TOGETHER WE SERVED

……the inside story of an army

By RoshanC

As a child, every year in the Independence Day celebrations, I used to see this bunch of oldies, flaunting their trimmed mustache and thick blazer worn over their stiff body, chest high, neatly polished shoes, making their way towards the podium. They enjoyed the best seats and people constantly came forward to greet them. I remember thinking, "I wonder what their stories are? What did they do to earn the medals they are wearing?" My grandfather too served the British army in Afghanistan and was an II World War veteran. Though I shared the same legacy, yet he was too old to share his experiences with me, or, maybe I was born a little late. The answers to all my contradictions regarding the green uniform were to be fulfilled later as I turned a teenager.

Military was, is and will be for the brave. I never considered the military an option. I was pretty much a coward. The thought of running out of toilet paper was enough to scare me. But things changed as I gradually grew up to be a stiff teenager and it was mere coincidence that I got myself selected to serve my country as a soldier in the Border Security Force (B.S.F). I was very proud to be connected to my family’s legacy. That was cemented even further when I gave a “YES” nod to go ahead and accept the offer. Well, when I received the joining letter regarding the place and date, of all the probabilities I expected, Bihar wasn’t one of them. I was to report to a commandant at Kishangunj in Bihar, a place which reminded me of cow dung paste and biris, where ancient language still remains alive and spoken among the rustic folk.

“First impression is always the last”. How true. Ten young boys from Sikkim headed for Kishangunj after boarding the same train from New Jalpaiguri. It was late evening when we reached the border town (the hamlet is also bordered to West Bengal state of India). We were shown our beds and we didn’t waste a second jumping into it. At around 7:00 am sharp, we were whistled awake from our deep sleep, the shrill sound enough to pierce the ear drums apart. It took us another couple of minutes to gather-up what exactly was going around when one of our friend, eyes perched out of the window yelled out, “Everybody is standing in queue around the kitchen with plates in their hand.” By the time we gathered our sense back, collected our plates (which many didn’t even have) and rushed towards the single file line-up, a fat guy with a big moustache and a huge measuring spoon in his hand cried, “Breakfast Closed.” He was the Head-Cook.

That was my first day and I was officially baptized into the Military.

Early Days

My Grandfather was illiterate. Yet he signed in English. This was the most fascinating thing that I grew up with (to a certain age) when he finally explained to me that he was taught by his British masters to communicate in writing in Roman English. That explanation itself was Roman to my ears. Mostly because in Roman English, you spell in English, write English Alphabets and the end product is Hindi (for eg. Aap Kaise Ho?). A decade down the line, my first initial days in Military started with Roman English language classes. Not because I couldn’t write in English, but because we were a troop of 120 recruits, and, where apart from the 10 English speaking (and writing) Jawans from Sikkim, rest were the aboriginal Kannadas’ (native of Karnataka) who knew nothing besides their (tangled) local tongue. So, the first lesson I learned here was, “Walk together; Talk together.” It took them(surely including us) two thunderous months to master the language, master in the sense, enough to scribble their name and utter a few words in Hindi, which at any day didn’t sound better than saying hello in Patna with a mouthful of paan in your mouth.

Everything about the military schedule is fascinating, at least to the naked eyes of the outsider. Nothing is such when you step into the shoes. It always sounds good when you know someone wakes up at five in the morning, sharp and everyday in his entire life. What follows next is something many don’t bother to know. Well, after you wake up, they’ll make you run, run and run for the rest of the day. Tell me if that’s fascinating? Not if it’s something that you do for at least the next 20 years of your life. There’s time for breakfast, time to dress (and undress), time to bathe, wash, and outing, there’s time for everything. They’ll blow a whistle and the next thing you remember is running for something or the other. Sometimes it happens at such odd times that you realize you are running towards a common direction but clueless what’s going on. This happened most of the time (at least in my case).

So, the next few months I found myself running. And along me were the other 119 guys. On the first day, I saw everyone getting in line for food (including all breakfast, lunch and dinner), seniors, juniors, officers, cobblers, washer man and barber. And then I saw an elderly senior the other morning sweeping the camp area, a routine which we followed every morning before breakfast. This senior had thick grey moustache (a signature flaunted by almost all military personnel in India), a few grey hair atop his already balding head and surely was to be pensioned off in a month or two. What caught my attention was the thought of his family back home. His wife, draped in a nice sari running around the household chores, with yellow metals adorning the bare parts of her body, his children must surely be attending the best school/college changing fashionable attire each day. Yet, the head of the family is here among us, surrounded by Jawans half his age, but doing the same odd job. And he has had been doing this all his youthful days only to go back home as an elderly, ageing oldie, with a handful of money in his kitty and the remaining life introducing himself to his own neighbors. Even after retirement, his mentality (and also the peanut that he retires with) won’t allow him to enjoy the fruits of his hard labor. He will end up either as a security guard in some corporate office, or get himself a used car and drive a taxi or, in many cases, get a pair of buffalo and milk it.                   It didn’t take me months to realize this sad truth, maybe I knew it all the while but my vision which was blurred all this year’s finally got cleared. An old saying still rings a bell in my head,” If you want to know the bare truth of the world; join the military”.

We were on the fourth month of our rigorous training regime now. Every day was just like the day before. Here’s how the calendar for the next nine months stood for us:

5:00am:                     Wake Up

5:15-6:00am:            PT

6:00 -6:30am:           Breakfast

7:00am:                     Report to the Training Ground

7:00 – 1:30pm:        Training

2:00 pm:                   Lunch

2:30-3:00pm:           Rest

3:00-5:00pm:           Working

5:00 – 6:00pm:        Canteen Recess

6:00-7:00:                Night Class

7:00 pm:                   Dinner

9:00 pm:                   Lights Off

Apart from this, every night we were supposed to guard the premises for two hours on a rotational basis. That was our OJT (On Job Training), a reminder of what we would be doing for the rest of our twenty or so years, guarding the borders of our country. On one such night, I was guarding the mess area of our training camp. Within safe distance from me were a few of my fellow mates, guarding the respective area assigned to them. Altogether, every night would require at least twenty odd guys for the premises. It’s a pity that unlike borders, here we had to guard off dogs, cats, strays and on many instances, elephant. Our training camp was an isolated place far off from the residential area, somewhere along the dense forest areas frequented by the huge mammal. In the middle of my duty, I heard a guy crying on the other side of the camp. Though the cry was easily audible, yet I couldn’t see anything in the dead of the night, also owing to the fact that the guy was entirely on the opposite side from where I stood. I was dead sure that it was a friend of mine, but my obligations didn’t allow me to budge from the place I stood. Owing to previous experiences, it was pretty much evident that someone might have been caught off guard by one of the trainer, and like they say, his case was taken royally. Sleeping, or in that matter, even dozing off on duty is considered an offence so grave in training period that what followed next was nothing but physical punishment to the last extent. You would be slapped, bashed by sticks or whatever came handy, made to crawl on the floor for hours and what not. Something similar had happened tonight, for it was clearly evident from the cry of my friend from the other side. Who was it was the only thing that was on my head until I woke up the next morning? It was not a herculean task the next day to make out that face from a bunch of twenty, a face that would clearly flash the gloominess of the bashing from the previous night. When I finally rounded up the face, it was not much a surprise. The guy was none other than Venkatesha Raju Ningappa; the most renowned face as far as physical abuse was concerned in our training batch.

Together We Served

Ten Kilometers from the village of Mattur is a small city Shivamogga in Karnataka. Venkatesha Raju Ningappa, a college student from a very poor family travelled this distance every morning, not only to attend his evening lectures, but also manage six hours daily driving auto on rent. And every evening he would return back home with the day’s earning, meager enough to purchase some rice and a pinch of salt for his eagerly waiting family. This household was in true sense hand-to-mouth.

Ningappa joined the army along with us. He was 24 by now, dark complexion with charcoal colored hair, a thin layer of mustache already on his upper lips and giant at 6’2”. He was dull in every sense. His face never showed any sign of radiance, completely devoid of expression, he never mastered the most essential language Hindi, which added salt to his poor performance all through the training days. He scribbled along the written examinations, climbed the 6 feet wall towards the other end with all his limbs, he crawled the floor like a python fed on a deer, and jumped the trench like a limping dog. For the trainers he was a sore in the eye right from the initial days which gave them ample reasons to bash and thrash him at almost anything.

I had a special bonding with Ningappa. We were from the same platoon which gave us an opportunity to mingle around most of the time. Life in the Army is pretty simple; my friends are your friends. It’s not cutthroat. We’re like family. In times of difficulty, we rally around the people who are down; in good times, we celebrate together. Every slap on his face was a disappointment for us too, for today if it was his, tomorrow would be ours. We tried our best possible to help him surpass all his drawbacks and sail through, something that was highly regarded unachievable. He was already admitted at the hospital on numerous occasions, but every time he bounced back surprisingly. He never gave up. Training for him was like fast unto death, and here, even death had to pave way, for his fighting spirit for survival was worth mentioning. He was aware of the life here and the life after training too. He never found anything much bothering. The food was relish to him, the thin mattress was enough to keep him warm in the chilling winters, the gentle breeze from the tiny window entering the fan-less room enough to chill him in the scorching summers, and he took the slaps on his face with the guts of a kindergarten kid who just misspelled some alphabet. He never complained. The other night I heard him cry like a baby, loud enough to wake up everyone in the camp, yet, the next morning, still the finger marks afresh on his cheeks; he managed to share the details of the incident with a huge grin over his face. He dozed off while on duty and was caught red handed by a trainer who was awake to answer natures call. There were marks all across his back which would make it impossible for him to sleep in a normal posture for at least a week. The loud cry itself made it evident that the bashing was nothing less than the lashes people melt out on animals. Yet, he was prepared for a fresh day ahead as if nothing happened a day before.

Everyone knew that Ningappa would never complete the training; at least he would never qualify. His “Never Back Down” attitude raised quite a many curiosities in my mind. The first day I joined the Military and seeing the hundreds queuing for breakfast, I had made a secret pact within that the day I complete my training, I am going to head back straight home. It was not my piece of cake and it never would be. And leaving straight away was never a better option, for its common to be taunted for running away from military before completing the training. You would be branded a coward all your life, something that I would never digest. And what still makes Ningappa to carry on? No one’s even sure if he would complete the training successfully. Prompt came his reply,” Roshan, I come from a very poor family. We are four siblings and I have an ailing father at home. My mom has never stepped out of the house for more than a decade; she’s just busy with the household chores and off course looking after dad. I am the eldest of the four, so my siblings are still at school. When I was back home, every day on my way to college, I would drive auto’s on hire and return back in the late evenings with something to eat for the whole family with the days earning. There were days when I earned nothing and those were the days when I never went back home. I couldn’t bear the pain to see my family sleeping hungry. I ended up sleeping on the auto or even under the overhead bridges for that matter. Then I got a chance to join the Army. I have a decent salary here, decent enough to feed my family back home, send my brothers to school and manage to save a little for rough days to come. This gives me enough encouragement to carry on no matter what comes my way. I can bear the physical pain here just with the thought that my endurance is at the cost of my family and I am prepared to go to any extent”. It was enough for my ears.

                        After completing my training, I was assigned to the Bangladesh borders. Life was truly a ‘bed in the bush with stars to see. After serving for three years, I called it quits. Ningappa might still be there on the borders, serving the country (as what many people say the green uniformed do) but he always had his own reasons to be there. I still remember him fondly……. together we served!!!

"A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living." - John F. Kennedy.

STORIES BY ME(ONE)

Dying Embers…..based on a true life story

By RoshanC

“Where’s the pharmacy?”I asked a nurse passing by. “Round the corner to the far right”, she said and whizzed past me. The pharmacy was a small counter at the corner, with piles of medicines stocked randomly at the back and the crowd screaming their turn to collect their prescriptions. It took me almost 15 minutes to get hold of my medicines and another 10 to make my way back towards the elevator which would take me to the maternity ward on the seventh floor. All this while, I felt someone seated behind the counter, some 20 yards or so, a looming presence with his eyes anchored towards my direction. I turned back without much hesitation and my eyes met his. I was already moving towards his direction, numb and expressionless. He didn’t move an inch from the wooden chair that he was perched on, his eyes never winked, he didn’t acknowledge my greetings, and his lips made some arduous effort to move apart in the gesture of a smile. A lady seated next to him managed to utter those two words which rang a bell so loud on my ears that for a second I felt my eardrums would tear apart. “He’s paralyzed, he can’t speak nor hear.” My eyes went away from his and through the window up to the mountains. I tried to say something, but I was so nervous that my voice started shaking. A small tear ran down my cheeks, I had never cried before.

Few Years Ago…

His name was Raj, short for Rajendra. No one knew his last name, but everyone surely knew that he belonged to the so called lower caste. He was in his mid thirties. He was already balding and made strenuous effort to pull the hair towards his forehead, an unsuccessful attempt to hide the blank patches. He had a dark complexion contrary to native Sikkimese, and big round eyes. He was 5 feet 5 inches tall and very easygoing. He was serving the state government for quite some years and stayed in a one room apartment which he had partitioned from half. He had a fetish for antiques, loved music to the core and was an avid dancer. He ate noodles for lunch every day and drank black tea. He was never married.

Raj was a catholic converted. Not a regular church goers, but feared God. Since he was a bachelor living alone, his room used to be a regular party joint. There might be a very few who never made it to his room on one occasion or the other, that I can say for sure. He loved kids and invited them for lunch at regular intervals. And that was exactly how I came to know him. His room was a must watch, he was such a perfectionist that I sometimes used to wonder if any women could match his house keeping skills. He had a vast collection of songs which he regularly played on his old Phillips cassette player, and at times he used to dance to kill his time. He had lots of canvas paintings adorning his walls, perfectly arranged greeting cards on top of the Almira which had his finest collections of La O’ Pala crockery’s, enough to sustain a hundred uninvited guests. His floor used to be mopped to the tiniest particle and had a fresh smell of Aerosol freshener every time one entered. His curtains were never odd to the light blue tan of the walls and even his bed used to be synchronized to the same. He always had a stock of the latest magazines from the market and his tiny reading table at the center of the room was neatly arranged with them. His kitchen always had the stock for the month, name it and you have them, noodles, biscuits, snacks, groceries, everything. And his utensils shined as if new. His hands were everywhere in the room, everywhere.

I was a frequenter to his room; he was always a warm host. He was an outsider to our village but took active participation on everything that happened in and around. People used to flock his room on Christmas or New Year, just to have a drink or two, and after the job was done, no one ever looked back. He used to party along, dance for the crowd, but later the same crowd called him names. I used to see him cleaning the overnight stuff alone in the morning on numerous occasions. He never complained and the same used to happen over and again. He even gave shelter to the poor kids from the remote villages, just to help them make their journey to school a less strenuous job. The same kids, after staying for years, completing their studies, went back their way calling him names. Yes, he had some feminine characteristics, like the way he kept his rooms clean, the perfection in the classical dance and mostly, a bachelor at 36. And he always paid the price for it, but silently. The price he paid for being an outsider, for being lonely all his life, for being a normal human being.

As I grew up, I always wanted to get down deeper into the root cause of his loneliness. Why didn’t he ever talk about his family? Why he never left home for vacations, and above all, with all that he had, why didn’t he consider marriage, not as an option, but necessarily   

“I was 14 when my Dad expired” he bubbled. I never had a childhood. I got a job as a replacement for my Dad, and I had mouths to feed. That is all I can recall about my teenage. I have two sisters who are doing well now, they got married and still live with my mother at our ancestral house. All that I ever earned went towards my sisters studies, paying the debts that my Dad left behind as his last will. I never wore good clothes but made sure my family didn’t shiver in the cold winters. I was never looked up in the society, but I made enough efforts that they look up to my family. When my sisters grew up, it was my duty to get them married off and I managed it well, the price of which I am still paying off as debts. I never consulted a doctor in my life, but made sure my mom’s sugar level never bounced above normal. Their demands came to me in the form of orders, and I worked towards it as my obligations. I never enjoyed a piece of candy on Christmas, but made sure my family had Chocolate cakes to cut in front of a crowd of hundreds. My mom never saw me on the dining table more than once. I was an employee, staying away from home, yet strings attached to it. People talk about my marriage, they ask. Even I gave it a thought, but when I realized that I needed someone to be with me, it was already too late. Who wants’ to get married to a loner, who has debts to pay and is already 35? I don’t blame the girls who dejected me. I was so engrossed my entire life that for once I failed to look at me as an individual. I sacrificed my life for my family, my happiness, my desires, my aims and ambitions and ended up here. I never wanted anything from them, I knew they had nothing to give, but they have everything now and I have none. One day I was with my sisters when we bumped into few of their friends, they got me introduced as their neighbor. That was just the beginning of the slaps that my cheeks have been silently bearing for years now, but never turning red. I kept them in the shade and the sun was on my face. Today my color appears so dark to them that I don’t fit into their fair world.

It’s been three years now I haven’t seen them. Last year I received a legal notice from the court saying that all the ancestral property in my name will be legally attached to my mother, which in simple term means, they disowned me. I signed the papers. I never had my eyes on the property; it’s now my last gift to my family, to my sisters.

I have nowhere to go on vacations. So I always try to find my happiness in this tiny room. I cook, I clean, I read and I drink and drink. But I never cry, I’ll never cry…never.”

I couldn’t hold back for a minute after that. I rushed for the door, I wanted to get out, just get out and get lost somewhere. His voice still ringing on my ears, I made my way outside. I could never face him again. The answers to my questions were heavy enough that my tiny heart could no longer hold them in. I never wanted to see him again, never wanted to see the pain inside Raj, so nicely camouflaged inside his large smiles.

Eleven years had passed by since I last saw him. And today he’s right in front of me, immovable and so silent. How I wished I could hear him speak, say something to me, anything, tell me what had happened in these eleven years, what made him a mere piece of wood. But he was here today and I saw that silence spoke volumes. He was paralyzed, but I could read his eyes, read his lips. I remembered the last word that he spoke to me eleven years back then:

                                                                But I never cry, I’ll never cry…never.”