Ok so a friend of mine with an Army background wrote this amazing nostalgic piece....most of my firends are from the Air force but life is i guess the same more or less....enjoy guys and hey miss all of you...
You know about cants and you know about 2 tons and 3 tons. Yes you have climbed precariously the steps of those large shaktimaan’s we called “School buses”. You know about night raid’s and calling on’s where you get free food, especially the cheese with pineapple starters if you behave well. You also know that mess parties (not to be read as messy) where they serve pudding of custard with fruit which IS the most widely available and accepted “pudding”. Did you say you dislike custard?
Baccha party is not a party dedicated to you, but yes it’s the clan name you earn as you learn to belong to the regimental parties with the rest of the “just as lost” kids sit together, whiling away time, while our parents conveniently join the main “party”. Good evening uncle and good evening aunty IS the most boring thing to say repeatedly at drawing rooms filled with large number of uncle’s and aunty’s who are your parents friends. One amongst the many who come by year on year.
If you are a girl growing up in the army (or any other) cant, remember, on the dance floor you are going to be asked for a dance, and the phone number would follow suit – yes its just as simple. NDA ball, may queen ball, or all the other balls, (no pun intended) no matter how much you curse them, still make you feel good about life when you are old (or getting there) and wrinkled and miss being treated all lady like with red carpets and the works. If you are guy, remember, that opening the door for the lady, just like the way your dad did for any “young” or “old” lady is and always will be fashionable. If girls you meet outside of army life say they don’t like it, what they really mean is - they love it! Black metal soldiers or the wall hangings from Rajasthan adorning the drawing room space is just something that you will learn to adore when you step outside the army (or any other defense) environment.
“Bhaiya” – the one who always came on cycle and always added a smile to your life is an integral part of the memory process. Keep it safe. Clean areas with painted red and white rocks, with arrow signs on roads, where ever needed, large trees, loads of sunshine and bajaj chetak. Fauji Life is tucked in between. That mid-way halt when the “regiment” moved, where we stopped for chaat, will always feel like a warm memory. Yes! Don’t forget aunties who are famous for a particular dish, because no matter after how many years you meet, you will remember their “bhel puri’s” or “chicken biryaani’s.” Say you meet after a decade, and you are just over 5 feet tall, and this aunty comes up to you and says she remembers seeing you in a nappy. The face goes red. Trust me “thanda thanda paani” by God forsaken Baba Saigal has haunted me all my life. Do not resist or throw a protest, its futile, or else they will make you sing it no matter how grown up you are right now. You know what they mean when they say “we were together in…” Going to play means children’s park where we learnt to get bullied and learnt to handle bruised knees. Climbing trees will always be a story that you recall fondly.
So where are you from? Where did you spend your childhood days? Questions like these make you start to think up ways to give the most simple, close ended, crisp answer, and after a while you realize “all over India” is the convenient answer.
MI room does not figure in this dictionary, but your vocab does know how to keep that record. MES furniture and white coloured cupboards are definitely always the most convenient. The house that you built will know how the drawing room and dining room needs its space. You have lived it. You will always regard KV’s to be the best schools ever, never mind the bihari accent teachers you met in Tenga Valley or the SUPW class that you always looked forward to so you could snooze. Also, once out of the army (or any other fauji) life, you will be asked “what are you?” and what they really want to know is what religion you follow. And the question makes you think.
Picnics, or the Holi get together’s or the Lodi party, or the swimming pool party, or the club membership, they all will figure in old pictures. Family day holds a special meaning, as you take a peek without really intending to understand at how your dad has been working. You know how to make yourself comfortable at a new place, you have done this all your childhood life. Painted boxes, hordes of them, neatly numbered with your father’s initials painted on them, just means you remember the smell of fresh paint and the Jonga’s when your father had a “posting”. It also means you can roam about and give a hand in “packing”. Its always more fun unpacking though, setting up “your room”. Ha! This is your postcard memory. Slam book has a special place because it has so many places and so many people. Your list of childhood friends is as diverse as it can be and you know when that uncle is talking too much and his wife is mostly silent, talking in short sentences only when needed, spells gossip because uncle is drunk and aunty is mad at him. And you are suppressing your giggles.
Gardens, water falls, rivers, water sports, horse riding, billiards, golf, badminton, basketball, hide and seek and pithu.. the games that you actually learnt, just that after growing up you wonder, phew! I learnt so much and practice so little because I cant make time. Parade’s, or the army band strumming tunes you can clearly identify, the bagpipers, the DMS boots or the broke shoes. They have a special place, so does the colour of your father’s uniform. You get tagged as a member of SODA (Senior Officers Daughter’s Association) when YO’s (young officers) are trying to get cute and know they will have to try harder.
Oh and yes! The dining in and dining out parties, you know them so well. You peek from the curtains of the room adjacent to the drawing room as the young officer visiting your dad sits pretty on the MES sofa’s in the drawing room. You know the time, when small talk is fashionable. Canteen – the place you always wanted to ransack as a kid and never really got around it. Or the white coloured Maruti 800 or Fiat that your father had. Brasso is dear to your life, with so much brass around, you know your house always needed it. The smell of Charmis cream or Pond’s powder or the “old spice” bottle you identify with – stuff that will always get picked up in canteens in to your homes and later in your memories.
Milton bottles, Borosil glasses, the kitchen gardens, the blue and white school uniforms... GOC, commandant, you know those words. You know those vehicles with red flash lights on them. Soldiers marching past, Saavdhan is something u’ve often heard in corridors and Jai Hind holds a special place. You know what they mean when they say they are going for an exercise. You wait for the chocolate your dad would get you once he is back from that God forsaken place he went to and called if possible to let us know that he is OK. You know the times when uncle was on exercise and aunty was expecting and you spent the night over at her place, just in case.
Then you grow up. And you hold this chest of memories with these people, and you know you look back and say “once a fauji. Always a fauji!” and you also say "it takes one to know one!"
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