Of Bandars and Bully Ants

Highlife In The Hutments - 3

This is a collection of short stories on life in the armed forces, collectively referred to as the ‘fauj’, and deals specifically with life in the fauji quarters. This story takes a look at the animal life that share our quarters.

Of Bandars and Bully Ants

            The Babe from Bandra and the Stunner from Santa Cruz squealed in unison, which made Cutie from Colaba drop her papers. When she bent down to pick them up she recoiled in horror and in a reflex action reached for the intercom. This was something the GM upstairs needed to know at once. “There are ants in the showroom Ma’am, big ones”, she managed to stammer out. The GM rolled her eyes upwards, and in as calm a voice as she could manage, advised the pride of Colaba to use a can of insect spray followed by a dose of room freshener. My better half related the latest crisis she had been compelled to deal with, amidst her negotiations with a demanding customer, during our evening walk. I listened silently, as one is expected to do when a superior officer speaks. Suddenly there flashed before my mind’s eye, a pulse generated no doubt by a long dormant neuron, a picture of a troop of bully ants marching determinedly towards my four year old toes, while I sat obligingly on the throne in an ancient bathroom of our house in far away Balasore. I stared at them transfixed as only a four year old could.

            As far as I could remember, there were always ants - red ants, white ants, black ants, blacker ants, ants as big as scorpions and scorpions as small as ants, that freely roamed each corner of every house that I can recall since childhood. They were there when the first British occupants entered those houses, while their descendants supervised the departure of the Brits to Blighty and their subsequent generations continue to live there, notwithstanding the annual efforts of the Station Health Organization. Insects of various shapes, sizes and colors, winged insects, creepies, crawlies and others have had a long association with fauji houses, many having actually accompanied the families on transfers throughout India. Thus we have had ants from Mumbai settling down in Delhi, roaches from Kochi hitting town in cosmopolitan Mumbai, Bangalore’s bully ants making their presence known in Gangtok and so on.

            It was not only insects but lizards, birds and animals of every description varying according to the place, that seemed to be attracted to those fauji houses and flats. Snakes in ground floor houses were a given, however in Goa I found myself peering at a snake through the window of our first floor bathroom, fortunately with a wire mesh in between. A friend even reported a snake on the fifth floor of their building when posted in Bombay, though I’m not sure how many pegs of rum had been consumed before the sighting, certainly several were downed immediately thereafter.

Wildlife was included free with the inventory of the house and indeed notes were exchanged between the new incumbents and the old occupants of a house, which went thus – “watch out for the snake that lives in the corner of the garden near the drain. Don’t leave the kitchen door open, otherwise the rats will enter and the snake behind them. Also watch out for a cat that lives nearby. It will enter through the window, if the milk is kept on the table. And yes, get the SHO to spray the house for roaches, particularly the bathroom drains …..”

The type of wildlife varied from place to place – in Delhi it was cheeky rhesus monkeys who used the clothesline as a swing and snarled daringly at the memsahib, but preferred to retreat a distance when the master of the house approached. In fact it peeved the missus no end that the bandars didn’t pay heed to her entreatments and even the swings of the mosquito rod held in her hands, but quickly moved off when I approached. No sense in raising that topic, however satisfying, during the evening walk, though.

But coming back, in Goa it was langurs, with snakes thrown in for free along with noisy mynahs, while in Kochi it was snakes, snails and flying cockroaches. In Mumbai, Delhi and other cities, one had to evict the pigeons and their extended families before one could move in. In Jamnagar, there was a veritable zoo, where jackals, deer and camels came calling every other day, along with more snakes and scorpions, while in Pune we were visited by a civet cat. Lizards were indeed part of the household and as my mother lived in dread of them and refused to enter a room unless the lizard was evicted dead or alive, I became an accomplished lizard hunter by the time I turned fifteen.

A friend who, on posting to Kolkata, was assigned a “pre-temporary” accommodation in Fort William, was startled one evening shortly after he had moved in, to find a spider nearly as big as his hand! When he related the episode of the gigantic spider, the next day in office, he learned that the room allotted to him was part of the stables dating back to the time of Col Robert Clive. Whether the spider also dated back to Clive will never be known, but he shifted out quickly, lest he next encounter the Colonel or one of his aides in one of the darker recesses of the dwelling.

Rats were another set of regular residents of our houses. Again there were a great variety of them – fearsome looking black rats that glared at you if you had the temerity to disturb them and smaller brown mice that were actually rather cute. The older the building, the bigger were the rodents. In Delhi, we lived in a ‘hostel’ on Maulana Azad Road, that had been built by my grandfather during the Second World War. The rats had obviously won their war for they seemed to have multiplied and grown bigger in size despite the rat-traps and the rat poison. Since that building had a false ceiling, one could hear them as they scampered around chasing each other. However in my experience the ultimate rats are the ones in Mumbai – I actually saw a tunnel made by rats through the floor of the ground floor flat that I was allotted on transfer from Goa. Rats that could dig their way through tiles?!

While visiting a cantonment near Guwahati, I saw evidence of a recent visit by elephants. My friend described the visit by the herd, who after sunning themselves on the lawn of his house, and having scooped up bushels of flowers as snacks, had merrily sauntered through carefully tended hedges, occasionally inserting a cheeky trunk through a carelessly left open window, to search for bananas and other fruit, all the while leaving large mounds of free gifts in their wake.

Bathrooms were a favorite place visited by snakes. In fact I once read a description of a bathroom written by an Englishman wherein he described the bathroom, or ‘gussalkhana’ as it was known then as “a room that had a tap at one end and a hole at the other. The hole was to let the water out and the snakes in.” We had one such gussalkhana in our house in Balasore, which had probably been built in the nineteenth century. I recall, as the afore-described three or four year old, being marched in by Mum for the gussal or whatever it was they called a bath back then, when I was just as unceremoniously yanked out and quickly perched atop a high chest of drawers while Mum deposited herself on a suitably elevated perch and proceeded to bring the house down.

A bit of shouting later, a posse of servants clattered past armed with mosquito rods and other weapons. A few more shouts ensued, till one of them emerged beaming with the offending reptile lying across his weapon of choice. The snake hunter would have held forth that evening, as the servants gathered for the post dinner hookah and beedi, in which he would have described the hunt in great detail. I know, because I often accompanied one of them to these discussions, where they rocked back and forth on their haunches while they discussed matters of importance.

Years later during a road trip, while staying the night at an Inspection Bungalow in Belgaum, my five year old daughter who had stepped into the toilet, let out a terrified shriek, for inside the toilet bowl was a fearsome looking black toad with an exotic orange strip running down its side. Once again the dreamer in me began to take over as I stared at it fascinated, however the shrieks of my progeny prevented me from any further wool gathering. Fortunately modern technology came to my rescue and I was able to simply flush it down.

            

Thoughts At The Dental Clinic

As I reach the officers’ waiting area for what certainly seems to be a long wait I notice everyone's head turned in a common direction. No one notices me as I discreetly slip in to take my place among the rank and file. I too point my head in the common direction. One more digit in the endless stream of anxious numbers, awaiting their destiny, where the prevailing certainty is pain. The TV on the wall, the object of studied attention of a couple of dozen pairs of eyes is belting out news of the Gujarat elections. Its surprising how the environ of a dentist’s waiting hall can produce such undivided interest in election results.

The wall mounted call board suddenly bleats out its electronic tune, a prelude to a new number call. Two dozen heads turn in unison. Someone jumps up in a scramble of dental sheets, cellphones and spectacles and hurries off towards one of the surgeries. Why the hurry when there is only pain beyond those closed doors, I wonder? Another figure hurries back, obviously relieved to have been released from the agony of the last half hour. He throws himself into a vacant spot and busies himself with tying his shoelaces, leaving quickly without a side glance, avoiding everyone’s eyes. The similarity with a relay race hits me – one goes in, another comes out and hands over the baton of pain.

Valour lasts only as far as the dental chair.

The others return to the elections seemingly absorbing every nuance of Modi’s campaign, but in reality the TV serves the purpose of a soporific and everyone’s attention is soon dulled till the next number call. The nervousness is clearly discernible, though the children are more honest about it.

Everyone returns to the TV set which has now shifted gears and is displaying news of a gang rape in Delhi. Coming close on the heels of the Bandra rape and the murder of a youth outside his building society in Mumbai for trying to protect the honour of a young girl and the Shivsena prompted arrest of two young girls for an innocuous remark, I am struck by the irony of what appears to be the latest position in a bizarre race between two cities vying for the top spot of infamity. Alternating lead positions in a self defeating race between two brutish mindless dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, because both cities appear to be long past their sell-by date, if crowds, pollution, creaking infrastructure, falling standards of living and rising crime are any indication.

Just when Mumbai appears to be edging forward towards attaining this unseemly crown, Delhi manages to pull off one more rape or grisly murder that helps it to ward off Mumbai's challenge as the title contender for the unsafest city in India. Just when it appeared that a semblance of sanity was appearing over the capital, its uncouth and loutish side has once again surfaced. Did it ever disappear, or was it just a pause for breath? Judging by the rate at which undesired events take place, it is amazing that there are any normal people still left. Its amazing that children still manage to go to school, couples still walk the sea-face, people continue to party out, go shopping, see movies, enjoy music, play games, visit libraries, study, sip a leisurely cup of tea while reading the paper or just sit quietly looking at crowds go by.

Why is it that we as Indians are simply unable to govern ourselves as civilized people are supposed to do? Is that the reason why foreign countries hold so much fascination for us as a people? Is it this that drives Indians to sell their farms and homes to migrate to USA, Canada, Dubai and Australia, where they are content to drive taxis, work as labourers and menials and will follow rules to a tee without a murmur. Why is it then that those same drivers, workers and petty businessmen turn into depraved maniacs without any sense of proportion when they live in their native country? Is it that every Indian works best with a danda over his or her head.

Perhaps, Indira Gandhi’s emergency wasn’t so bad after all.

I see someone signaling me. My turn appears to have arrived, I head towards a surgery, leaving my thoughts trailing.

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.

The Receptacle And Other Weapons

High Life In The Hutments

This is a collection of short stories on life in the armed forces, collectively referred to as the ‘fauj’, and deals specifically with life in the fauji quarters. The following story provides an irreverent view of the furniture provided to a typical fauji house.

The Receptacle And Other Weapons

            As anyone who has ever lived in a government provided house will tell you, the euphoria of receiving the allotment order for a long awaited house is followed by the more serious business of formally taking over the prized dwelling, complete with its inventory of sanitary fittings, brass taps, light fixtures and so on, carefully catalogued in an inventory of fittings. For a young memsahib moving into her first home, the high of the allotment is often followed by a sense of disappointment on seeing the bulky, unwieldy furniture and whitewashed walls that assault her sense of style and visions of a cozy cottage, that is, till her natural ingenuity takes over to transform an otherwise dull, box like indistinguishable structure, into a stylish address.

            For those like me who have been raised since early childhood on a diet of government furniture, the sturdy chairs and tables served many purposes, from creating a makeshift ladder to climb into the loft, to creating a stage and seating for one of the many home production plays that we inflicted upon reluctant and somewhat embarrassed parents, as well as, stumps for our endless cricket matches, whereas the dining table could be used as a passable table-tennis table. A quarter of a century later, when I was alloted my own house, I discovered that while the furniture had remained largely the same from my parents’ time, much like elderly family retainers, the inventory list with its archaic names completely foxed me and was a source of amusement to my wife. For I discovered that, the items that I had simply referred to as the long brown table or the high square table, actually had other names that took some getting used to, like uncovering a new side to an old friend’s personality. Unknown to many of us, the sturdy if dowdy furniture provided a feeling of welcome, comfort and security to us wandering nomads who moved from city to mountain top to forested areas like migratory herds of wild animals.

            While the items issued (yes, they are actually issued) to most fauji houses across India are identical in form, fit and function, many are legacies of bygone eras and although never used, they continue to be provided simply because that has been the practice for the last half-century. The trouble would start when it was time to hand over the house and one simply could not locate a piece that had never been used and hence had remained out of sight and out of mind. To the average civilian reader, the concept of ‘furniture issue’ may seem quaint, but terms like ‘furniture issue days’ and ‘barrack damages’ have always been part of our lexicon.

            Among the items issued and never used was the “Set MNF”, which had nothing to do with the Mizo National Front, and was an acronym for an unpretentious Mosquito Net Frame. To the uninitiated, this was a set of metal rods of varying lengths that could be inserted into designated slots in the “Cot Nevar” (more about that later), and assembled together into a frame to suspend a mosquito net. If dropped on the floor, the rod resonated with the most irritating, shrill clang. With eight rods to a bed, there was a sizeable collection of rods from the five beds that had to be carefully stored, till the inventory was mustered in the presence of a rep of the BSO, or the Barrack Stores Officer, and signed off on the occupant’s transfer. Rarely used for their intended purposes ever since the late sixties, the rods had other useful purposes and were handy as weapons to ward off snakes, lizards, rodents, stray dogs, monkeys and other forms of wildlife that shared our living quarters.

            The Set MNF was eventually replaced by a T shaped mosquito net support that continued to be standard issue, long after mosquito nets had been phased out by electronic mosquito repellants and the ubiquitous “Kachhua Chhaap agarbatti”. Either through force of habit, or (I suspect) just to amuse himself, the Barracks Stores Officer continued to issue these items, even after the windows had been reinforced with mosquito proof net. Much like our depleting wildlife, today they can occasionally be seen in pairs forming the support of a clothes-line or sticking out of the disused corner of a balcony, consigned there by the harried lady of the house.

            The “Cot Nevar”, for the uneducated and unknowing, was the bed where you slept. In the days before 12 mm plywood became the standard support for the mattress on your bed, you turned into the Cot Nevar. Nevar (nevaar) was the broad cotton tape that was stretched across the bed in a criss-cross manner and had to be frequently tightened lest it sag and give you a back ache. One assessed the standard of a home based on the slackness of the cot nevar, which was a good indicator of how tightly the household was managed by the lady, since the bed could never be made properly if it had a sag.

        A bed fitted with ply was a prized possession and something to boast about in cocktail parties, since the only way one could get it without spending money, was by getting a doctor’s chit that said “advised hard bed”. Those who couldn’t get the medical certificate had to buy their own plywood cut to the size of the bed and they carried these pieces of plywood from station to station on their transfers. Mercifully the Cot Nevar has now evolved into the “Cot Ply” as the nevar had a nasty habit of attracting bed bugs and moisture during monsoons.

            Another piece of furniture seen only in fauji homes, was the “Bin Soiled Linen Wooden”, where you were expected to dump your dirty linen till the next visit by the dhobi. As a budding adolescent, I was required to make a list of the clothes while the dhobi squatted on the floor and segregated the clothes emptied from the “Bin Soiled …”. The bin came in two models – the horizontal one which did double duty as a settee and the vertical model, which, covered by a neat table cloth functioned as an excellent perch for that most coveted status symbol of the sixties and seventies – the telephone.

            Another unique component of fauji homes was the “Meat Storage Locker” that was clearly a throwback to the Raj. This was a lockable cabinet where the upper half was covered with fly-proof netting, while the wooden sides and door of the lower half was lined with aluminum sheet on the inside. This was where you were expected to store your meat and chicken. They hadn’t heard of fridges back then. We found an ideal use for this antiquated piece of furniture, as a place to store and ripen the freshly plucked and slightly raw papayas from our kitchen garden. Every item of furniture had its main use and alternate uses, much like the “Normal and Alternate” modes of power supply that I encountered in later life on ships.

            The “Receptacle With Bucket Aluminum” which to the ignorant was a mere dustbin, was in fact an enormous sturdy metal garbage can fitted with an outsized foot operated lid-opening lever that clearly had its origins in the firing mechanism of a howitzer. In accordance with accepted rules and practices, the lever had the dual use of tripping the unwary. The many bruises on my shins bore witness to the efficacy of its alternate role. The contraption was designed to be placed, outside the kitchen door where it stood like a bellicose sentry ready to take on all comers. The slamming of the lid in the late morning indicated that the “kachrawala” had emptied its contents, much like the 12 o’clock cannon fired in the old days to indicate that all was well.

            If any item of furniture was found missing while returning the house to that guardian of homely values, the Barracks Stores Officer, one incurred a penalty aptly termed as “Barrack Damages”. Everyone dreaded being awarded this penalty as the amount charged for a minor infarction, was nearly twice the market price of the item. Even the most arrogant colonel with his swishing swagger stick, and, the most dashing destroyer captain in his Ray-Bans turned to jelly when faced with Barrack Damages. However every clause in the government’s book of rules also has its own proverbial loophole and it was always possible to pass off some broken bits and pieces of wood as furniture that needed repair.

            Each bathroom was issued with a “Bath Mat Wooden”, on which you were expected to perch while under the shower. My wife, mortified that could be a snake residing under the wooden slats decreed that it should serve a higher purpose as a stand for her precious potted plants. On one occasion, having taken over a new flat, the memsahib noted that the bath mat we received was rather shabby. It was promptly thrown out with an indignant remark on junk collecting in the house. The maid’s husband, who normally couldn’t see beyond his rum fuelled haze, that day perceived it as useful firewood and proceeded to dismantle it in preparation for the evening’s cooking. Fortunately I discovered the errant item just in time and managed to save it from the fire. The item was quickly returned to the BSO as a defective bath mat and the consequent barrack damages averted.

            Thus it was that life went on in the cantonments – for the lady of the house a challenge to transform a dull room into the most bright and warm home that resounded with laughter of children and guests, where boxes covered by blankets and bright rugs became settees to overcome the shortage of sofas. Trunks stacked over the other became a wall to divide a room in order to provide a grown daughter with privacy that was respected by all. Today as I wind down three decades of career I am faced with the prospect of mustering the furniture inventory one last time before I finally call it quits. I hope I am not slapped with Barrack Damages!