers in Singapore, exercising silently, in unison on a patch of green. What made for a spectacular sight was that they were all wearing the same caps, which gave them a sense of uniformity – of belongingness, commonality of purpose and above all, identity. Since that day, it has been Arora’s dream to transpose that ethos into our Club.
Today he realised that dream. For once, all members who turned up for the exercises had, without exception, their caps on. We did not realise the impact it had created till people on the Walking Track kept stopping by to gape at us – as though this was the first time they were seeing us. It was almost like history being created in the Garden.
But this has not been easy. The caps were introduced last April and since then, there has been consistent resistance from a section of the Club. If one spoke of hair-loss upon wearing the cap, another argued that it caused migraine while a third pleaded amnesia and fourth insisted on feeling uncomfortable... No amount of requesting and reminding, coaxing and cajoling worked, till suddenly the miracle occurred today.
It was only towards the end that Harish Wadhwa showed up, capless – closely followed by Vijay Gupta (a non-member) – and they were made to stand in the middle and conduct the second laughter session (right pic). Effectively, history was created for the second time today. For, never before have we had the benefit of two ‘teachers’ conducting the same exercises simultaneously!
Harish Wadhwa:
Gupta-ji and I kind of enjoyed the punishment of conducting the second laughter session today. Hope all others had a good time too.
Jagmohan Papneja:
In spite of the claim, we had fallen short of creating history in the end. But, as a self-disciplined group, all members will keep the spirit aloft by wearing the cap and take pride in it.