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
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
One sunny afternoon in Siliguri
Dad had just got posted to Bombay (it was called Bombay then) and we were ecstatic to be in this city - the place where Amitabh Bachhan resided, the place which was the film city, the place which was shown in most of the Hindi movies at that time. It was simply the "place to be" for a 15 year old who was going to join a new school, new class, new people, new friends. The very idea of being in a city at that age was exciting. I still remember when Dad came home early that sunny day in Siliguri (its a place in west Bengal - I am emphasizing about it being a place because the Bombay kids burst out laughing when I told them where I am coming from) and was standing with Mom in the hallway waiting for my brother and I. He was wearing his "fauji" uniform and mom looked stunning in a "salwaar kameez". And Gem (our lapchi breed dog) was sitting next to them. My brother and I came home and Karan Singh, our "helper bhaiyaa" opened the door for us. He looked sad for some reason.
We rush straigh in trying to race towards our room to change and go playing when suddenly we see both Dad and Mom standing in the hallway looking at us with an ear-to-ear smile. Before we could comprehend what was happenning our Dad said in a very energetic, excited voice.
"You know what kids?" ....pausing waiting for us to reply to that statement as if we were going to say "NO"
"Papa has been posted to Bombay"!!!
We were expecting this since it was time for dad's new posting but certainly were not expecting this surprise. It took a whole minute before my brother and I could congregate what our Dad had just uttered.
"Kya baat kar rahe ho"!..."You are kidding".... "Mama....Papa sach bol rahe hai kya?"
With in seconds we had confirmed, reconfirmed and then re-reconfirmed again with both Mom and Dad, whether what Dad had just said was true! We were just so excited. Gem was wagging his tail and running helter-skelter showing his excitement as if he knew what was being spoken and that he was too happy to be shifting to a new world.
Mom was so thrilled that the whole morning and afternoon she was doing packing or may be just shifting things from one room to other in excitement giving herself the false realization that she had started packing.
I started to recall the entire episode of 3 years' stay in Siliguri and the way we had cherished our time there. From unwillingly getting up early mornings in absolutely chilling winters to catch the school bus, to standing behind the girls in the morning prayers and tease them. From regular punishments from teachers to once making my Sanskrit teacher cry and quit the school in frustration. I used to be found standing out of the class so often that I was tagged the most "outstanding" boy of the school. I distinctly remember that once a teacher who unfortunately happenned to be our principal as well, was teaching us Chemistry and was holding a test-tube with some wierd pink liquid, in her hand.
And out of nowhere I get this urge to sneeze. I tell you, these sneezes sometimes are so ill-timed! I sneezed so hard that not only did my principal dropped the test-tube in fright, the teacher in the neighboring class came running to see what had happenned.
The whole class was thundering with laughter.
"Mam, I am sorry ... I just could'nt control it". And I could still hear those giggles in the class, that I thought were adding to my principal's rising temper.
"Jaydeep...GET UP....GET OUT!" was what she said.
The principal had not even finished saying it...and the whole class was in uncontrolled laughter again.
I remembered the day when while playing I had mistakenly hit my neighbour's kid with a stone and he had started bleeding profusely. And as a typical complaint box, a third kid who saw this incident ran to my friend's house to tell his mom. Unfortunately his dad was at home too, that day. And what was more unfortunate was that my friend was a Sardarji.
Kitni maar khayi yaar maine us din!
But like all Sardarjis are, after an hour they came home to apologize to me and in fact invited me for dinner. For a brief moment, I had this vague thought "ab khana khila kar marenge kya"! But they were sweet people. And afterall, it was an incident that had happenned while playing.
I remember that the bungalow at the back of our's had one of their bathrooms facing my bedroom. And that bathroom was mostly used by this really hot looking aunty. The highlight used to be evenings when she used to switch-on the lights and take a shower, completely ignorant about the fact that some "innocent" kid is appreciating her beauty...well actually the curves!
From those afternoon-till-late-evening games of cricket which used to result mostly in fights, to those parties at the club. Guys my age and I never used to miss parties at the club. Yeah the food was good, soft-drinks were on the house, tambola was awesome. But what used to inspire us more to attend the parties was getting a chance to dance with "this" girl our age. She used to wear mini-skirts that time with stilettos. She was our Aphrodite back then. "Man she was really hot".
Oblivious to the fact then, that girls grow taller, faster than guys during teens, I had mistakenly called this beauty "didi", only to find her sitting next to me on the first day at school. She was laughing all day and of course I was embarrassed, would be to say the least.
"How could I scr&w it up so badly"! How could I call her "didi"!!! Over time we started seeing each other. That typical "infatuation seeing" that kids that age call "forever love".
I realized why Karan Singh was upset earlier that day when he had opened the door for us. He was upset because we were soon going to leave Siliguri. Leave him, our house, dad's unit, those days behind. All that we would be carrying with us will be the memories. And of course truckload of a typical "fauji's" boxes and his never say die Fiat Padmini.
I realized that night that we had not gone playing in the evening, all keyed up and looking forward to the new life. To our dad's new posting.
Jaydeep Deshpande
We rush straigh in trying to race towards our room to change and go playing when suddenly we see both Dad and Mom standing in the hallway looking at us with an ear-to-ear smile. Before we could comprehend what was happenning our Dad said in a very energetic, excited voice.
"You know what kids?" ....pausing waiting for us to reply to that statement as if we were going to say "NO"
"Papa has been posted to Bombay"!!!
We were expecting this since it was time for dad's new posting but certainly were not expecting this surprise. It took a whole minute before my brother and I could congregate what our Dad had just uttered.
"Kya baat kar rahe ho"!..."You are kidding".... "Mama....Papa sach bol rahe hai kya?"
With in seconds we had confirmed, reconfirmed and then re-reconfirmed again with both Mom and Dad, whether what Dad had just said was true! We were just so excited. Gem was wagging his tail and running helter-skelter showing his excitement as if he knew what was being spoken and that he was too happy to be shifting to a new world.
Mom was so thrilled that the whole morning and afternoon she was doing packing or may be just shifting things from one room to other in excitement giving herself the false realization that she had started packing.
I started to recall the entire episode of 3 years' stay in Siliguri and the way we had cherished our time there. From unwillingly getting up early mornings in absolutely chilling winters to catch the school bus, to standing behind the girls in the morning prayers and tease them. From regular punishments from teachers to once making my Sanskrit teacher cry and quit the school in frustration. I used to be found standing out of the class so often that I was tagged the most "outstanding" boy of the school. I distinctly remember that once a teacher who unfortunately happenned to be our principal as well, was teaching us Chemistry and was holding a test-tube with some wierd pink liquid, in her hand.
And out of nowhere I get this urge to sneeze. I tell you, these sneezes sometimes are so ill-timed! I sneezed so hard that not only did my principal dropped the test-tube in fright, the teacher in the neighboring class came running to see what had happenned.
The whole class was thundering with laughter.
"Mam, I am sorry ... I just could'nt control it". And I could still hear those giggles in the class, that I thought were adding to my principal's rising temper.
"Jaydeep...GET UP....GET OUT!" was what she said.
The principal had not even finished saying it...and the whole class was in uncontrolled laughter again.
I remembered the day when while playing I had mistakenly hit my neighbour's kid with a stone and he had started bleeding profusely. And as a typical complaint box, a third kid who saw this incident ran to my friend's house to tell his mom. Unfortunately his dad was at home too, that day. And what was more unfortunate was that my friend was a Sardarji.
Kitni maar khayi yaar maine us din!
But like all Sardarjis are, after an hour they came home to apologize to me and in fact invited me for dinner. For a brief moment, I had this vague thought "ab khana khila kar marenge kya"! But they were sweet people. And afterall, it was an incident that had happenned while playing.
I remember that the bungalow at the back of our's had one of their bathrooms facing my bedroom. And that bathroom was mostly used by this really hot looking aunty. The highlight used to be evenings when she used to switch-on the lights and take a shower, completely ignorant about the fact that some "innocent" kid is appreciating her beauty...well actually the curves!
From those afternoon-till-late-evening games of cricket which used to result mostly in fights, to those parties at the club. Guys my age and I never used to miss parties at the club. Yeah the food was good, soft-drinks were on the house, tambola was awesome. But what used to inspire us more to attend the parties was getting a chance to dance with "this" girl our age. She used to wear mini-skirts that time with stilettos. She was our Aphrodite back then. "Man she was really hot".
Oblivious to the fact then, that girls grow taller, faster than guys during teens, I had mistakenly called this beauty "didi", only to find her sitting next to me on the first day at school. She was laughing all day and of course I was embarrassed, would be to say the least.
"How could I scr&w it up so badly"! How could I call her "didi"!!! Over time we started seeing each other. That typical "infatuation seeing" that kids that age call "forever love".
I realized why Karan Singh was upset earlier that day when he had opened the door for us. He was upset because we were soon going to leave Siliguri. Leave him, our house, dad's unit, those days behind. All that we would be carrying with us will be the memories. And of course truckload of a typical "fauji's" boxes and his never say die Fiat Padmini.
I realized that night that we had not gone playing in the evening, all keyed up and looking forward to the new life. To our dad's new posting.
Jaydeep Deshpande
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