I started remembering how the classic army lifestyle was, in Sukna (the cantonment area of Siliguri), in Delhi, in Jodhpur, in Nagrota (J&K). Before these places I was either an infant to understand what was happening around me or may be getting conceived to see the world outside!
But I am sure all the fauji kids (as we call the sons and daughters of Army, Navy & Air Force officers) have almost everything in common except the places where their fathers are posted. The same Army, Navy or Air Force schools where we studied at least 6-7 years of our lives before our parents realize that a better option now would be to shift them to Kendriya Vidhyalaya's or convents. You see the teachers in defence schools are as good as the fauji officers wives. And then if one of your teachers happens to have an ego-clash with your mother then you have had it! Ego-clashes used to happen due to numerous critical reasons - from not getting along at ladies' club to your mother being the wife of an officer who is the blue-eyed boy of the station commander or the GOC. Worse, if the teacher also happenned to be the principal of the school.
The magnitude of worst-ness used to be geometrically progressive if the teacher's husband and your dad were at loggerheads either due to internal rivalry or seniority rivalry. Or even due to accomodation that eventually your dad was allotted, but was even eyed by your Mathematics teacher's husband! The ire used to be passed on to the kids and we always used to pass with distinction. Literally! Our grades used to be distinctly far from good.
And then there was teacher to teacher rivalry. The best part used to be when one of the students in the school was in a class where my mother was a class teacher, and if that student's mother happenned to be my class teacher. If I get low grades, the impact could be seen on the report card of that student in the other class too and vice versa, period!
But then we passed!
With so many pretty daughters of officers' around (not sure what do the parents eat or if there is any particular position in bed they have mastered, but seriously, daughters of fauji officers are absolutely beautiful - what I mean is "most" of them are. ), love happens at an early age. And with each passing year, sadly but surely it moves on. Every guy has his own share of one-liner "masterpieces" that he would have used, only to realize post-puberty how amazingly stupid they were!
"Rachael, we both are in the same class, so I think I love you"
"Nandita, you are so beautiful and you always smell good. Will you be my girlfriend?"
"Tanya, you are fair and so am I. And everything is "fair" in love (and war). So I love you"
WHAT WERE WE THINKING!!!
Cant believe the girls used to oblige by saying yes, to such idiotic, hideous ways of asking them out, back then.
If you were going around then, the worst part was that all the other "lost" contenders had one simple way of getting back at the guy. Inform his folks and the news invariably used to reach our respective folks, within a day of the couples "togetherness". And the life long love affair thus used to have a tragic demise.
I remember an acquaintance once wrote a letter to this girl all the guys were after, outlining the size of his biceps, his height and how many hours a day he goes to the gym. Thank god he did'nt mention the size of his "prized possession, of the male kind"! It was a laughter riot when this good looking dumb f*ck actually told us what he did, and with élan!
Of course in his case, the girl started hiding miles away after noticing him and the place where we saw him last was the gym.
Jaydeep Deshpande
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