Pink For The Bedroom
It was in ’62 while posted in a remote
district of insurgency ridden Nagaland
that I decided to take the plunge. I had been doing the rounds of postings on
various mountain tops and jungle locations that were de-rigeur for all junior infantry officers, and considered myself
something of an expert on jungle warfare, having topped all professional
courses, till one day over the third rum, my drinking partner, an elderly major
advised me in rural punjabi, “Kaka, ki
kar reyan. Aiddan rum peendan jayenga, ya vyah-shyah karaan da koi plan hai?
[What are you doing young man? Are you planning to get married or just keep on
drinking your life away?] Unknown to me, the usual correspondence and
negotiations that precede most Indian marriages were well under way nearly
three thousand Km away at home in Ambala. As was usually the case in those
days, things were mostly firmed up without the groom’s knowledge and all I was
required to do was to apply for leave to get married. Naturally, my company
subedar, a dour Gurkha veteran of World War II, with the imposing name of Bam
Bahadur Thapa, approved of it long before the CO knew about it.
In the early sixties, the outfit where I
was posted, did not have regular government accommodation for its officers and
men. In any case, living in a remote jungle, inside a fenced perimeter ringed
with eight LMG posts and crisscrossed by roving patrols there were no such
niceties. So when the Subedar asked me whether Memsa’ab would join me, I
realized I hadn’t considered the aspect of where wife-to-be would stay. “If Memsa’ab is coming, let me know, I will
do something”, was his cryptic reply. My query on what he would do, drew a
laconic shrug in response and he instead began to discuss the forthcoming volleyball
championship.
Having negotiated the three day train
journey home, I put the question to the memsa’ab to be whether she would like
to move to my remote jungle location or whether she would prefer to sit out the
remainder of my field assignment in more civilized Ambala. Predictably, the
future homemaker stamped a dainty foot and with a toss of her head decreed that
she expected me to make full arrangements for her stay in far away Deephu.
Further, the size, scale and quality of the future accommodation was required
to be nearly as good as Daddy’s house in Srinagar. With some trepidation I
wrote off a letter to Subedar Sahib, announcing the impending arrival of the
Memsa’ab, hoping he would keep his word.
Several days later, when a newly minted
husband and wife arrived at the unit location having traversed a tiring and
difficult journey, they were met by the Subedar. I couldn’t stop staring at him
for he had a gap where his tightly lipped mouth used to be and a strange
expression resembling a smile, on his face. He was followed by a crowd of
beaming, giggling Gurkhas led by Ganga Bahadur. A stern look from Thapa froze
them into silence while he, in the manner of the proud father of the groom leading
a marriage party, showed us to our future home. I was struck speechless, for
before us stood a brand new cottage in the traditional Naga style, that I could
have sworn hadn’t existed a month ago.
My better half was also silent, for I
suspect that she had been expecting a cottage of the style commonly seen in Srinagar,
with a sloping red roof, a fireplace and lace curtains in the windows instead
of the green bamboo jungle dwelling in front of us. However I didn’t venture to
find out.
On arrival of my letter, Subedar sa’ab had
set his boys to work. I didn’t know that several members of my company,
probably including the otherwise inscrutable battle hardened JCO, nursed secret
architectural dreams and were only too glad to experiment while building a
house for their Company Commander. Teams were sent into the forest to search
for bamboo of varying dimensions. Sturdy bamboo trunks as thick as a man’s
thigh were used as the main columns of the house. Smaller diameter trunks were
used as the horizontal beams supporting the walls. The design was simple and
functional. A small verandah led into a drawing cum dining room, a door from
which led into the bedroom. Attached to the bedroom was a toilet and bathroom,
complete with toilet seat. The toilet design would have done credit to many of
our current ‘green buildings’. The seat was placed above a twenty or thirty
foot deep bore hole. Similarly, the bath area consisted of a bamboo mesh placed
above a six feet by six feet square pit into which drained the bath water
through the gaps in the bamboo mesh. Thus there was no problem of drying the
bathroom. As the soil consisted mainly of mud, water in the pit slowly drained
through the soil, as a result of which the pits didn’t need clearing for a few
years. Further, the moist heat of the jungle ensured that decomposition of
organic matter took place rapidly.
The walls were made from a double layered
tightly woven mesh of bamboo, so impenetrable that not even light could find
its way through. The walls were secured to the columns and beams using finely
scraped strings of bamboo or other local vines. Windows consisted of a gap in
the walls enforced by a bamboo grille with a flap that could be let down to
enclose it completely. The whole structure was covered by thatch so thick that
even the unrelenting jungle torrents could not seep through. A passage from the
drawing room led off to a pantry and kitchen store, while the kitchen was
located at some distance from the main dwelling. The Memsa’ab was expected to
confine herself to the house as the Subedar sa’ab took a dim view of young officers’
wives having unfettered access to the surroundings.
There was no electricity and running water
of course, but every morning, the unit tanker delivered water from the Jamuna
river, a lesser known north-eastern namesake of her more famous cousin, into a
forty gallon drum placed strategically near the entrance. From there on, Ganga
Bahadur took charge of it, distributing it to various buckets. Light was
provided by a hurricane lantern spreading its benevolence no more than five
feet. As the mistress of the manor believed in bright lights, a petromax was added,
that gave plenty of light but also added to the considerable tropical heat.
Subedar sa’ab had thought of everything, including cane sofas for the drawing
room and a bamboo double bed. The only problem was paint, as there were only
four colours in the unit – plenty of olive green, but lesser quantities of
white, red and yellow. While the jawans had used olive green paint generously,
when the Subedar sa’ab arrived for inspection to review the efforts of his
boys, he growled, “You idiots have used
green in the bedroom as well. Don’t you know, memsa’abs like pink?” So it
was that white and red were mixed together to produce various shades of pink,
till the old soldier grunted with satisfaction and decreed, “Use pink for the
bedroom.”
The old soldier had made his plans with all
the seriousness of a company attack on a hostile post. However there was one
small area that was alien to him. Having been brought up since childhood on a
palette of natural colours found in forests, he remembered the most exotic
shades of pink seen on jungle flowers. On the other hand, the person he was
trying so hard to please considered the English and Parisian shades found
between the covers of ‘Woman and Home’,
the only colours worthy of emulating. Thus
it was that we were struck speechless when we entered a bedroom in the most
shocking shade of pink designed to knock your eyeballs from their sockets, covering
the walls, the floor, the ceiling and even the bed. Thankfully, Memsa’ab held
her counsel, and even managed to mumble some polite sounds while Subedar Thapa
beamed like an indulgent father.
However I caught a sidelong look and it
took all my training in evading Naga ambushes to avoid ‘a keel hauling’, in
that wonderfully evocative phrase of sailors. Over the next few months we
discreetly changed the colour of the bedroom to a more sedate white.
