High Life In The Hutments

High Life In The Hutments

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about the humble dwellings that house large swathes of Mumbai’s population. In the army’s lexicon, the word ‘hutment’ refers to a temporary house allotted to an officer, usually to tide over the period before he gets a proper flat or house. Usually placed cheek by jowl with other similar structures, it could perhaps with a little stretch, be termed euphemistically as a row house of sorts.

To anyone who has ever experienced that period of bliss that only a childhood in cantonments can provide, the mention of hutments evokes memories of fun with dozens of friends, all living within shouting distance of each other, of birthday parties when it was common to receive at least three or four identical gifts that were the latest arrivals in the canteen, of endless games played in the common lawn, impromptu pot-luck parties, breakfasts of steaming idlis at Menon aunty’s house, parathas from Gill uncle’s place, pakoras from Gupta aunty’s, of arguments over the window seat in the school bus and picnics with everyone crowding into the Shaktiman from Srivastava uncle’s unit.

These temporary houses have been home at some stage, to all those who have served or followed their fathers in their tours of duty across the length and breadth of India. Many of these hutments built as temporary structures during the Second World War, continue to be used to this day, a tribute to the quality of their construction. While the shape and size may differ from station to station, the essential flavor of life there remains the same. All fauji houses, whether temporary or permanent, share some common qualities, that can easily be identified by anyone who has lived and played in them and grown up to regard them as home. The average civilian reader could be forgiven for sniffing at what I am about to describe, as poor quality of construction, but we took such minor trifles for granted and got on with our fun-filled lives after making a few adjustments.

Having spent the last three decades in uniform and before that another two in my parents home, while the senior Kris was in service, I can tell you with some authority that every house has its special quirks, which the occupant has to either accept gracefully, or spend his tenure in misery. That nearly all fauji houses leak during rains, is a well acknowledged fact and is merely a question of quickly rolling up the carpets and placing beds and trunks intelligently, so that the buckets capture those offensive drops. No one ever minded the presence of a few buckets even during parties, whether at home or in the messes. In any case, after the second round of drinks, people didn’t even notice them, besides they served as excellent ashtrays, while waiters and stewards smoothly navigated around them bearing trays of drinks and fish fingers, or that most favourite of army small eats – scrambled egg on toast.

You were lucky if you got a house that didn’t leak, but the law of averages quickly caught up in other ways. There were windows that never opened, doors that wouldn’t shut, bathrooms that had never seen water and others that would absolutely refuse to dry. It was common to have a few latches that couldn’t be latched and bolts that hadn’t been bolted for years, covered in layers of paint as they were, with each successive inspection. In fact on an idle afternoon if one had the inclination to peel off the paint, one could easily find two or three different colours. Doors and windows were usually misaligned, so it was common practice to align the latches instead, which usually left scars and holes on the wood. These were painted over with copious quantities of paint.

There were even doors that seemed to expand every year, usually during the rainy season, making it difficult to open as they jammed on the floor. The lady of the manor would grumble, the young master in his 8^th year of school would kick the stubborn door while his older sister, absorbed in the latest Mills and Boon romance would scream at him to stop it. Dad would usually pretend that nothing was wrong and to demonstrate, would open the door by hefting it upwards; however to buy peace he would cast a look at his trusty Bahadur, who understood with that one look, that it was time to summon the carpenter.

The carpenter would arrive in due course and with all the seriousness of a master surgeon going in for a complex operation, he would remove the beedi from his mouth, shake off the burning tip, pinch it carefully and tuck it behind his ear for future use. Meanwhile a worn out pencil stub would be produced from the other ear. From his equally weather beaten bag, he would extract an old saw that would be first checked for trueness. He would then cluck and comment on the quality of tools being supplied and proceed to tell a story about the saw, having been provided an audience in the form of the young master and Bahadur, both of whom had been warned by the memsahib to keep an eye on the carpenter lest he make off with the family heirlooms. The story over, the carpenter would proceed to cut off a sliver of the door from below. That done he would pronounce the door fit for future use.

Strangely, the following year the door would stick again at the very same spot.

It was common for bedroom windows to have window panes that were completely opaque, covered by the aforementioned cocktail of paints. However there was a method in the madness. The glass panes reinforced thus by paint, had enough strength to withstand a broadside from cricket balls. Conversely, and quite possibly the product of a maintenance man’s wicked thoughts, it wasn’t unusual for bathrooms to have windows that were clear enough to provide a view from the other end of the maidan, and, so fragile that they would have shattered with a sneeze.

My better half, an army brat herself, through careful research and years of experience had indeed formulated a set of laws for life in the fauji quarters, which were to be followed by all in the house. The dictats went thus:

·      If it is broken it shall remain so. No amount of effort by the maintenance staff will repair it, hence they need not be called to waste their time and ours.

·      Walls have eyes – all bathrooms, dressing rooms, bedrooms shall be scanned before use for unusually large holes, cracks, gaps in the paint on window-panes etc. All windows and doors shall be covered with towels, sheets, curtains at all times during the day or night. This particularly applies to inspection bungalows, guest houses, holiday homes irrespective of rank, status etc.

·      Two geysers shall not be operated simultaneously, lest the house wiring go up in smoke. The same rule applies to the geyser and airconditioner.

·      If it isn’t elegant / pretty / useful, it is not required and should be thrown. We are not to be concerned with trifles like returnable items. Those are for others to worry about.

·      If the aforesaid inelegant / ugly / useless item cannot be removed eg. walls, floors, doors etc, the same shall be covered with fabric / carpets / rugs / curtains / cushions and such items of quality that shall only be used after due diligence. Anything associated with, or, remotely resembling government issue items like fauji blankets shall be used only after due permission has been granted. The same may however be used on the floor of Sahib’s room, if he has one.

It was quite common for drains to get choked or water taps to fly apart on Saturday evenings when the maintenance staff had secured for a rum fuelled weekend of bliss. The fact that the defaulting tap was leaking water from the overhead tank meant for other houses too, rarely moved the plumbers who were never to be found. Thus one could either spend the weekend fretting about a soggy carpet and water everywhere, or one could give the maid the day off and move into the Mess for a pampered weekend, while the water poured out of the house from under the doors. The choice was simple. On Monday morning, a platoon of plumbers would turn up and carefully roll up their trousers before stepping into the house now in ankle deep water. Meanwhile the memsahib would have got the servants to round up bricks to be used as stepping-stones from the bedroom to the kitchen so that the husband and kids could be got out of the way soonest. There was a whole new meaning to the phrase “stepping stones to success” in our fauji homes.

While my civilian brethren may well be appalled at the range and scale of building defects that I have just described, the fact was that those places were home to us and the fun that we had as kids, the camaraderie we shared as young newly wed couples and the feeling of warmth and security that those ancient sloping roofed barracks and inelegantly designed apartment blocks exuded, more than made up for the material discomforts. Today as I watch the sands in the hour glass of my service career run out, I can clearly see the lights of the barracks in a remote station that beckoned me as a young boy to make a choice. I’m glad I made that choice.