an abstract from memories are made of

An abstract from MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS, the random memoirs of a once-young Sherwoodian who loved the wild as fiercely as he loved the parents who

introduced him to it.

Bandoo

The ‘sixties were a watershed in human history. It was the time of John F. Kennedy, Jawaharlal Nehru, early space exploration and a changing India. Society was in transition. A whole new generation gap was in the making, and we were the post-war teenage kids who were busy fashioning it, delighting in scandalizing our parents by worshiping new gods on the block of the likes of Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard, with their distinctive brands of pop and rock-‘n-roll music and outlandish dress codes.

If Dads’ trousers had cuffs that stretched the tape to 18 or 20 inches, ours had to be tight-at-the-hip, twelve inches at the cuffs, calf-and-ankle hugging blue jeans. Fathers still wore their hair brushed back, like Humphrey Bogart or Ashok Kumar. We rebelled by adding an embellishment called ‘The Puff’. Of course, Elvis and Cliff had started the craze, but they were merely pointing the way as far as we were concerned. Sherwoodians took that over-cultivated forelock and turned it into an art form.

The major compulsion behind The Puff was, of course, peer pressure, but like all fads, no one noticed any overt need to conform. Like every new generation, we thought we knew a good thing when we saw one. Taking the pioneering efforts of Elvis and Cliff as mere harbingers of things to come, we unleashed all our creativity on our forelocks. Living as we did in the foothills of the Himalayas, we did not have to look far for inspiration, for there was Mount Kailash, Trishul, Nanda Devi, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, or even Everest! We were surrounded by working models to base our designs on. Looking further for inspiration, some found it in the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, or perhaps, I suspect, even Mount Kilimanjaro or Fujiyama.

There were about three hundred boys in Dixon Wing, the senior section of the school, and competition as to who had the best Puff was fierce. Absolutely unstated, of course but it was there; we were all participants in the Great Puff Derby, and each one of us meant to win. It was like the English custom of sincerely wishing one’s opponents all the best before a football match, and, shortly after the start of the game, proceeding to take the rival team apart by fair means or foul. As far as Puffs were concerned—at least those in the championship class—there were no fair means. ‘Anything goes’ was the rule.

There was K.M Pant who, it was rumoured, put his locks in a curler before he went to sleep, in the darkness after ‘lights out’. Or Roger Boezalt, who was said to favour two strips of garden hose, rubber bands, and clothesline clips to achieve his stunning effects. Ken Rice was a model-airplane freak and suspicion fell on his airplane glue: nothing else could explain that breathtaking, gravity-defying pinnacle of perfection that soared up from his narrow, cunning forehead. For the densely packed runners in the middle of the field, however, the answer was Brilliantine.

Firmly positioned between the coconut oil of the Deep South and the hair gel of the late 1990s, Brilliantine was a strongly-scented green pomade with a viscosity that made heavy-duty engine grease look like runny peanut butter. It was applied to wet hair which, after being ‘styled’ was allowed to dry. It set hard within minutes, and was capable of holding the biggest of puffs together by its sheer tenacity under extreme conditions, such as dancing the (forbidden) Twist. Needless to say, Brilliantine was a best seller because no self-professed swinger would be caught dead without his magnificent puff. All Saints High School girls wouldn’t look twice at a guy whose puff was substandard.

An offering to the gods of the earth from Subroto Mukerji, who accepted the great boon of this life with as much enthusiasm as it is possible to muster


introduced him to it.The downside to using Brilliantine was that not only was it fairly certain that it sank

into the brain and left the user somewhat soft in the head for the rest of his life (as you’ll no doubt conclude after you’ve read this chapter), it also attracted the unwelcome attentions of sundry winged pests such as hornets, bees, and the common horsefly. But it was a small price to pay: no girl would dream of dancing with a guy who dared to turn up minus his puff!

In those days, dancing was not the series of disjointed gyrations that go by that name today. Ballroom dancing involved (barring the banned ‘Twist’) holding one’s partner’s right hand with one’s left hand, while one’s right hand curled lightly around her waist as one took a series of predetermined steps around the floor. I feel a little sorry for the guys today, hopping up and down to the monotonous throb of Indipop as if there are scorpions running loose inside their shirts (and maybe someone put thumb-tacks in their shoes). They don’t know what they’re missing. Their partners shake and contort their bodies like they’ve got a bad case of St. Vitus’ dance, or it could be that someone put itching powder in their clothes and they are too well bred to scratch in public.

All good things must pass, however, as the Romans of the Empire came to know only too well, but I must confess that when the blow actually fell, it took us all by surprise. For one fine day, ‘Lew’ (our principal, Rev. R.C. Llewellyn) decided that West Point had a point in prescribing short hairstyles for gentleman cadets. He banned puffs, just like that. Puffs banned! It was like the end of the world for us! Some unkind souls expressed the opinion that since Lew was practically bald, he couldn’t stand the sight of our proud puffs any more. A second opinion that merited serious consideration was that he’d invested heavily in the shares of ‘California Poppy’, the hair oil that had ruled the roost until Brilliantine came on the scene and put it out of business. Another market-savvy operator suggested that he had entered into a partnership with Bandoo, the school barber.

This sounded logical. Till now, Bandoo was merely a vassal who, under the terms of his contract, received a fixed sum of money to shear as many heads as were sent to the hair-cutting room every Thursday by the Prefect-on-Duty. But now, newly empowered and contract re-negotiated on a piece-rate basis, he became a tyrant whose excesses knew no bounds. He metamorphosed into a wily predator who lurked near the dining room door after teatime, either tapping a gleaming puff as it moved past him under full sail or merely caught the eye of the P-o-D (Prefect on Duty) and shook his head mournfully, whereupon the said P-o-D jotted down the condemned prisoner’s roll number and called out to him to report at the hair-cut room at such-and-such a time. Either way, the results were the same. The victim sat sullenly on a stool and moments later, stared dejectedly at the guillotined remains of his meticulously nurtured puff that had joined the debris of other, similar works of art on the floor at his feet. It was a demoralising experience. It is not surprising that a pall of gloom hung over the school.

Something had to be done fast. It was the dark night of the soul for senior Sherwoodians. Social life had taken a beating, and self-confidence and morale had sunk to a new low. The credit for coming up with the answer went to Brian McMahon. It doesn’t surprise me that he went on to become the successful businessman he is today in Sydney. It was an ingenious solution, somewhat expensive but eminently practical. It was, like all neat solutions, a thing of stunning simplicity, being based on the time-tested American belief of ‘if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.’ We would make it financially



introduced him to it.significant to Bandoo to cooperate with us. Yes, it was proposed to harness the power of Mammon to exploit the love for lucre that dwells deep in the heart of every human being.

It was common knowledge that Bandoo was a man of fastidious tastes: his cap was of the finest wool, his kurta-pajamas were tailored from the choicest silks, and his large feet were shod in what was then Bata’s flagship model, the caterpillar-soled ‘Ambassador’ Deluxe. He would be an easy target for our scheme.

It was obligatory for every one of us to enter the plot, for in unity and mass response alone lay its effectiveness. All we had to do was to go and have a haircut in Bandoo’s saloon in town every now and then. It is unavoidable, at this stage of my narrative, to fill you in on certain financial and administrative details of life at the POW camp…I mean, at school.

Since it was obligatory for a person—even in the Auschwitz known to the outside world by the misleading name of Sherwood (with all its connotations of swashbuckling outlaws shooting King John’s deer with bows and arrows in a forest on the outskirts of Nottingham)—to have some cash-in-hand, the bursar, Mr. Duckett, or his Accountant Mr. Rekhari, doled out pocket money to us every Friday.

The amount varied as per entitlement, starting at Re.1/- for juniors (who, though heavy investors in edible foodstuffs such as roasted peanuts or confectionary ranging from Parry’s sweets to pastries, found this sum quite adequate for their simple needs), to Rs. 4/50 for seniors, who might wish to ride a horse, eat ice-cream at Sakley’s, relish some malai-chops at Prem Restaurant, or even buy a Max Brand or Zane Grey cowboy novel from ‘Moddies’ (the still-going-strong Modern Book Depot). The fall-back position was ‘Bank Money’ (extra money sent direct to the Principal by parents), doled out by Lew himself, perched gravely behind his ledger. He made the debit entries and struck the fresh balances after he had interrogated you and provided he was satisfied with your reasons for wanting to draw on this reserve.

He always handed over money with the utmost reluctance, whether it was five rupees or ten (quite a substantial withdrawal in those days and one likely to make a noticeable dent in one’s bank balance), all the while propounding the virtues of frugality / simplicity and the necessity of spending money wisely (we went and did the exact opposite in the outside world!). Quite understandably, most Sherwoodians are bad with cash and investments (not counting, of course, the 47 shrewdly businesslike Patels from East Africa who were in school at the time).

Special permission was needed to go down to town, which was otherwise out of bounds, as was Bisht Bhawan (old man Bisht served a marvellous omelette-on-toast), or anywhere else outside the school’s somewhat porous boundaries. Town leave was granted class-wise (both sections simultaneously, for there were only two sections per class), and was no doubt eagerly awaited by the town’s entrepreneurs. Nainital’s sales graphs peaked on town-leave days—the five main residential schools played a vital role in its economy, especially during the off-season monsoon months.

Descending to the town, one’s first stop, depending on the level of one’s blood sugar (typically low and in urgent need of replenishment), was usually Prem Restaurant, a house of delicacies serving the afore-mentioned malai chops that vied for attention with ras-malais, and laddoos. Suitably fortified, one then proceeded to The Modern Book Depot, affectionately known as Moddie’s. The reason for the popularity of this major drain of resources was its bookshelves, groaning under the weight of all the cowboy



introduced him to it.books a schoolboy could possibly want, and it’s knee-level troughs awash with comics. The next step, till now a laissez faire decision, became a de rigueur stop at Bandoo’s as per the recently passed General Resolution.

Bandoo’s saloon was a simple affair in those days, just a couple of adjustable (wooden) barber’s chairs, a bench for those in the queue, and mirrors. But the walls were plastered with framed charts displaying pictures of gentlemen in stylish haircuts…and they all sported massive puffs! As one took one’s seat, all one had to do was point to the type of puff desired and leave the rest to Bandoo. It was a very different Bandoo we met here. Polite to the point of obsequiousness and anxious to please, he was a toothless tiger in his own den, and instead of the standard two minutes he normally took to shear one’s carefully nurtured crop in school, it now took him over ten minutes of careful snipping before he was ready to seek one’s approval. As one paid him the standard fee of Rs.1/50, one added a tip of 8 annas (that’s 50 paise by conversion, but, in case you want to ascertain its buying power today, you need to multiply that by 40) to bring the total damages to Rs.2/-.

Shortly after we had launched our offensive, Bandoo’s eyesight started failing…at least when he came up to school. No longer could he see the big puffs he had earlier spotted with such deadly accuracy. With a solemn air tinged with deep disappointment, he crouched beside the door at teatime, rubbing his hands apparently in an agony of inner turmoil as he ‘failed’ to sight a single target. Still, to keep up appearances, he would ask some regulars up to the cutting room for a little cosmetic trimming and a touch of the razor on side-burns. Lew was too busy to notice that puffs were back, having got hooked on his latest fad (Morse Code), proficiency in which became important if one wanted him to hand over one’s bank money without undue fuss, or for permission to play your favorite record on his electric record player.

Chanakya alias Kautilya always maintained that it was better to sidestep a powerful foe by giving him what he wanted, if that gave you what you wanted, too. Today, Management gurus refer to this strategy as a ‘Win-Win’ situation. Our entente cordiale with Bandoo did more than merely neutralize that arch-enemy of puffs: it preserved our hair styles, salvaged our self-esteem and social life, and…made him rich. He opened an extension counter in Talli Tal, diversified into a fruit shop manned by his younger brother, and—if rumour is to believed—married again. He was looking years younger when I last saw him, sleek and well groomed, and had bought himself a scooter, which was a very coveted item in those days.

The puffs themselves…what happened to them? Why, haven’t you ever heard of The Beatles?




Baadal

Horses are practically history today. The internal combustion engine has seen to that. Yet Man’s own history would have been very different had the horse never existed. The same applies to the English language. We would have had to struggle along without a little horsing around sans a jot of horse sense, deprived of a chance to indulge in a spot of horse trading, kicking up our heels or keeping the bit firmly between our own teeth. We would never have felt hungry enough to eat a horse, nor felt as strong as one after eating a hearty meal. Would we ever have had to contend with a dark horse? Would there have been horse latitudes, horse radishes, or horseflies, I wonder? We could never have accused anyone of talking horse-shit! Could anyone have unhorsed an opponent at the polls, tourneys having gone out of vogue? Nay (neigh?), we would also have to shut the stable doors after some other four-legged beast had bolted.

The author of the Encyclopædia Britannica article on this noble animal is obviously fond of his subject. From Eohippus—“Dawn Horse”—to modern equestrian sports, he misses nothing. He gloats over the different breeds, from Thoroughbreds and Pintos, to Roans to Palominos. He omits to mention, however, the most famous Palomino in history: Gene Autry’s steed Champion, all gold and power and beauty.

It is a privilege to ride a truly great horse. They are rare. Baadal was one such, a heavily-muscled, midnight-black stallion about sixteen hands high who used to come up to Nainital about four decades ago. It cost seven rupees (a small fortune in those halcyon days) to ride Baadal from town to Sherwood College, nestling just below Dorothy’s Seat on the Ayarpatta Ridge. The money apart, one never got a chance to do so. He was popular. Then one day, by some stroke of good fortune, I happened to be at the right place with the right change and at the right time.

Mounting a big horse is not an easy task for a small boy, but I made it a prestige issue to clamber into the saddle on my own. The groom refused to give me a quirt: Baadal needed no urging, his look implied. He carefully recounted the currency as we moved off.

Baadal ambled along, and though his reluctance to move quickly on the steep inclines was quite understandable, his refusal to get into his stride on the level stretches had me puzzled. No amount of rein-slapping, dug-in heels or war-whoops could induce him to engage third gear. I finally came to the conclusion that I’d been swindled. Baadal had outlived the legend and was headed for the glue factory.

Horses are extraordinarily intelligent beings. Even as the thought flashed through my mind, he glanced around at me through the corner of his eye. Then he erupted. I hung on tightly, shocked out of my wits at the sudden acceleration. From canter, he went to full gallop, and time seemed to stop. I had never ridden such a fast horse before. I was scared, mortally afraid. Then, as if in response to some telepathic communication from fast horse to small boy, I relaxed, and fell into mental stride with the big black beast. Horse and rider became as one.

It was an elemental feeling of union with a force of nature, very hard to describe. It transcended euphoria but was not delirium. A shiver ran down my spine as I felt this tremendous force respond to every nudge of my knees; in fact, Baadal seemed to anticipate what I wanted of him. I found myself entering a zone of no vibration, where



introduced him to it.the jerks and jolts encountered in trot and canter did not exist, cancelled out by the evenly balanced movements of this running machine. In later years, I realized that the same thing happens inside an eight-cylinder engine, this cessation of vibration being the reason why Mongol riders at full gallop could shoot accurately from their recurved bows.

I was leaning smoothly into the curves, urging him on. We went faster and faster and faster. Never had the familiar track looked like this, as Baadal reeled it in, fast forward. The firs and pines on either side of us had dissolved into a greenish mist. There was a deep booming in my ears. It seemed to pace us, a tidal wave of sound that followed us, rolling. For the first time in my life, I experienced first-hand what the term ‘thundering hooves’ really meant. There was just the blurred track, that strange booming thunder…and the whistling wind. Nothing else.

It was extraordinary, this glimpse of another reality and, as you can see, I still haven’t got over it. Even as I type these words, goose pimples have come up on my forearms. Baadal, my magnificent friend, I remember you vividly.




Marathon Running

Chander Rana joined Sherwood two classes above me, in 1960. It took time to size up new boys, but he was quite plainly a pushover—a soft target. He was flabby and large for his age. ‘Sloppy’ was the word that teachers usually applied to him disparagingly. His hair was too long by Sherwood standards, he always smelled of eau-de-cologne, and he was a little too pleasant and easy-going to have a comfortable time in a tough residential school where one got bullied if the tough guys got wind of easy prey. Sure enough, he proved to be hopelessly inadequate at games, having little more than a nodding acquaintance with any of the three major sports. The years of easy living at home were there for all to see. He resembled nothing more strongly than the soft underbelly of a fish.

In course of time, the bullies lost interest in him as newer, fresher, targets appeared at school the following year. Chander Rana dropped down the hit list to mere ‘curiosity’ status, a fallback position, a substitute to be targeted in case of emergency. Right from the first day of his second term, everyone noticed one odd thing about him; his ‘games kit’ –as our out-of-uniform clothes were referred to – was an outlandish garment entirely outside our experience.

The normal dress for ‘games’, as specified by the school but not too-rigidly enforced, was a lace-up T-shirt (called a ‘House vest’) in one’s House colors, and navy-blue shorts (called ‘half-pants’ in the school prospectus). The colors made it easy to identify which House a boy came from, for sundry administrative, control, and supervision purposes. The odd man out was Chander Rana. He chose to wear the weird suit of no particular shape that had a short zip-up top with a collar. It comprised a full-sleeved upper garment with elasticated cuffs and waist, much like Navy diver wear before they are bolted into their diving suits. The lower garment was a baggy affair elasticated at waist and ankles. The material was apparently a heavy nylon, which, in the 1960s was a modern wonder fabric jointly developed by scientists in New York and London (and hence the name, derived from the identifying abbreviations of the two great cities of the world).

Chander Rana, out of uniform, was hardly ever seen in anything other than this bizarre dress which was, of course, a tracksuit as we know it today. In 1960, we were seeing one for the first time. No one at Sherwood had ever seen anything like it before, leave alone knowing its name. In time, we got used to seeing him in it. He even swam in it, the suit billowing out and possibly adding buoyancy to his flabby, joyously buoyant lighter-than-water body. But more often than not he was seen to wander off on his own after tea, to resurface, red-faced and sweaty, in the shower-rooms. The two hours or so between tea and dinner were the only time in the day when we were left to ourselves.

Boys usually made a beeline for the tennis courts or to the playing fields straight after tea, hastily snatching up strategically positioned tennis rackets or other equipment. It was a strictly ‘first come, first served’ system. No one had either the time or the inclination to keep track of another’s movements, leave alone Chander Rana’s. Since he never missed roll call at the assembly before dinner, his absence during the evening recess went unremarked if not wholly unnoticed. Besides, some of the more daring seniors were



introduced him to it.known to sneak off, AWOL, to town during this time, or even to rendezvous at Bisht Bhawan. Teachers or boys who kept too close a watch on people’s movements were likely to become unpopular, and there was an unwritten law against prying too keenly into another’s engagements.

1960 stands out in my memory for several reasons, one of them being the first Steve Reeves movie I ever saw. He was (arguably) the handsomest bodybuilder of all time, a multiple Mr. Universe titleholder. Possessed of classic good looks and a physique of Grecian symmetry, he was the discus thrower of the famous Athenian statue come to life. To see him in the movie ‘The Giant of Marathon’ was a truly thrilling experience. Hollywood rewrote history to ensure that Pheidipedes (Steve Reeves) not only survived the 26 mile, 385 yard run from the Plain of Marathon to Athens to convey the glad tidings of victory in a crucial battle with the Persians, but went on to drive them away, emerging victorious over the enemy as well his lady’s heart. The gym saw an unprecedented burst of activity after the screening of this movie in Milman Hall. Even I, who usually preferred tennis or a Henry Rider Haggard book, couldn’t resist going to the gym for a stint on the parallel bars now and then.

The Sherwood ‘marathon’, though hardly in the same league as the New York or Boston marathons, was the last event in the school athletics calendar, and was held after the rainy season finally ended in September. It wasn’t run over the Olympic Marathon distance, of course. That would have been asking too much of schoolboys. The entire sports and athletic structure, as far as participants were concerned, was designed to test, but not best, a boy. It was not a class or age-based system, for this could give an unfair advantage to larger, stronger boys. Instead, all eligible boys were grouped into ‘Divisions’.

The Division one was allocated was determined by a mathematical formula based on age, height, weight, and class, with each Division as an independent unit with its own record books, roll-call lists, events, etc. ‘Marathon’ distances varied from 6½ kilometers for seniors, to about a kilometer for the juniors. Ordinarily, these distances were not at all daunting for schoolboys who spent nine months of the year at 7,000 feet, fully acclimatized to operate at peak efficiency. But fiercely competitive running, over a winding, looping course of steep climbs and slopes was something entirely different. It was a brutal test of stamina and determination.

That year, the Senior Marathon Prize was a fifty-fifty chance between Prasad, a darkly handsome daredevil and Surjit Singh, a Flying Sikh. The possible outcome was the subject of much conjecture; Prasad was big and powerful but not known for his stamina, while Singh was wiry, fleet-footed and was an excellent middle-distance runner. The fact that they belonged to Houses locked in rivalry for the Top House award, which went to the House with the best all-round performance (again calculated on a points system), made the ensuing confrontation all the more eagerly awaited.

The Senior event was the last one, run late in the evening, and the crowds had swelled with all erstwhile contestants now free to join in as spectators. Excitement ran high, as this event would decide which of the two rival Houses won the Top House award. After an appreciable wait, tension increased as shouts from spectators lower down the valley reached our ears. This was a sign that the pack leaders had come into view. Quite probably, a fiercely fought battle was in progress between the panting rivals to see who would be the first to traverse the last level stretch, before climbing the steep slope to the



introduced him to it.tape. This was the most crucial stage of the marathon, for this was the place where carefully conserved energy was unleashed to gain a lead before the dash to the tape. Who had ever heard of anyone overtaking on a steep stretch?

As the clamour got closer and closer, we laid little bets among ourselves whether Singh would win or whether Prasad, his bulk notwithstanding, would best him to the trophy. And there he was, struggling round the last bend of the slope, an obviously exhausted and winded Surjit Singh, with Prasad at his elbow, equally tired. So keenly were we watching the titanic struggle between the two rivals that we failed to notice the lumbering, sloppy figure till he caught up with them, and, to our shocked disbelief, proceeded to lope past them with ridiculous ease.

With an apologetic grin on his pink face, Chander Rana moved away from them to breast the tape a full three seconds before Singh and Prasad stumbled across it in a photo-finish. He wasn’t looking particularly tired, though the shapeless garment he wore was soaked with perspiration. No one could accuse him of the being the stereotype of the ideal athlete. He never said a word, just toweled himself dry and went over to the refreshments stand. Explanations were superfluous. No one wins a marathon without months of practice.

He had to position himself in the school. This was his quiet, non-violent reply to all the taunts, jibes, and bullying. It was a reply that knocked the breath from our lungs. Right from Day One, and probably during the winter vacations as well, Chander Rana had been running a marathon every day. His outward appearance didn’t change too much, and even if he looked a bit leaner, well, who didn’t lose weight on school food? But inside, where it really mattered, he was now too strong for the best marathoners in school.

Chander Rana taught me a lesson I’ll carry with me as long as I live—there’s no mountain so tall it can’t be climbed. If you want something badly enough, and if you are willing to give it your best shot, sacrificing many things along the way, the prize will be yours, rest assured. Much talent, much effort goes waste in people’s lives because they don’t give of their best, because they don’t want the prize if it means letting go of a lot of other things. Like Arjun, the celebrated marksman of the Mahabharata, only those archers hit the bulls-eye who cannot see the whole fish hanging from the branch high above, but only its eye.




Avenging Satan

He was a handsome devil, was Johnny. Of course, no one called him ‘Johnny’ to his face; at least none of the boys did. Mr. Malcolm Johnson—‘Johnny’ to us (behind his back, of course)—was the popular but very demanding swimming instructor, an ex-Indian Navy Chief Petty Officer, all whipcord and muscle who still held the Indian Navy 800-meter freestyle swimming record. He stood about five eleven in his socks, and there wasn’t an ounce of flab on him. If you can visualise a cross between Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, and Stephen Boyd (the Roman centurion, Messala, of ‘Ben Hur’ fame), you’ve pictured Johnny.

It was a treat to watch him do his handstand dive from the top board. He’d walk up to the edge, crouch on hands and knees the way a 100 meter sprinter settles in his blocks, then the next second he’d flip up on his hands, gripping the carpeted lip of the board, body poised vertically, then slowly let go, just like (future) Olympic champion Greg Louganis. Half a second later, his arms would cleave the still surface of the pool and the rest of him, in a welter of bubbles, would slip into the depths with scarcely a ripple. It was a tough act to follow. Even Chris Sarstedt (who, come to think of it, was a dead ringer for Boris Becker) couldn’t quite match Johnny’s best, although his 2½ somersaults-with-corkscrew dive was certainly as good, if not better. Navin Kapoor, however, remained the undisputed king of the swallow dive, the only dive he knew, true, but one he had mastered.

Satan was Johnny’s jet-black Alsatian, a canine version of his master. This magnificent brute was strictly a one-man dog. Inmates of a remote boarding school are apt to pine for the pets they leave behind at home, and often ‘adopt’ their teachers’ dogs. Sherwoodians were no different. But Satan was a lone wolf who never succumbed to the overtures of his numerous admirers, shying away nimbly from the occasional pat. This is not to say that he was anti-social; he moved around among us freely, always stood-by on guard duty near the pool during swimming classes, and escorted Johnny all over the place. When his master walked him down the Mall on weekends, the sight was a traffic-stopper. In an attempt to upstage the Satan-Johnny act, Thapa, our PT instructor, got himself a pair of Bull Terriers, but it didn’t have the desired effect. Satan remained Top Dog, and well he knew it.

It was decidedly politic to be in the good books of Thapa and Johnny, two tough disciplinarians whose displeasure, once incurred, was difficult to neutralize. In order to do that, to stay ahead of the game as it were, one had to be proficient at one of three things: swimming, gymnastics, or shooting. The last item, though no longer on the Sherwood curriculum, went down the best of all, for it may be said that these two former navy men had none of the habits that landlubbers usually associate with the merry boys who sail the briny. They kept away from the local bars and were happily domesticated (their soft-hearted spouses often filling in as surrogate mothers to many of the home-sick kids who missed the mothering that day-scholars take for granted).

Unknown to all but a very select bunch of Nimrods amongst us (if the secret may now be told, as the passage of forty-five years has rendered the revelation inconsequential), and to a few local sportsmen, our two outdoor-minded teachers were avid hunters. But



introduced him to it.they hunted for the pot or the trophy, not for the fur market. They were sportsmen, first and last.

Those were days when firearms were uncommon in India. The American cult of the gun had not infiltrated the Indian psyche through the backdoor of Bollywood. Rifle toting goons of the Bihar-East Uttar Pradesh belt had yet to retro-evolve (if one had to coin a word to describe the situation) from homo sapiens. Normally, only officers of the armed forces, whose livelihood involved familiarity with firearms, upper-echelon bureaucrats and zamindar families kept weapons, usually for (as per the standard response to the relevant question on the shooting license application form in vogue even today) ‘sport and self defense’.

The dacoits of Rohilkhand and the ravines of the Chambal river valley (such as the gangs of Man Singh, and his son Subedar Singh) were obviously well armed. The rest of the weapon-owning pie chart was filled by senior game wardens (rarely encountered) and by sundry poachers. I’m afraid Johnny, Thapa, and a select band of ‘outlaws’ of Sherwood ‘forest’ fell within the last category.

Looking back at my own life, with all its dizzy variety and challenges, I don’t think taking on an assignment as a swimming or PT instructor at a residential school, no matter how exclusive, in a sleepy little hill-station like Nainital could really have been a very exciting proposition. True, there was the Founder’s Day PT display, the annual Lake swim, and excursions involving the mountaineering and rock-climbing clubs, but for a pair of vigorous men who had seen the world on a navy ticket, it could have become just a shade boring after a while. But there was a silver lining to the cloud.

The Kumaon hills, in the early sixties, as hard as it is to believe in these days of anxious conversation about conservation, abounded in game. The hunter, depending upon his tastes and hardware, could choose from wild pig, hog deer, the kakar or barking deer, the occasional antelope, leopard, the rare (even then) tiger, and game birds such as pheasant and the magnificent jungle fowl, whose long, multi-colored tail feathers put those of the barnyard variety to shame. Thapa and Johnny had both acquired weapons during their naval stints, they must have known that the Himalayan foothills teemed with game, and the lethal potential of two military-canteen quotas of rum packed the punch needed to win friends and influence people among the local forest gendarmerie. I have a sneaking suspicion that it was this very combination of factors that tilted the scales heavily towards their choice of Sherwood as the school to join after their honourable discharge from the Indian Navy.

As they took over their duties, we were unaware, till much later, that during the self-introductions and the process of getting to know our new teachers, we were being subjected to a subtle screening. Questions about hobbies, air guns, and gun-slinging Dads and uncles were innocently insinuated into the conversation. Unknown to us, we were being filed under two categories: shooters and non-shooters. In no way did this influence on-the-job assessments, but off the field, matters took a different course. As an extension of the getting-to-know-each-other process, some were invariably asked over to their cottages, where, after being sworn to silence, secret caches of arms were lovingly unwrapped for inspection. Our schoolboy fantasies had come to life: there were BSA .22 double-spring air-rifles (it is a licensable weapon today, deemed ‘lethal’), standard .22 rifles firing the ubiquitous Long Rifle center-fire cartridge, .12 bore DBBL (double barrel, breech loading) shotguns, and the piéce de résistânce, Johnny’s treasured .30



introduced him to it.Springfield rifle, which, at the time I write of was a state-of-the-art, super-accurate firearm favoured by the US army and even many professional sharpshooters.

And thus began our (often nocturnal) tramps in the woods with the two marksmen. Suffice it to say that as the days became weeks, we were gradually weaned from air guns to fire arms, always under the watchful eye of our instructors in their new role. Besides, our digression has served the purpose of providing an excuse for revealing Satan’s secret identity. No, he wasn’t Superdog; he was simply the best hunting dog I ever had the chance to shoot over.

I know, I know, Alsatians are police dogs, guard dogs, watchdogs, seeing-eye dogs, sniffer dogs, and even circus dogs. Classic bird dogs are retrievers, usually Golden Retrievers, Labradors, Spaniels and even Terriers, with Dachshunds, Beagles, and Corgi bringing up the rear, bred as they are for rooting out smaller game like rabbits. And game dogs can run from Afghan hounds to Salukis. The trouble was that Satan didn’t know all this, so he just did what his master felt a gun dog should do.

He didn’t exactly stiffen into a classic point the way a thoroughbred gundog does; he just sort of tensed and froze, looking pointedly at the spot he felt was a potential one. His nose quivered, his tail wagged slowly from side to side, and he was capable of making the gundog bloomer of looking back over his shoulder at his shooter. In the field, it made no practical difference; we weren’t at a dog show or a pointing contest. Satan found game, you bagged it, he ran over, located it and brought it back (if portable). It was that simple, and it worked.

His nose was about the best in the business. He could smell a pheasant a mile away, and lead you in the general direction. He even had an in-built sense of discipline. He never chased a mongoose or a squirrel while on gun duty. On the rare occasions that the scent turned out to be cold or even false, his dignity under pressure was impressive. You never felt like laughing at his blunder, or joking about it. He became an intrinsic part of our hunting trips, and his contribution towards the bag was undeniable. In short, he was hot stuff.

Johnny had been keen on a leopard skin for quite some time (we joked among ourselves that he probably wanted to fashion a circus strongman outfit for himself). Whatever the reason, he told us to keep a sharp lookout for sign of a leopard. When Hari Singh, the lab assistant, whispered to Reverend Bentinck, our Headmaster that he and his son had noticed the fresh pugmarks of a large male leopard around the lower tennis courts, the news was immediately conveyed to the principal. As a result, early morning tennis practice was banned, and the lower courts declared ‘out of bounds’ till further instructions. There was a chorus of groans from several quarters, but anyone on the lookout for it would have noticed the gleam in Johnny’s eyes. That leopard’s number had already come up... but, tragically, in a very different way from what we’d anticipated.

The next day, a noticeably subdued Johnny addressed the senior school at the breakfast roll call. It appeared Satan was missing. He had been let out for his late-evening visit to his favourite clump of bushes, and had failed to return. As the cottages of Thapa and Johnny were perched on the hill at the foot of which the land had been deforested and leveled to make the tennis courts, we feared the worst. The same anxiety was mirrored in Johnny’s grey eyes that were now chips of flint, sniper’s eyes in which I had never before seen the slightest emotion.



introduced him to it.Classes X and XI were divided into search parties of ten boys each, and I was one of

the dejected bands that went in search of Satan, looking up into the trees as we went along. Not because we expected an ambush, but because that was where we would find Satan. And sure enough, before lunch, one of the Patels from Nairobi (I forget which one) had spotted, high up in an oak tree, what appeared to be a black pelt.

Readers will excuse me if I skip the grisly details of the recovery of the leopard’s meal. The spotted guldar, or forest leopard (much larger and fiercer than the tendua or plains leopard), in a tragic reversal of roles in the wild, is a cat for which dogs are a delicacy. For them, any dog – no matter how large or ferocious – is easy prey (with the possible exception of the Tibetan Mastiff that has been known, in pairs, to keep bear and even tigers at bay, so perhaps they are the grand exception to this rule).

After the curtain rang down on the little burial ceremony, a hard-eyed Johnny went about preparing for reprisal. He and Thapa vanished for two days, with a small goat in tow. They were back on the third day without the goat and with dark stubble on their cheeks. There was a shapeless bundle strapped to Johnny’s back. Wordlessly, he flung the bulging canvas sack to the ground.

A rank odour wafted from it, and on further examination it was found to contain the freshly skinned pelt of a large male leopard. A tiny bullet hole was visible just behind the left ear. Johnny had a far-away look in his gimlet eyes, and an icy smile played around his pale, cruel lips. We fought over the privilege of dismantling and cleaning the .30 Springfield, but it turned out to be a light job. It had fired only one round, the one in the breech. The magazine was still full.




Miracle on Echo Mountain

Though our school was in the hills, we knew nothing of mountaineering. We just scrambled about on the rocky crags all around us, and it is a wonder that there was not a single serious mishap. Familiarity with the rugged terrain around us had bred in us a jaunty insouciance, an innocent over-confidence that compensated for lack of formal training. Even that shortcoming was sought to be remedied by Rev. Llewellyn, our principal, when, in the early sixties, he invited Hari Dang and Brig. Gyan Singh, both famous Everesters, to join our Founder’s Day celebrations. The former was invited as the Chief Guest, while the latter was to preside over the function. The upshot of it all was that our PT and swimming instructors, Thapa and Johnny (two very tough, hard-boiled retired Chief Petty Officers of the Indian Navy) attended a training course at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Manali, and started a mountaineering club which would initially dispense training in rock-climbing and, if that got off well, progress to medium-altitude (upto 20,000 feet) mountain climbing as well.

Starting with a four-week toughening-up course (which included push-ups on finger-tips, deep knee bends, and behind-the-neck pull-ups on the high bar), we went on to learn the basics of climbing a rocky face. One portion of the hillside facing the main playing field had been reinforced with granite blocks buttressing the main causeway, which sloped down from the senior school, higher up the hill. It was on this forbidding near-vertical surface that we cut our climbing teeth. Morale was low; it was one thing to do push-ups and attend lectures on handholds and toeholds. It was quite a different matter when, climbing rope around the waist, one actually came belly-to-belly with cold, unsympathetic rock. Within two weeks, the initial thirty members had dwindled to fifteen souls, skinned elbows, bruised knees and all. We kept at it. It was surprising how quickly the rock became a friend whose every niche, every little crevice was unconsciously memorized. In a month, we were scrambling up (and rappelling down) it as many times as a bored-looking (read ‘proud’) instructor could stand it. Then came the acid test of Echo Mountain.

It was all shale, deceptive and treacherous. Those of us privileged few who had poached ghooral, the sure-footed wild mountain goat that lived on its steep slopes (on what, one often wondered: there was little vegetation) with Thapa and his lovely two-piece .22 Browning single-shot rifle, knew it intimately. We feared it, but taking a ghooral with the Browning was like sneaking off to a strip-tease joint in the middle of a Scripture class; our boarding-school lives were so hard and hermit-like. The poaching was a delicious secret that remained within our little band of schoolboy snipers.

I have never fired a sweeter weapon (and that includes the elegant .22 rifles from Brno, Czechoslovakia, that the NRA was selling to members in the early seventies, in Delhi, for the ridiculously low price of Rs.100.00 each) than that Browning. Sliding about on the steep, flaky slopes, we tried, usually in vain, to sneak up on a ghooral ram and get close enough (which meant, roughly, about seventy yards) to snap off a shot. As this meant silent stalking, a near impossibility on the shale, and as the wind was rarely in



introduced him to it.our favour, it called for a feast whenever a ghooral was actually bagged. I daresay Thapa did much better alone, but hunting is more fun with companions. Johnny, the proud owner of a .30 Springfield rifle, looked down his nose at this ‘plinking’, preferring to go for leopards, barasingha, and the occasional kakar (barking deer). He never accompanied us unless he had jungle fowl on his menu, at which times he carried a shotgun.

So when it was time to tackle Echo Mountain (obviously named for the echo one received in return for a yell from a promontory in the school’s immediate vicinity aptly named ‘Land’s End’), we were not too nervous. A little climbing and rappelling was all that was planned, and exposure to the uncertain footing was sure to pay off on the moraine we would encounter en route to the Pindari Glacier, the next item on the practical training agenda. A teacher called William Gardner, who had showed remarkable talent and stamina despite his rather slight physique and less-than-average height had from time to time accompanied us. He was a bachelor with a stentorian voice and an authoritative manner, and he wielded the ruler on palms with sufficient force and accuracy to entitle him to a grudging respect during assembly and roll call.

Nevertheless, he was hard working and dedicated to his calling, and none could say that he was not popular. It was with satisfaction that we noted that, of late, he had started paying more than ordinary attention to Ruth Shepherd. This pretty, statuesque brunette, who taught English in the junior school, had been escorted around for several months now by one of the senior schoolteachers, Walter Luther. Until Gardner quietly entered his name in the lists, we had thought it was a smooth run-up to the wedding cake for Mr. Luther, what with the clear field he had. The sudden change in the romantic equation was cause for much conjecture, and budding bookies, sensing a killing, opened accounts for those sportsmen wishing to try and supplement the meagre pocket money allowed by ‘Lew’, as Rev. Llewellyn, our Principal, was affectionately called.

Apparently, the two rivals decided on different tactics to impress the object of their attentions. While Luther stuck to dramatics (where he invariably cast himself in the romantic lead in the school play, opposite Miss Shepherd, which gave him ample opportunity to soulfully discharge fusillades of romantic monologue at her), Gardener, apparently desperate to make up for lost time, decided to narrow the gap by taking the road less travelled. Thus, on the fateful Sunday of our tryst with the mountain of shale, he led one of the teams chosen for training. Luther was inconspicuous by his absence, but there was a surprise spectator in the crowd that observed the teams at a distance through binoculars (10x30 Carl Zeiss binoculars, reluctantly loaned by George Thompson, the eccentric, bird-watching music teacher). Although she tried her best to make it look as if she was merely going along for the fun of it, Ruth Shepherd was more than a little nervous (I was told later). Besides, as the only lady in the crowd, she stood out like a beacon in her gay floral print dress.

Three teams had already rappelled down a cliff face and had climbed back when, as per the draw of lots, Gardner and his team got their chance. One by one, the members cautiously rappelled down, then groped their way back up the 200-foot face (beyond this, it was a considered a little unsafe for such a bunch of greenhorns; the cliff fell away, in progressive swoops, to the floor of the valley 2000 feet below).

Gardner started off splendidly. He rappelled down with an assurance that belied the scanty practice he had put in, and then, squaring his shoulders, he started the climb back, expertly belayed by Thapa and backed up by the beefy Alan Gill and two other large



introduced him to it.boys. Gardner’s climb showed a fluidity that had us marveling; he must have sensed it, because he increased his pace, putting weight on hand and toeholds even before testing them. On shale, it was not something to do, rope or no rope. Perhaps thoughts of a certain someone in a colourful dress urged him to push his limits. And to the amazement of all, the small, lithe man was clambering up without a single backslide of loose rock.

Just as we were heaving a collective sigh of relief, he was gone. The shale gave way, his foot slipped, the rope snapped (probably cut by a razor-sharp edge of shale), and off he went, sliding down the steep slope. He had time to shout, “Don’t tell …” before he went off the first of the ledges. He fell through fifty feet of air, bounced off a rock, then he was sliding, bouncing, towards the final drop into the distant, hazy valley below.

Johnny launched himself. He ran down that slope we had so warily negotiated. He ran lightly, easily, like a gazelle, without a single misstep or hesitation. The force of gravity seemed to have gone on vacation. Years later, a Japanese climber called Yuichiro Miura skied down Mount Everest, a feat never again repeated by any man. I remember considering it a remarkable effort, but was not over-impressed. It couldn’t be otherwise: I had seen, with my own two eyes, a sight I’ll never forget.

Was it only adrenaline? Was Johnny a superman? I still ponder over it. Suffice it to say that as we held our breaths, refusing to believe that two of our teachers were to die that day, he bounded down that impossible slope to certain death. He never took a false step, and he never took his eyes off Gardner, whom he reached, by a superhuman effort just as he was about to go off the edge. The distant valley floor yawned in dismay.

The rest was routine: ropes, rescue party, stretcher, and the long haul back. Johnny never spoke; he seemed to be far away, his thoughts were directed inward, and we left him alone. As soon as the sweating party of stretcher-bearers reached the easy stretch on the path to school, Ruth Shepherd was at Gardner’s side in a flash. He was conscious now, and she held his hand while they simply uttered each others’ names over and over again, all the way back to the infirmary. To me, it sounded as if two people, ostensibly taking each other’s names, were actually chanting a mantra. It was a monosyllabic prayer if I ever heard one. The scene was so touching that few could trust themselves to speak, and our eyes were damp.

He was spared for her, and, in the nature of true miracles, it so transpired that there was not a single fracture in his body (I remembered him bouncing off those boulders and thinking that few bones in his slim body would survive the cruel impacts). Johnny never spoke of what had happened; indeed, he did not seem to remember doing anything. I had been one of a privileged few to witness divine intervention, for there was no other explanation for the phenomenon of a man who fell 1,000 feet and suffered only lacerations, cuts, and bruises.

I like to think that, in Johnny, the Great Trekmaster found the ideal instrument. Johnny never quite grasped the full import of what he had done; it was as if his memory of the incident had been erased. But he consented to be the best man at the grand wedding that took place in the school chapel, looking decidedly uncomfortable in a navy serge suit, with a rose at his lapel.

He was a man of the outdoors, and I think the whole thing was an ordeal for him. Now and then, if anyone cared to observe closely, his hand stole to his hip pocket, to return to his mouth to cover a ‘yawn’. Any telltale glint of metal within the shadows of his large fist could be ascribed to reflections off the medals that gleamed on his broad



introduced him to it.chest, and the distinct aroma of the Scottish highlands that haloed him was indulgently overlooked as being quite in keeping with the ‘spirit’ of the grand occasion.

Escape to Ranikhet

It was in 1959 that I first went to Ranikhet. My parents had not been able to take their customary thirty days’ vacation at Nainital in June that year, as Father had some pressing official engagements. However, his eldest brother, Basu Deva Mukerji, who was like a godfather to me, had surprised me by coming up to Nainital. Being a sitting judge of the Allahabad High Court, his high office had immediately entitled him to reservations at the exclusive enclave of Sleepy Hollow, with its lovely, English-style cottages in a sylvan setting. He had clout and he used it.

He was especially pleased that there was ample space to reverse and park his pride and joy, a cream-and-chocolate 6-cylinder 1955 Oldsmobile that he drove himself: he was a car buff, outdoor enthusiast, golfer, and gun nut all rolled into one. (He had shot into prominence when, in spite of death threats, he had awarded Tehsildar Singh, the son of India’s infamous dacoit, Man Singh, the death sentence). I still remember the .45 Colt automatic – a chunk of cold blue steel reeking of grease and cordite – which he once let me hold after removing the loaded magazine. It was heavy for a small boy, and I had to use both hands to keep it from slipping through my fingers to the carpet. It was the first handgun I ever held, and it was my great good fortune that it happened to be this legendary weapon. Only much later did I realize why he carried it on his person whenever he went left the house.

It was a great surprise (and a crushing disappointment) that my parents were not coming up from the plains, as promised. But what I did not know was that a wise friend, shrewdly guessing the loneliness of a boy who had not seen kith or kin for four months, had adroitly rearranged his busy schedule to spend a week in the Kumaon hills. For friend he was to me, and I am proud to call him such. The forty years difference in our ages did not separate my uncle and I; they but served to bring us closer. A boy he was at heart, and a boy he remained till his last breath, full of sunshine and laughter despite the burden of his gloomy profession, a man of so vast a scholarship, so blazing an intellect, that many an academic—unbalanced by the weight of his own overripe learning—fell silent before the sweep and profundity of his erudition, and his shockingly intimate knowledge of another’s subject.

Yet he was a simple soul, effortlessly able to empathize with the poor and the downtrodden. Softhearted, generous to a fault, playful yet disciplined, devout, self-effacing and humble, Basu Deva Mukerji was cast in the mold of the rishis of old, perhaps that of Bharadwaj himself, who was our kul-guru. I was too young then to appreciate, as I now do, the man’s greatness. He was just fun with a capital ‘F’ as far as I was concerned. I still marvel at the perspicacity, the rare humanity, which made him stand in for my parents (no doubt seriously upsetting his busy schedule) lest I feel a sense of abandonment during the most festive time of the year for Sherwoodians. One thing I knew for certain, when I received his phone call asking me to spend the Founders’ Day holidays with him: this was going to be a very special week in my life.

As the gleaming Oldsmobile with the whitewall tires and fluttering pennants, with just the two of us in it, pulled away from Panditji’s dhaba and whispered up the steep



introduced him to it.slope to Ranikhet, I hugged myself in excitement. The sky was an impossible blue, the air was cold and ozone-fresh, and the trees were mostly conifers instead of the deciduous variety that was found at lower altitudes. The sun seemed to smile happily on an enchanted landscape eternally moored in a time when all was green and unspoilt.

As the car drew up before the circuit house, the staff lined up with garlands and bouquets, to our intense embarrassment, and after the ritual was over, to our great relief, we were escorted to a spacious first-floor suite. The view was magnificent, and so was the five-course lunch that followed. Chefs at circuit houses belonged to the now-extinct Indian variety of cooks called khansamas, and the mughlai dishes they conjured up were an unbelievable treat for a boy from a residential school with its spartan kitchen and unappetizing, bulk-cooked fare.

But in the afternoon, out came the black steel trunk, which disgorged bulky files tied with red tape, the covers emblazoned with the Ashokan three-lion motif. I knew it was work-time for him, and stole away to play in the lawns. Tea meant half-a-dozen different kinds of pastries, and I never enjoyed confectionery more, sitting with him as he recounted folk tales of the Ranikhet hills. Ranikhet is situated at the foot of a range of jagged Himalayan peaks which include such well known ones as Nanda Devi and Trishul (or Trident, because it’s actually three peaks in one.) There were legends of ageless saints who meditated in the caves in the higher mountains, and I listened with rapt attention, for he was a great raconteur.

Then it was work for him again, and as the rich aroma of ‘Three Nuns’ tobacco wafted from his pipe, I took up an Enid Blyton book. I remember it was a ‘Secret Seven’ adventure. And thus the days passed happily. Ranikhet has a beautiful golf course, one of the highest in the world, and he was raring to have a go at it. It was sheer heaven to be outside the suffocating classroom, trailing his caddy, all the time reveling in the bracing mountain air on an alpine meadow of clover and turf.

But all good things must end, and finally it was time to say goodbye to Ranikhet. At teatime, that last evening of our all-too-brief vacation, he told me he had a gift for me, and that he would collect me from my room at ten o’clock that night. This came as a big surprise, since he always insisted that little boys should be in bed by half-past nine. I was almost asleep when, on the dot at ten, he hauled me out of bed, got me into my dressing gown, and cautioning me to complete silence, stole back into his room.

I noticed with surprise that all the lights were switched off and the room was pitch dark. With the help of the faint starlight that came through the glazed windows, tightly shut against the frigid air, we groped our way to the French window, where he motioned me to take up my position. He obviously wanted me to see something. My skin crawled: what was it going to be? A ghost? (I was very scared of ghosts, never having seen one!) He seemed to be pointing in the direction of the huge oak tree that spread its canopy of branches about twenty-five feet from the window.

As time dragged on, I got sleepier and sleepier. It was an effort just to keep my eyes open. I tried reading the time on the radium dial of my wristwatch, but its luminescence had dimmed. I remember guessing that it must have been approaching midnight. Then he was shaking me awake gently, and pointing at one of the branches outside the window. I thought I detected a movement, a shapeless patch of darkness even darker than the dark night. It was definitely something…but what?



introduced him to it.Then his hand crept to the window, and I realized he held the six-cell torch he always

carried in the car. A moment later, a shaft of light spotlighted the mysterious nocturnal visitor. A memory of green eyes, a snarl of white fangs, a polished coat of gleaming ebony, then the jet-black panther was gone. One moment he was snarling his resentment at the intrusion, the next instant the branch was vacant, swaying as if in an unseen breeze. There was nothing else to be seen.

We stood there in the dark a full minute, savouring the experience, how rare, I never really knew till I was a grown man. Black panthers are a rarity, like albinos, but whereas the latter never survive because their pale color militates against their survival in a world where camouflage is king, the black has an edge in the darkness where panthers do most of their hunting. Yet, given that, they are very rare. It is a wonder that they do not proliferate. Perhaps their rarity is a sign that, in Nature’s eyes, they are an unprogrammed aberration, and can only be tolerated in minute doses.

I was left with a gift I treasure, the sighting of a rare carnivore probably on the edge of extinction. A wonderful, versatile man went out of his way to give it to me, leaving me with a visual legacy I can only share with you through the poor medium of words.

I have a hoard of memories of my eldest uncle, but this is one I treasure above all. Wherever that great soul now roams, I am sure it is a place where there are good roads, fast cars, 18-hole golf courses, aromatic tobacco, fine food and dear friends. There will be merriment and endeavour, jocularity and discipline, justice tempered with mercy, and an ambience of wonder at the marvels of Creation. I am sure that The Happy Hunting Grounds appreciate having him around, as much as he enjoys being there.




Vanished Wilderness

Who knows where it came from or where it went. It flowed from time immemorial, a thing alive, aloof from the rest of Creation. It hacked its way past jagged mountain ramparts in their perennial mantles of white, slicing through the lower valleys. A blue-white fury, it wore down everything it came up against, rushed past, or ran over, as it hurled itself like a writhing snake at the plains far below.

It watched, unmoved, as eons came and went, as creatures on its banks lived, died, or drifted away, a torrent self-sufficient, answerable only unto itself. From time to time, the man-things came to its banks, living off it. It cared not, for it had enough for all, a bounty it shared readily with those who dared to try and snatch sustenance from it. Occasionally, one of them fell in and was swept away to his death.

It gave life and took it away, cold, remote, detached, uncaring in its wild beauty. It mirrored the rich tapestry of existence around it, alone and proud, content to be but itself—invulnerable, emotionless … eternal.

As the car topped the rise and halted at the crest of the ridge, the boy sucked in his breath with a hiss. After the dust and mud of the hour-long drive, the sight was breathtaking: an unspoilt valley, heavily wooded, and probably teeming with game. The river was a thing of wonder, winding and snaking, battering itself against rocks the size of pavilions, a splash of royal blue such as he had never glimpsed before. It was a thing of creamy rapids and boisterous riffles punctuated by deep, deceptively-still pools where the water seemed to catch its breath before plunging into yet another stretch of white water. Never before in his young life had he seen so marvelous a thing. He had come across deep, contemplative lakes, cheeky little mountain torrents, submissive streams, sleepy, lotus-filled ponds. But this…this was something altogether different.

He sprinted down to the golden beach, revelling in the sound of the virgin sands crunching under his ‘hunter’ boots. The pool was a thing of beauty and mystery, deep and alluring, cloaking its denizens with a reflection of the azure skies above. Eighty yards across the expanse of smooth, blue-green, glassy water, myriad rock pigeons fluttered about clumsily on the sheer rocky cliffs where a few hardy plants clung in audacious defiance. With trembling hands he assembled the old cane rod and fitting a spool reel, ran the line through the rod-guides and wrapped a ball of dough around the hook. Then he peeled off about twenty rod-lengths of line, and whirling the baited hook with its two-ounce lead sinker round and round over his head like a bolas, allowed it to slip from his hand and sail away gracefully, to cleave the water’s oily-smooth surface thirty yards away.

The line tightens as the bait hits the bottom, rolling with the current, and it has not come to a stop when the rod jerks in his hands like a thing alive and the reel screams in panic as line streaks off it. The tip of the rod is whipping with the sheer violence of the passage of the line through the tungsten-carbide line guides; the rod bends in a graceful arc as the boy rears back in the age-old technique of the mandatory strike against the



introduced him to it.fish’s bite. The tortured shriek of the racheted reel is a symphony to his ears, and he glances down apprehensively as he sees the last of the hundred yards of nylon monofilament line swish away and the mooga braided-silk backing line from Kanto Brothers, Bowbazar Street, Calcutta come into view.

He is still a boy, and the rod is heavy and very hard on his arms now. The whirling handles of the reel are an indistinct blur. He is careful to keep his hand away from them, for one touch of his fingers will be enough to snap the line. It curves away to the right, away from the cliff face, then scythes back as the big fish runs this way and that to dislodge the thing caught in its mouth. The tall man in the sola hat now comes to his rescue, knowing the boy is in trouble, leaning back against the arcing rod, and now the fish shows the first signs of tiring, allowing about twenty yards of line to be recovered before it makes another mad dash for freedom. The rushes get shorter and shorter, and at last the fish shows itself, a long shadow in the depths, struggling valiantly, trying to throw the hook. Drawn reluctantly to the surface, its dorsal fin cuts the water like a knife as it cruises in the shallows, turning over on its side now and then as its strength fails it. Fifteen minutes later, it is gasping on the bank, a sleek, thirty-pound mahaseer, all golden green and silver, and the boy thinks he has never seen such a lovely thing in his life. He loves that fish, for to him it epitomizes the wonder of it all.

The next Sunday, they do not cross the river, but follow its left bank in the jeep, climbing into a ridge where the machine has to go in first gear, engine straining against the acclivity. As it drops into a deep rut, he braces himself against the jerk, but to his utter surprise the jeep sails through it unperturbed, its unique suspension, so hard on the spine on asphalt roads, at last in its element, its springs designed for just such terrain. The boy looks longingly at the controls, but it will some years before he will be old enough to drive. He watches closely, yearning, learning, filing everything away in his mind for the future…the racing change into a lower gear, the heel-and-toe technique as the jeep plunges into gullies then up a spur, the powerful engine roaring in triumph.

Dense jungle on either side, dark, silent, expectant…a leopard, startled into breaking cover, bounds across the track. There are birds everywhere; the air is redolent with the scent of exotic flowers. A profusion of butterflies, like a colorful veil carelessly thrown over the vegetation, adds a touch of the surreal. It is a fantasyland, far away in time, a land none has ever seen before. The track descends sharply, and the jeep crawls down it cautiously till the path starts leveling off. Now there is blue among the trees, and he knows they are with the river again. The forest thins away as the jeep comes up against its most formidable opponent, the small, football-sized boulders that were once the riverbed. A halt for changeover to 4-wheel drive, then the jeep creeps along over the rocks, rolling over them one tire at a time, ‘walking’ over them, plunging luxuriously on its deliciously deep, velvety springs, drawing ever closer to the current murmuring to itself across the ages.

There is an old abandoned fishing lodge, here at Buxar, where men have come years ago and left for distant shores leaving behind a few chairs and books no one wants. Mouldy, covered with the dust of years, but books! The boy, wondering, picks one up…it is one he has often wanted to read but never could find, Col. A.J. St. John Macdonald’s timeless classic ‘Circumventing the Mahaseer’. They are all there, Isaac Walton’s ‘The Compleat Angler’, the first known treatise on fishing, which is classified as literature, Skene Dhu’s ‘The Mighty Mahaseer’, Capt. Conway’s ‘Sunlit Waters’, Thomas’



introduced him to it.delightful and authoritative ‘The Rod in India’. What manner of men were they, those ghosts of the past, to have left such a fortune behind? Is it their legacy to a future generation? For any soul hardy and daring enough to come here, to the river, to this utterly wild and desolate spot, unafraid of the dangers and the things that live here, must surely be one of them, one who will realize the worth of these treasures, reading them, absorbing their lore, and leaving them here for those who follow.

Men who love the wilderness, who live in the wilderness, are men of a different breed, a dissimilar species, loving wild things, clouds, birds, the dew on the open grass, a deer in the forest, a ripple in the river, a duck rising smoothly into the blue, even loving the most vicious animal of all…Man…loving everything, every man, every woman, so deeply, so completely, so compassionately, loving the all in a way that other, civilized men and women can never understand.

What man in his right mind will venture into this rugged country, teeming with game and predators, unarmed and conspicuous, in search of the elusive thing called…called what? What do you call that thing which fills your heart till it’s fit to burst with the sheer grandeur of it, that feeling that you are one with all creation, all things come together in an insanely logical unity; for a moment the obscurest of scriptures makes absolute sense, there is a feel of the Absolute, the selflessness of it all is paramount, poetry comes alive, there is a pattern, never before glimpsed, an underlying purpose that is lost in the selfishness of urban life, the preoccupation with the self… unmindful of the Self.

As the days become weeks and then years, he explores the terrain, here treading in the footsteps of forgotten legend Anil Deva Mukerji, hunter, tracker, woodsman and conservationist non pareil, there lying on the rocks watching the crocodiles frolicking in the shallows, from the very spot, over the pool that bears his name, where the great F.J. Champion photographed them in the ’thirties. A squadron of three very large Mahaseer is chasing yearlings, streamlined streaks of silver in the deep water, but so clear is it that it seems they fly through air. One of them comes lunging right through the surface, preceded by a spray of young in a tearing hurry to get away from the marauder. Thwarted, he hangs in the air, slowly shaking his head from side to side, peering up at the sky in surprise, then falls back into the pool with a thunderous splash.

The young man watches, fascinated, camera and fishing rod forgotten. There is not a soul within a hundred square miles. Men are at work in stuffy little offices elsewhere (where is elsewhere? Is it is preferable to this? Then why do they stay there, in that ‘elsewhere’ till the day they die, kowtowing to false gods, eating cold, stale food from little tin boxes, their pale skins untouched by rain or wind or sun. What manner of men would give up all this for that?). He knows that one day he may have to join them, those tin soldiers, but for now he stocks up on memories—those that are worth keeping—for memories are made of this.

He goes to Garjia, where an obstinate sliver of quartzite has resisted erosion and has split the river instead. It is a lone knife-edge of rock towering over the twin streams that flow around it, topped by scanty vegetation, a rock climber’s delight. He visits placid Tumaria, where the river widens out and branches into numerous shallow channels that a man can easily wade through. He remembers a deep, oily run with steep gravelly banks, where his partner hooked a big fish that sulked for an hour at the bottom before it was ‘pumped’ up to the surface.



introduced him to it.Or a stretch of boulder-filled rapids that a sow crosses, a wild piglet firmly grasping

her tail in its mouth…and its siblings similarly attached in tandem one to the other, strung together like so many sausages. She powers her way through the fast current like a motorboat, her little family tossing in her wake, to emerge triumphant on the other side with her team still attached to her and intact. In all the days he spends on the river, he never meets another soul. And all around him is the jungle, companionably silent, never complaining, never demanding anything but understanding and respect.

He remembers the nameless place that he reached by wading through a fast, chest-high current. The beach is golden, and the rapids are perfect for casting his line and lure, but after a hundred yards, he halts, his senses at full alert. The breeze has brought with it the scent of tiger, once smelt, never forgotten, a scent men know instinctively from caveman times. Slowly, without making any quick movements, he looks around; in a clump of bushes fifty yards away, the motionless horns of a cow can be seen at ground level. A tiger’s kill, concealed in the vegetation! And the big cat must also be there, watching unseen.

Slowly, he turns and walks back the way he has come, wondering if he is mistaken but not willing to take unnecessary chances. The tall man in the sola hat is approaching, and the youth lets him walk down the beach, determined to stop him if he gets to the point where he himself had caught the tiger smell. But he needn’t have worried; the tall man stops at the very same spot, wrinkling his nose uncertainly, then motions that they should retrace their steps. The king of the jungle does not take kindly to being interrupted at the dinner table.

I hope you enjoyed this episode because the real thing’s long gone. That unique unspoilt wilderness has vanished forever, a victim to man’s insatiable hunger for for energy, for hydro-electric power. The waters of an earth dam at Kalagarh have inundated thousands of acres of jungle, including my favorite fishing spots, now buried under a deep reservoir that has backed all the way up the valley.

Tourist resorts have sprung up along its banks, and since wild creatures don’t particularly care for the music of Elton John, Gurdas Mann, Mika, The Beatles, or Britney Spears, whether on tape or CD, they have long since departed. Motorboats plough across placid, soulless deeps that give no hint of the vanished glory of Champion’s Pool or the raging rapids of Buxar, and the waters have long since carried away with it the books I’d admired, just as the current of life has swept away their authors.

They had made an earthen dam over it, the fools, not knowing that, in the entire span of its existence, nothing had ever managed to hold it in check for long. Beneath the earth’s surface, deep within its crust, it sensed the first of a series of convulsions that would get progressively stronger and more violent as the over-burdened tectonic plates shifted uneasily against each other.

Soon, the pressures would reach levels where the plates would slide one over the other, tearing rock the size of cities off each other, releasing energy equivalent to hundreds of atom bombs. The dam would explode like a paper bag, and trillions of acre-feet of water, billions of tons of it, would smash their way far into the plains, carrying towns and villages before it like so many corks bobbing on the surface of a millrace.



introduced him to it.Then things would return to normal, as they always did, and it would be its old self

again, running with the lay of the land as it had done from time immemorial.

Aqua currit et debet currere ut currere solebatLast of the Curlews

Guns have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, though it is impolitic to say so in these times of mindless violence and international terrorism. Reading all those cowboy comics, seeing all those cowboy, war and safari movies in school, those unforgettable outings with Thapa and Johnny, the legend of Anil Deva Mukerji, and, of course, my trigger-happy cousin… I suppose they all had a lot to do with it. Father was keen on guns, too, in a very quiet sort of way. He had been an emergency commission officer, and had done well in the weapons course at the Infantry School, Mhow (today known as the ‘College of Combat’, in the erstwhile Central Provinces, now called Madhya Pradesh). From popguns I graduated to airguns, Dianas Model 1 to 16, moving up to a Model 35, more or less in step with my cousin, about two years older than me and just as enthusiastic about weaponry.

My eldest uncle had once let me hold his big Colt .45 automatic, and I was hooked on handguns for keeps, once even briefly owning an Arminius .32 revolver. As our lives periodically came together and drifted apart again, my cousin and I kept in touch, keeping our mutual interest alive. We met for a significantly long period when it was time for our upanayan ceremony, which was jointly celebrated at our ancestral home, Madhu Mandir, Allahabad. We had to spend three days in near-total darkness in a small room on the first floor, shaven-headed brahmacharis in ochre robes, and to while away the long hours we caught up with each other’s lives.

When we were boys at Allahabad, I remember, one of my father’s brothers-in-law, Rajen Chatterji used to drive up frequently from Jabalpur in his Packard. Then he and my uncles would go off duck shooting. There was a .12 bore in the house (apart from a Model 99 .22 Savage, with its Winchester-like under-lever action), relics of my late uncle ‘Doctor Bob’ (Bhava Deva) a keen hunter who had died a bachelor. Piles of ducks would mean a summons for our on-call khansama Raj Kumar, all 5’1” of him. What a wizard he was. I can never forget his puddings. In due course, dekchis full of aromatic minced duck with herbs would materialize, and table manners would perish in the meleé.

After the upanayan ceremony, my uncle Brahma Deva drove the three of us down to Seohara. Like all males of the clan, he was fond of driving, and he tackled the 130-mile (208 kilometers) trip single-handed. On the way, I remember, he shot a couple of partridge in one of the fields we drove past in Bijnor district. When he had gone to England for his ICS training, he had ordered a fine .12 bore shotgun, tailored to his own measurements, and it fitted his son to a ‘T’, for though the lad was about two inches taller than his father, their upper bodies were of identical dimensions. The older man was uncommonly sturdy, wide of shoulder, long of arm and blessed with an iron constitution.

I remember Brahma Deva Mukerji’s irritation at the salutes he got from sundry peasantry trudging in the dust alongside the road. “Hangover of the Raj!” he kept muttering to himself shamefacedly, as if he had failed somewhere. He felt affronted by obsequiousness in his countrymen. An ICS officer of British times, he was a fearless patriot who gave the British his service but his loyalty to the nation. His books on



introduced him to it.Community Development were considered classics of their time. A member of the ‘Steel Frame’, he belonged to an age when, if there was a confrontation, a difference over a policy matter, between the Secretary of a government Department and the Minister, the Minister it was that backed down, as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had always maintained he should. The situation today…you read the newspapers, you should know!

On the back seat of the Fiat, as it sped towards Seohara, was an old air-rifle that belonged to Khokan, Sushital Banerji’s brother-in-law. It was of Czechoslovakian make and of indeterminate vintage. The two us had always wanted this weapon as small boys, having often witnessed its amazing power and accuracy, and since Sushital Banerji refused to let his son Amitav (known even in the Foreign Service by his pet name, Bhootoo) have the air-rifle, it had finally come down to the two of us. Alas! It was in poor condition now, for Khokan had used it so well that the spring had become as weak as a Diana Model 1’s. My cousin and I had gone to Jama Masjid in Delhi and located a length of spring about 2 inches long and of exactly the same diameter as that of the original spring.

Then we had taken the weapon apart and, after considerable effort, had succeeded in inserting this spring as an extension to the existing one. It was astonishing, the way that old gun revived; in fact, it became so powerful that its flatter trajectory compelled us to hammer the rear sight down in a bid to sight it in properly. It was a full-size air-rifle, but it fired the smaller .177 slugs, not .the larger, heavier .22 slugs. This made it even more powerful, giving it phenomenal killing range, but the lighter pellet had a tendency to drift in a crosswind in outdoor shooting, making it mandatory to suck a forefinger and test the breeze to judge the windage needed to compensate for drift, before squeezing the trigger.

This air-rifle gave us the range necessary to pot snipes. Shooting snipe on the wing is something few shotgunners ever master, for these small birds, found on the banks of ponds and cattle wallows are incredibly fast fliers, with a darting, dodging flight any fighter pilot would give his eye-teeth to emulate in a dog-fight. We had to be – and were – content to pot them on the ground, incidentally a big no-no in sporting circles. But we were using an ancient air-rifle of uncertain accuracy, so I guess that evened things out. The snipe, bobbing and dipping as they walked along with an occasional glance around, had far keener vision than we had. Though it was not quite as good as that of the English woodcock with its 360º field of vision, the snipe were so sharp-eyed that we had to crawl on our bellies to get close enough for a shot.

Even in these early years, it was clear who was boss in the shooting department and who took charge when it came to fishing, for he had the Dad with the gun and I was the one, who, though passably accomplished with gun, was always subordinate in the hunt. When it came to fishing, however, the roles were reversed; my father was the angler, and it was I who took charge. Besides, he was the older one, and seniority counts for something. But the field is no respecter of pecking orders or reputations, and gives all a fighting chance. Mine came the day we spotted the curlew.

We had met an old poacher in the fields, and he showed us, his fellow poachers, his bag of tricks. And pretty ingenious was the contraption he carried in his innocuous-looking sling bag. It was simply a square wooden frame, easily folded and tucked away in the bag, with holes drilled through the wood at brief intervals, like in the frame of a tennis racquet. Draw-nooses of catgut were tied in each hole. After he set the frame up at an appropriate location and expanded the drawnooses (called ‘phandhas’ in Hindi), he



introduced him to it.reached deeper into his bag and brought out a male partridge in a small wooden cage. This he placed in the center of the frame, and motioned us to follow him to the cover of a clump of bushes from where we could keep an eye on the trap, for that was what this rig was all about.

Partridge have a call that has lots in common with a big burp that has formed deep in your gut after you’ve gulped an aerated soft drink—neither of them can be held down for long. No matter how delicate the situation, they are going to erupt, often without warning. The male in the cage, in unfamiliar territory, decides to stake his claim to it and calls loudly, challengingly. When the nearest territory-conscious, aggressive male hears this, he comes over quickly to investigate and drive off the intruder. He charges the interloper, only to get entangled in the drawnooses; the harder he struggles, the worse it gets. The rest I leave to your imagination. I am seething internally at this nasty bag of tricks, and the poacher, sensing this, tells us of a water hole nearby where, he says, there are lots of ‘burra chaha’ (‘big snipe’, meaning curlew).

There’s only one, and he’s very skittish, moving fast on the ground, big but very jittery. On our bellies on the ground, barely concealed by a small mound of earth, I lay claim to the shot: it’s my turn. Reluctantly, my cousin hands over the air-rifle. The biggest potting chance of our sniping years…and the greenhorn gets to take the shot. Too bad, that’s life. Over thirty yards, and he seems to sense that someone somewhere is drawing a bead on him. He moves ahead nervously, picking up speed. My cousin is whispering fiercely in my ear “Drill him! Drill him!” That’s easier said than done, there’s a slight breeze and the target is gathering speed, a moving shot, I have to ‘lead’—shoot slightly ahead of the speeding target. Now even I’m getting cold feet—35 yards at least. I lead as best I can and squeeze the trigger.

He’s down! My cousin leaps to his feet jubilantly and runs for it. I roll over, look up at the blue sky and think…that curlew’s number came up today…why? Why didn’t I miss? It would have made no difference. Someone up there has given all of us numbers; when one’s number comes up…that’s it. From that day, my enthusiasm for killing begins to wane. I start thinking in terms of shooting with a camera, like A.D. Mukerji and his eight millimeter, spring-wound Beaulieu movie camera, the jerky frames showing a tiger charging the camera, then a brief gap, then the tiger, rolling over and over, stone dead, shot through the heart. Mine will be 35 mm frames, no killing, just the subject frozen on celluloid forever. A decade in the future, a mustachioed rally driver from the Gulf will make my dream come true.

More than once, in the preceding years, I read a story called ‘Last of the Curlews’ by Fred Bodsworth; it was a Reader’s Digest Condensed Books selection. More than once does the story stay my finger on the trigger. Like the time Uncle Brahma Deva, then Secretary (Ministry of Fertilizers), Government of India, visits Nangal Fertilizers. After taking in a VIP conducted-tour of Bhakra Nangal Dam, walking through miles of instrumentation and turbines and other gizmos inside the endless, labyrinthine corridors at the heart of this temple of modern India, as Jawaharlal Nehru called it (the massive concrete wall of the dam is pushed back eight feet by the force of the water at the high-water mark, we are told), my cousin and I turn down, with unmannerly haste, an offer from his Dad to accompany him to inspect Nangal Fertilizers; us for some fresh air and shooting!



introduced him to it.The Rajah of Nangal has a big shoot lined up for us two. The invitation has come that

morning—instigated by whom, I wonder. When we arrive at the haveli, a big band—drums, tubas, saxophones, trombones, everything—opens up. What a racket! We are profusely garlanded. Some shoot! Anything in fur or feathers must be in the next district by now. One smart Rajah we’ve got here. I have a heated pow-wow with my cousin. Poor fellow, the killing madness is on him, he doesn’t see through the ruse. “We’re here, and we’re going shooting!” he says pugnaciously. I give in. “OK, fine, it’s a nice day for a funeral, might as well take a little walk round the place.” The route covers about twenty kilometers. We are each handed a .12 bore, and six No.6 shells, four No.4’s, two LG and SG cartridges, and one cylindrical lethal ball cartridge each. ‘Take anything from quail to elephant’, the ammunition pouch seems to be telling us.

Two trackers and two hunting dogs have been allocated to us. As we enter the jungles, my worst fears are confirmed; there is sign everywhere. Even a greenhorn can see that till not so long ago the place was teeming with life: jungle fowl, partridge, jackal, chital, chinkara—it’s all there in the dust, it’s like an open book, but he refuses to see it. Now we are in scrub jungle, with small hillocks and ridges, and ravines that would get the nod from the choosiest drygulcher—that’s ‘ambusher’ to you, mate. I slow down, slip an SG in the left (choke) barrel, and an LG in the right. This is leopard country; we could be jumped by one anytime, and I don’t want birdshot in my gun when that happens.

Ten kilometers have been covered and my cousin hasn’t fired a single shot. I slow down, and tell him to take both the dogs and trackers and go ahead. I’ll just stay here by this big rock at the edge of the clearing and enjoy the scenery. He barely hears me and rushes off, ever the impatient one. An hour passes, and away to the east I hear a commotion, the sound of a shot. I slip off the safety catch. Something is rushing down the hillock towards me, I can’t see what it is but it’s cutting a swath through the low bushes and tall grasses, something coming downhill very fast, something not small.

Leopard! The gun comes up to my shoulder, index and middle fingers curled around front and rear triggers of this DBBL, the way I’ve been taught by Johnny, drawing a bead at the spot where the creature will emerge into the clearing I’m standing in. Something bursts into view, running across my line of fire, right to left, I have it square in my sights, it’s running flat out, a gray-brown streak, belly to the ground. I follow it in the .12 bore’s rudimentary gunsights, I can easily drop it.

It’s so sweet; it’s a doe, going like a bat out of hell. I wish I had that camera… I slip on the safety catch, put the gun down.

My cousin’s now coming downhill, he’s running behind the baying hounds and trackers, and all of them panting like steam engines.

“Did you see it? Where’d it go? I took a shot at a deer, missed…against the light…it was running your way…?” he looks at me accusingly. They’ll never know, they don’t bother to read sign, the story’s written there, on the ground.

“Yeah, saw that scrawny doe. What do you want to shoot that for? It’s a buck you should be looking at, Deerslayer. In any case, it went off at right angles…over that other hillock” I point in the wrong direction.

He groans “Not uphill again! I quit, I’m bushed, been running with this gun for miles…why didn’t you shoot it?” he asks the question that he’s been dying to ask. It would have meant my being one-up on him. But I’m not the type that has to be one-up on people. I guess I lack the ‘killer instinct’.



introduced him to it.“I did,” I admit “here!” I tap my head, then break open the gun and pocket the shells

as we turn back for home. I need to hang up my gun…for good. When the camera comes…

And what about that story I told you about, the one that got under my skin and changed the way I looked at hunting, the book called Last of the Curlews by Fred Bodsworth? Sorry, can’t get hold of the book, but may I give you a synopsis? Here it comes, keep some tissues handy….

Last of the Curlews

There is a theory among naturalists that says that when an animal or bird population has decreased to an abnormally low level, the species loses the will to live and slides into extinction. But this would have been news to the pair of Eskimo Curlews, which were migrating south to escape the fatal winter cold of the Artic Circle where they had summered. As they flew on, totally engrossed in each other, they should be pardoned for failing to notice anything amiss.

But it was a fact that, among all the other sky-filling clouds of birds of the shore and the estuary that moved south with them to sunnier climes, among all the Redshank, Dunlin, Sanderling, Black-tailed Godwit, Lapwing, Golden Plover, Whimbrel, Greenshank, Spotted Redshank, Grey Plover, Turnstone, Ringed Plover, Little Stint, Garganey, Ruff, Pectoral Sandpiper, Richard's Pipit, and a dozen others, they were the only Eskimo curlews. True, there were many Black-necked and Stone Curlew on the mudflats, but none with the distinctive height, long, curved bill, and whistling ‘threeeeeet’ call of the Eskimo.

They were birds that paired off for life, harbingers of Life and Happiness, riding the scented air-currents to a happier tomorrow. They moved into the vast, sun-warmed continent, rich with food and promise. Five thousand feet above the earth, the big male started circling out of the sky towards the freshly plowed field below. Calling to him anxiously, his little mate also began losing height, ‘threeeeting’ her love. Among the furrows, they forgot about the abundant food for a while: they had been in the air for hours, and they moved to each other in their immense love and contentment.

Lost in themselves, they failed to notice the man get down from the tractor with the ‘stick’ in his hand, failed to see him creep up within range, only shuddered to the thunder that erupted out of a blue sky, and metal rain that tore up the earth around them once, twice. There were no swifter birds than them: they darted into the air, and rapidly gained height, their shocked senses and hammering hearts forcing the pace. The male was the more powerful of the two, and he was out-flying his little mate. Every now and then, he would look back impatiently and whistle his urgency to her. He wanted to get far away from this bad place.

But she was falling back, and now he noticed a stain spreading slowly across her breast. She threeted back to him helplessly, then she was going down, down…and he peeled off and dived after her as she tumbled out of control and landed heavily on the grass. A paroxysm of pain shook her, and she opened her eyes and looked all her love to him; all the tremendous adoration and deep commitment of a lifetime went into that gaze. Slowly, reluctantly, filling her senses with him, she closed her eyes. The male called to her till the evening, nudging her, but she ignored him, would not respond to his



introduced him to it.entreaties. It was only when the ants came that instinct told him it was over. Then, like all wild things, he moved off. Who knows whether he felt grief? Aren’t happiness and sorrow emotions only humans understand?

He flew on amidst the sky-filling clouds of birds, but they were traveling in opposite directions. They went towards the future. He was the last of the Eskimo Curlews, and primal memory told him that countless quintillions of his kind had lived on the Earth before him, and now they called to him. He flew back to them, back to the past where they waited for him; where she, too, waited. A dirge rang out in the blood of the last of the curlews as he winged his way swiftly across the eternal airways to a land that time forgot.

Is it any wonder that I hung up my gun?




A Freshman in Stephania

“You will be mercilessly ragged,” Dr. B.N. Ganguly, Delhi University’s Vice Chancellor is warning me. “So what?” I reply. My retort is unintentionally rude, a result of bravado at the coming ordeal with all its promised horrors. I bid my parents good-bye. As the black ambassador with Bailey at the wheel rolls away, I am reminded of another day, way back in March, 1957,when I bade them goodbye in similar fashion as I prepared to settle down to life at Sherwood. I was only eight then: I am over sixteen now, nearly a man, but the old lump returns, unbidden, to my throat. To divert my mind, I unpack and settle down in my little cubbyhole at St. Stephen’s College.

There is thunderous knocking at the door. “All freshers to line up in the lawn outside.” The ferocious bellow comes from a bull-necked, tousle-haired goon with wide gaps between his tombstone teeth. A mean bruiser, if ever I saw one. He reminds me of Ernest Borgnine. His belly looks soft, though; ‘a hard, low punch, straight-armed, to the solar plexus, full bodyweight behind the blow, then dance away, jabbing with the left, in case he has the wind left to follow. Alternatively, you can try a left uppercut if he folds—remember to bend your knees as the glove comes up, then snap them straight just before impact, to add body-weight; remain focused on his chin’…Thapa’s voice rings in my ears.

But no, this is not the boxing ring at Sherwood, it cannot be done; this is a ritual, going back to pre-historic times when the young, would-be warriors are ‘blooded’. I join the queue of sacrificial lambs. (‘Borgnine’ is later to be revealed as Vik Atal, one of the jolliest blokes around. It’s just as well as I didn’t try anything funny, though; he is as tough as they come. He’d probably have taken me out in seconds. Besides, it’s just not done).

An hour of reciting, and acting out his favorite nursery rhymes, follows. I guffaw at the antics I see all around me. The bruiser is not amused. He complains loudly, in a martyred tone, that this is one hell of a fresh Fresher. No matter how rough the ragging gets, I just can’t help enjoying it; it shows, to his consternation. I seem to be a first for him. He’s determined to sort me out. When the others are through, he selects ten of us, myself among them, and marches us off to his room (in Rudra South block, I think it was). Calisthenics follow: routine stuff for a Sherwoodian, but some of the guys don’t see much point in endless deep-knee bends while clutching one’s ears in a crossover hold.

We are told to lie down on the floor, one atop the other. The pile of bodies is unstable, as heaving chests labour for air. Fresher pressure, our tormentor gleefully calls it. I am second from the bottom. Between the hard floor and me is a slight frame, bespectacled and of scholarly mien. I feel sorry for him. The world knows him later as Dr. Arvind Narain Das (Gold Medallist in B.A. (History Hons.), a genuine intellectual and prominent Leftist thinker/ writer and the author of many scholarly works including The Republic of Bihar (Penguin). 1

1 Arvind passed away suddenly in August 2000, leaving his many friends shell-shocked.



introduced him to it.Two cricketing types hi-jack us from Borgnine. From frying pan to fire! One is a

thickset, gray-eyed fellow with wiry forearms who reminds me of Charles Bronson. The other is a slim, Hugh Grant-type with a comma over his right eye, like Bond in Dr. No. He would have been handsome had he not pasted that bored, cynical expression on his face (it’s a façade, I see later—he is the legendary Michael Dalvi. His partner is the equally famous Pradeep ‘Bablu’ Bhide, both opening batsman of a class St. Stephen’s rarely sees). The lawns are flooded ankle-deep; the deadly duo make us ‘swim’ two lengths of a pool—naturally, the smart fellow who decided to do the Dolphin finished miles ahead of the rest—he just stretched out, then dragged his knees his up to his chest, then stretched out again—and so on. Funniest sight is Giddy (James Gideon), doing the crawl: he thrashes about for half-an-hour at exactly the same spot.

We are bedraggled, grass-stained, thoroughly soaked. The two heartless hooligans march us off to where they’ve lost their hearts—Miranda House. Here, at the boundary wall, we present impromptu versions of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene—on the road. Judging by the cheers and the titters from the jam-packed windows, the performance is highly appreciated by a knowledgeable audience. Traffic crawls. Shakespeare seems to be highly popular with the Kingsway Camp dadas, turned out in full strength. Now we have two audiences trying to outdo each other in cheers, jeers, catcalls, and wolf-whistles. Things are getting slightly out of control; we are marched off in the pairs, holding our partners up close and personal. The applause is deafening. We are mere cannon fodder; we have but served our purpose. Body language (at our cost) has done what words have failed to do. (The deadly duo connects unerringly, later on).

We are now marched off to the College café and treated to a gargantuan meal of scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and mince chops. Introductions follow, the signal that our battered bunch has earned the right to live in Stephania, as far as the going concern of Mike & Bablu is concerned. Henceforth, we are invited to resort to nicknames when addressing them, equals in a land where we are more equal than the vast, unwashed multitudes of the outside world. It is a never-never land that, once left, we will never, never again encounter, though we will search for it all our lives.

A word about the café. The St. Stephen’s café, at first glance, looks somewhat run-down and frayed at the edges (remember, I speak of forty years ago). It is situated indoors. Two spring-loaded wire-mesh doors (which later prove to be portals to a paradise of rare gastronomic delights) afford ingress to a large room (about 25’x 25’), with a split-counter on the left leading to the alchemist’s alcove (the kitchen). There are about a dozen tables with four or five cane chairs set at each, and there is no music or carpeting. It is well ventilated, however, so smoke is not a problem. There are ceiling fans whirring away overhead, and the walls and ceiling are whitewashed. That’s all. It is a man’s kind of place.

But first-time visitors learn that appearances can be very deceptive. For in this hallowed place are available the best scrambled-eggs-on-buttered-toast, mince chops, and shikanji (sweet-lime) in the world. The wizards responsible for these wonders are known to the faithful as Dolly and Shelley (although it is rumoured that their secret identities are Daulat Singh and Shailendra Singh). They never reveal their secrets, handed down from sorcerer to sorcerer. For decades, foreign powers have sent agents/moles to steal the magic recipes. They return empty-handed, including one Zia ul Haq, who, in spite of graduating from Stephania, fails to lay his hands on the secret formula. His frustration



introduced him to it.ultimately turns to belligerence. It’s a case of tortured taste buds. We, the cognoscenti, understand. Becoming President of Pakistan does not offer a way out, as Zia learnt to his dismay.

It is common currency that Ian Fleming thought up Blades for Bond and his boss, ‘M’ (and P.G. Wodehouse invented the Drone’s Club for the Last of the Woosters) after sampling the atmosphere and fare of the café we had just left.

We know for a certainty that the outside world, large though it is, will never be able to satisfy our palates, at least as far as the items we have just gorged on are concerned. They will remain a mirage to tantalize and madden our spouses, whose culinary skills will be put to the ultimate test and found wanting. Breakfast, it is said, is the time when the Stephanian, married and addicted to scrambled-eggs-on-toast, is on his shortest fuse. Ambrosia, alas, is only available on Olympus… not in Eden.

Under the shade of the large, leafy Neem tree outside the café sits Sukhia (he has been there for as long as anyone can remember). He is a Barfi and samosa specialist, and that’s all he stocks. The quantity is limited, but the quality is not. After sampling Sukhia’s wares, from which the aroma of homemade ghee wafts like a cloud, attracting swarms of bees (a sure sign of purity, Agmark or no), one becomes rather suspicious of other mithai-wallahs. One complainant, unhappy about the shrinking size of the Barfis, is silenced by the acerbic observation that he himself is but an etiolated, effete version of his father… a grand gentleman who was never heard complaining. Just thinking about Sukhia’s offerings, not merely the edible variety, makes me salivate, even after all these years.

Ominous news: the annual ‘Miss Fresher’ contest is scheduled for the coming Saturday. But before that, one has to be blessed by the ‘Blacksmith’. This mysterious deity turns out to be the huge water-cooler opposite the notice board. The exact reasons for this nomenclature are lost in antiquity. Suffice it to say that every Fresher has to make obeisance before, and swear fealty to, this icon. Then he has to recite the Blacksmith’s Song; recite, because the score has been misplaced ages ago, and no Stephanian, not even venerable Khushwant Singh or the brothers Bharat Ram Charat Ram, can recollect the tune. I once even asked Dr. Karni Singh of Bikaner, ace marksman and Olympian, but he couldn’t recollect any tune, either.

The lyrics compensate, in large measure, for the lost music. They are full of earthy wisdom, imparting deep insights into certain aspects of general anatomy. They provide the wet-behind-the-ears Fresher a vivid glimpse into a murky world of human predilections even as they inspire research into an esoteric area of mechanical engineering. Unfortunately, certain laws of the land, common to civilized societies, come in the way of my reproducing them here. In any case, I do not wish to be drummed out of the Old Stephanians’ Society for committing a breach of faith. Like the Rosicrucians, I am only allowed to externalize the mantra on select occasions (viz., Stephanian get-togethers), linking arms with my fellows and hollering it at the top of my baritone. The magic chant, it is said, has the power to rejuvenate, to roll back the years as it were. It works.

The Blacksmith is the logo on the masthead of the college fortnightly, Kooler Talk, aka KT. KT claims to cover ‘all the talk that’s kool to print’. It is a trendsetter, a breeding ground of many future writers and journalists. The captions and headlines are often decades ahead of their time: even the snappy bold-print of today’s newspapers is



introduced him to it.hard-pressed to match the best of KT. It is unique, presented in cryptic idiom for a select audience, not unlike The New Yorker or The Field (both of which are available in the reading room, rubbing shoulders with Punch, TIME, The New Statesman, National Geographic and The Economist). Illustrious names have figured on the editorial page; I can remember Arvind Das’s name on it vividly. As a wit that wagged full-time, only one Doraiswamy (passed out, unfortunately, before I joined) – better known as ‘Doray’ – is said to equal Arvind’s stature as Editor of KT.

A trio pounces on me in the reading room and hauls me away. One is Yashwant Sahai (son of Ram Sahai, IAS, an old friend of Dad’s from his army days). His fellow inquisitors are a sardarji who is an ex- Sherwoodian a year my senior, who therefore grins and takes a back seat. The other is one who finally reveals himself as Deepak Dhawan, only the D’s and P’s come out as ‘Fr’s’ on account of some acoustical aberration; my interpretation of his name, therefore, is highly confusing.

The last of the threesome is a short, barrel-chested, rubicund roundhead with sparse brown hair and an infectious grin. He finds out I am a Sherwoodian like his sardarji friend. I am grilled mercilessly about C.S Bedi’s (for that is the sardarji’s name) school record. Fortunately, it is quite outstanding, so I have little difficulty in remembering. Besides, he was my House Captain. In an inspired moment, I even recollect the full version—Chiranjiv Singh—a rare occurrence, since only surnames are used in Sherwood. My ex-chief grins proudly at my tormenters, and pulls them off me. I have got myself a staunch ally from the past. He lets it be known that I am an old friend. The ragging begins to abate

The barrel-chested one is Lawrence Rydquist (“Just call me Larry”), a rock-hard boxer-type from St. Xavier’s, Hazaribagh. He is an irrepressible jokester, who loves it when the joke’s on him (which it often is: no one can resist kidding Larry. If I were a girl, I’d probably describe him as ‘cute’). One thing I notice is that ragging is a fantastic icebreaker; we come to know each other intimately, even to the point of often remembering, for the rest of our lives, which school the other fellow went to. Snobbish? I don’t think so; merely someone else’s personal details, long remembered, and very flattering to a friend…a bond-enhancer if ever there was one. Stephania, I discover, is a tiny country in the clouds where everyone knows everyone else well nigh inside out.

A burly figure with a powerful, metallic voice marches me off to his room in Allnutt South. The shelves groan under the weight of myriad classics. He obviously has a profound knowledge of Shakespeare; I am grilled on Laertes and Ophelia, Lear and Mercutio. I have to recite the Seven Ages of Man. The burly figure nods without comment at my fumbling attempts to match the range and daunting sweep of the questions flung at me. He seems to be a throwback to some senator of Roman times, a patrician type born to sway the masses. I, a mere stripling of a freshman, am awed. He starts looking bored, asks me to name any ‘difficult’ word I can think of. If he doesn’t know the meaning, I am off the hook. I come up with “Hector”. His eyes twinkle (relief? amused pride?). He insists it’s a proper noun, a character from Ovid. “From Homer, Sir”, I correct him. “Ah, yes, Homer. The Iliad, of course.” That twinkle again: he is toying with me. “But what does it mean, fresher? It has no meaning.”

“It has, Sir,” I protest, “it means ‘to bully’ ”. He asks me to look it up for him from the dictionary on the shelf. I locate the word and present the evidence. He reads it with satisfaction. “Bully for you, Fresher. Good going.” He is genuinely appreciative. (But



introduced him to it.why the pride in my performance? Simply because, I see in a flash of prescience, he is a born leader and motivator). “By the way, call me Kapil, as in ‘Kapil Sibal’”, he says, as he shakes my hand, the signal that the ragging session is over.

I have just met Stephania’s legendary orator, Shakespearean actor non pareil, and a great gentleman. No production of the justly-famous Shakespeare Society of St. Stephen’s College is ever complete without him; he is Hamlet, he Julius Caesar, he is King Lear, he is Romeo, he is Henry II, he is a hundred characters from other plays like ‘Rhinoceros’; he is history come to life in living literature. In a word, he is unforgettable. In time, he becomes the leading lawyer of India’s Supreme Court of Justice, the first Indian non-parliamentarian to address both Houses of Parliament, to finally himself sit in the Upper House and go on to a cabinet post. He achieves fame and fortune through sheer merit and honest toil, quietly accepting the respon-sibal-ities he was pre-destined to carry across his massive shoulders. A fine Indian it was my privilege to have met in my formative years.

How can I possibly take the names of all the great men with whom I had the privilege of breaking bread with in Stephania? Today, if I recount their names, it will seem as if I, an unknown Stephanian, am attempting to shine in their reflected glory by mentioning illustrious names in my little book. But I have mentioned so many who, great men all, are not in the public eye, that I do these stalwarts an injustice by omitting to mention them merely because they are already newsworthy. How about Suman Dubey, tall, serious, bearded, very fit as per the requirement of his hobby, mountaineering. A brilliant student, who plays a key role in the Ministry of Finance and Planning Commission? Or Siddharth Kak, film-maker and theatre personality extraordinary?

Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, fresh-faced and energetic, keeps a very low profile despite being the Indian squash racquets champion (1969) and undoubtedly one of the all-time greats of the game, who has become a legend thorough his social service organization in Tilonia, a remote little village in Rajasthan that he has transformed by his pioneering efforts. And how about Roshan Seth, famous thespian? Mighty Manjit Singh, now a top gun in the Audits & Accounts Department? Rajeev Sethi, India’s Czar of Culture, always in the dailies whenever avant-garde is news? Maybe Rana Talwar, sharpshooter turned Banking mogul? Top bureaucrat Ajit Jadhav? Kabir Bedi? Shakti Maira? Charan Das Arha? Gobinder ‘Goofy’ Singh? Kiran Rai? Nirupam Sen? Naren Belliappa? Badal Roy? Nirmal Andrews? Shiv Shankar Menon? Cricketers like Ashok Gandotra, and cousins Jeevan and Sheel Mehra? Stage personalities Suraj and Chander Rai? If I let my mind freewheel any more I’ll run out of paper. The corridors of power, the media, the creative arts are where you find the best of Stephania; no matter where you go, you are bound to bump into a Stephanian!

Ragging is banned in Delhi’s colleges today. In recent years, the influx of undesirable elements into the university has given it a bad name. Excesses, in the name of, and under the guise of, ragging, have had serious repercussions of a law-and-order nature. Ragging, too, apparently, therefore, carried within itself the seeds of its own demise: it just needed the right socio-economic conditions to ignite the fuse (see “A Farewell to Arms.”). With its passing, a whole new generation will step out into life after an insipid, uninspiring experience of passively joining an institution, studying for examinations, and passing out, without ever having known the euphoria of close friendship and intimacy, the stuff that esprit de corps is fashioned from.



introduced him to it.It was not elitism, it was not a bourgeois tradition, it was simply a great way for

young people, who would otherwise have remained closed doors to each other, to function effectively as a group and make the most of college life. It helped forge lasting bonds that served them well throughout life, the sap of the ‘Old Boy’ network that sustained and supported the ever-growing edifice. It was a golden opportunity for developing inter-personal skills that enabled one to better endure, and perhaps cope with, the inanities and pettiness that life in the great, big world outside would be found to be brimming with.

If the other name of Stephania was Utopia, ragging served the useful purpose of helping one keep firmly in touch with terra firma. No ‘five-pointer’ (five points are the highest possible marks in the inversely-structured marks-sheet system of the Indian School Certificate Examination) ever got shorter shrift than the one Stephania gave him. It chastened the proud and uplifted the meek and the modest. It taught one how to stiffen the spine in the face of apparently hostile elements, to laugh at oneself and at life, and perhaps inspired solutions that enabled one to win over an opponent.

It smoothed-out the rough edges, buffed by a hoary tradition driven by peer-pressure. Many an intractable rough-diamond departed as an exquisite brilliant whose fine-cut facets reflected the fire that burned brightly within. It also served to raise lasting mental memorials to friends never seen, met, or heard from again. Young people today, I fancy, are much the poorer for its passing.




VIJ

Mussoorie! That’s where we were going, our motorcycle ‘gang of four’. I was in second year at college, and spent weekends at my uncle’s government accommodation (a lovely, spacious bungalow on Purana Qila Road, New Delhi). Our friend Suresh revealed that he had been selected for the Class I Central Services, and wanted to check out the Academy at Mussoorie. Since we knew one or two persons already under training there, arranging accommodation at Mussoorie would not be a problem. Then Suresh remembered he had a class-fellow called Vij who was undergoing training as a cadet in the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. Dehra Dun thus became the first stage of the expedition, the base camp for the final assault on Mussoorie.

Driving up to Dehra Dun and Mussoorie has lost much of its glitter today. In recent years, I had often driven up in my little Maruti…and hadn’t enjoyed the journey half as much as I should have. There seemed to be an inordinately large number of heavy vehicles traveling in either direction with sundry Paul Reveres at the wheel, possessed of urgent information of national import. Caution had not only been thrown to the winds, it had apparently been struck from the lexicon. The car carried all the family I had, and I didn’t relish the way people risked your life on the road. I had always felt that if one must risk a life, it should be one’s own and not those of others. A whole new generation of ill-trained drivers, with the road sense and manners of a mentally retarded buffalo, had seemingly appeared overnight and changed the equation for keeps.

But in 1967, all that was a generation away. The Rajdoot motorcycle had recently been launched in India, in collaboration with Cekop of Poland. It was an inexpensive, ruggedly basic machine from the House of Escorts, and it was an overnight success. The Japanese invasion was almost two decades away. For now, the Rajdoot was the best value for money, and the university crowd did not shy away from it. Marketing manoeuvres precipitated by the entry of up-market foreign makes had not forced it into its current ‘Doodhwala’ image, aiming it pointedly at the rural market (where it went on to re-invent itself in the most brilliant product re-positioning exercise I’ve ever seen in India).

I had no motorcycle in college, there being a tacit understanding with Dad that I’d get one from him the day I got a job (he gave it to me five months before that event, a new, dark-green, 250 cc ‘Jawa’—the precursor of today’s eclipsed ‘YEZDI’), which was



introduced him to it.perfectly acceptable to me. My cousin was two years older and more insistent, and his father could absorb the impact of supporting a college-going son, motorbike and all. Even in those relatively cheap times, it nevertheless involved what was, in value-of-money terms, a not inconsiderable financial outlay. But he was a large-hearted gentleman, and took it without blinking. I think he loved his son much more than he ever cared to admit. Actions spoke louder than words for Brahma Deva Mukerji, ICS. It was on an almost-new and shiny Rajdoot, therefore, that we set off for Dehra Dun.

Forty-odd years later, I cannot recall the exact details of the journey. Suffice it to say that it was simply glorious. I had always been mad about motorcycles, ever since, as a three-year old, I had started riding on the petrol tank of Dad’s classic bike, the now-legendary 250 cc 4-stroke, single cylinder BSA. I still recall with joy the deep, staccato exhaust beat that emerged from the gleaming, pipette-shaped, heavy-chromed silencer, the individual, well-spaced notes blending into a thunderous roar as Dad opened up the throttle on Thornhill Road.

Alas! The single-cylinder, 2-stroke Rajdoot engine had an uneven, tinny beat, hardly conveying the impression of robust construction, but it was capable of carrying two people in comfort (the floating-arm suspension was outstanding) at a steady 60 kph all day. Stopping occasionally at roadside dhabas for tea and snacks, we entered Dehra Dun as dusk was falling. The other Rajdoot belonged to Suresh, who had another friend as his pillion rider.

From the fact that we were immediately directed to Vij’s quarters by the helpful guards, readers will understand what relaxed, laid-back days those were. In spite of two wars with our neighbors, paranoid security-consciousness had yet to take root. Here were four scruffy-looking civilians on dusty motorcycles, clad in jeans and jackets, and all the guards could think of was that we looked like we could do with a hot bath and a square meal. Our dishevelled appearance was our entry permit. No awkward questions were asked of us, no papers had to be produced for scrutiny by some officious popinjay, no cooling of heels in some spartan visitor’s room. My opinion of the Indian Army, already high, shot through the ceiling.

We were told to look for ‘Karen Coy’. Who was this coy Karen, I wondered, already feeling every bit the civvy that I was. She sounded nice. Bad luck! ‘She’ turned out to be ‘K’ Company’, better known as ‘Karen Coy’, ‘Coy’ being army abbreviation for ‘Company’, a group of soldiers! We stood outside barracks occupied by maybe half-a dozen cadets. One stood out from the rest by virtue of his extraordinary physique. To call him ‘husky’ would be a gross understatement.

He was not tall, barely 5 feet 8 inches in his shoes, but he looked shorter. Incredibly wide shoulders bulged with solid muscle; his deltoids were like cannonballs. The deepest chest I’ve ever seen in a man, with massive pectorals worthy of the greatest gladiator, and arms like pythons. A trim waist with a clear-cut six-pack rippling in washboard array topped slim swivel hips. The shorts (all he wore) exposed muscular legs. Yet it was not a gym-made body. It was an obviously natural physique, a gift from Mars himself. Its bulk and definition didn’t register, so perfect was the symmetry of it. There was nothing of the oily, clumsy pahalwan about him. And hence it did not put one off; the overall effect was pleasing to the eye, to put it mildly.

The best part of it was that he was quite unselfconscious, totally unaware of his Olympian build that separated him from his fellows, cadets all. I soon learned that he



introduced him to it.enjoyed testing and punishing his powerful body much like a boy with his new bicycle; he pushed it to its limits just for laughs, to see how far it could go. He would take a telephone directory and rip it in half, or he’d blow and blow into a football bladder until it burst. Some lungpower! I’ve seen him tighten a regulation army web-belt, Brasso-ed, Blanco-ed and everything, around his waist, then expand his stomach till the poor belt could take no more and exploded in defeat. Then he would collapse weakly onto his camp cot, and laugh and laugh till the tears ran down his cheeks. I was feeling sorry for the Pakistanis already.

If this account of Vij’s mad feats of strength conveys the impression that, physique notwithstanding, he was mentally challenged, I have inadvertently done him an injustice. IMA cadets are selected after successfully competing in an All-India examination against hundreds of thousands of aspirants. He set aside time for studies, and was near the top of his class (the IMA has a rigorous academic syllabus, and cadets who are all-rounders get the plum postings). He read quite a lot, and even wrote articles for some army publication or the other. He was a keen photographer, I learnt, when he showed me his treasured Contax.

He was to become, one day, a Command diver and boxer. He always seemed to be suffering from an overdose of glucose. His energy had earned him the nickname of ‘Speedy’, a sobriquet that embarrassed him no end (nicknames in the army are a status symbol, a practice inherited from the British, and often stick for life). He was hugely popular; it was obvious from the way his mates accommodated us by immediately vacating the barracks for our group. Later, I was to learn with deep regret that, in the ’71 operations, many of them made the ultimate sacrifice.

The next morning, we were rudely woken by reveille at 5 am, an hour when no self-respecting civvy would rise. In the army, not leaping out of your bunk at reveille meant you were dead meat. The sergeant major bawled us out before he realized that these scrawny specimens weren’t part of his bunch. What the hell, we thought, once up, might as well go through the whole routine. It was a bad decision; cold water shower, followed by rope climbing (Thapa’s and Johnny’s rigorous discipline and training stood me in good stead), then rounded off by a two-mile run (the school marathon fondly remembered). This entitled one to another shower, and breakfast in the mess—as much porridge, as many eggs, toasts, and lashings of butter as one could put away. Burp !! Ooops !!

Then on to Mussoorie by taxi, Vij in grey mufti, a grey Fedora jammed firmly on his close-cropped, bullet-shaped skull. The IAS academy, ‘Whispering Windows’, a round of the scenic spots…then back to Dehra Dun. I never saw Vij take a drop of alcohol, ever. He had no use for stimulants. The Glucon-D factory inside him injected raw energy into his bloodstream 24 hours a day. His face was always ruddy, flushed with the heady experience of being alive. He consumed liters of orange juice every day. It was his only weakness. He shunned cigarettes but did not sermonize if you happened to like a puff or two. He simply enjoyed being Gentleman Cadet Vij, Arjun, of Karen Coy. Unaffected, fun loving, vigorous, a keen sportsman, serious about a career in the army (his first and only love; he never married), fond of (and knowledgeable about) firearms, Vij was that rare commodity—a man’s man.



introduced him to it.It was time to go. We mounted our bikes and took off on the road back to Delhi. I

glanced back at the IMA gate just before the bend in the road. He was still there, lustily waving the Fedora. Then he was lost to view, and the years swallowed him up.

Vij, Arjun; Major; IC - 17575

Late autumn, 1971. I am enjoying an evening stroll in Connaught Place. Traffic, scanty and sedate, flows in both directions around the central park. Walking around the Inner Circle is such a delight; no hawkers, no pavement encroachments, very few beggars. Fountains play over coloured lights, the shop windows are full of goodies, and soft music comes from somewhere. Couples stroll hand in hand, lost in each other.

I am a bachelor, about twenty-two, footloose and fancy free. My wallet bulges with currency notes. Dr. Charat Ram is an exacting taskmaster, a brilliant man who drives his team (and himself) relentlessly…but we are handsomely compensated. I am drawing a princely salary of a thousand rupees a month. Petrol costs less than a rupee a litre, and my Jawa motorcycle is giving me 40 kilometers per liter, no matter how hard I flog it. Mileage is passé; performance is everything.

‘Gold Armour’ shirts cost sixty rupees each (I make it a point to have half-a-dozen in stock), a top-of-the-line Zodiac tie costs thirty rupees, a high-quality Zodiac belt, forty. Senson’s on Janpath charges sixty hard earned rupees for tailoring a pair of form-fitting men’s trousers. It’s worth every paisa; they do a fantastic job. The best calf-leather boots come for three hundred rupees; a lavish dinner for two at Volga or York’s can set one back all of sixty rupees.

The mutton lunch at Bankura, Janpath, goes for 5/50, the chicken one for 7/50. It is a balanced meal and the servings are generous. In spite of a hearty appetite, I can barely manage to eat everything on my plate (I hate wasting food). A packet of India Kings, advertised as ITC’s premium brand, sells for Rs.7/50. Wills Navy Cut cigarettes, always a reliable index of inflation – a rival to petrol as such – is eighty paise a pack of ten (up from 67 paise in my college days). Gillette razor blades come for two rupees a packet of five. A rear shock absorber for the bike means an outlay of over seventy INR.

My small bachelor apartment in Hauz Khas (fully furnished) exacts a dreadful toll of one hundred and fifty rupees every month (roll up your eyes in horror!), paid on the first day of the following month. My office is in Himalaya House, the only multi-storied building on Kasturba Gandhi Marg (formerly called Curzon Road). Surya Kiran follows



introduced him to it.shortly, along with the American Library and The Hindustan Times building. They spring up before my eyes. Gone are the sleepy, sprawling bungalows, with the lovely gardens and lawns we so admired from our windows on the 12th floor. Demand and supply, “make ’em an offer they can’t refuse.” Delhi’s skyline begins to change. Parking space, there for you to take, is going to become a problem soon. Fortunately, Himalaya House has basement parking for people who work there.

A leisurely fifteen minutes’ drive through moderate traffic gets me to work. I enjoy driving in Delhi. The flow of traffic is smooth, disciplined. The cops are a benevolent bunch of sleepyheads who often look the other way, more embarrassed than you are at a slight infringement of a traffic rule. It’s easy to crash red lights, but few bother. There is no hurry, no panic, and no road rage, no drivers at the wheels of imported limousines jabbering away into their mobile phones as they weave from one lane to another. The old rich of Delhi are still around, a highly educated, cultured, sober and dignified lot who love the city. The rise of a hitherto unknown class of carpetbaggers has yet to make its presence felt in any significant way.

There aren’t too many cars: mostly cyclists and a thin stream of two-wheelers. Come Friday night, I never miss an English movie. Chanakya is my favorite cinema hall, not far from ‘home’, although the newly renovated Plaza and Odeon are giving it competition. But I have to admit that Chanakya’s décor is superb, and so is the selection of movies. A ticket in the Dress Circle costs about six rupees, and there aren’t that many takers.

Rivoli is small, low profile, but often steals a march over competitors on account of its penchant for offbeat, different films, which usually click well with its small target audience. Dress Circle tickets can cost about five rupees per head. The seats aren’t too comfortable, but they are adequate, as are the sound and décor.

I don’t see too many Hindi movies (‘phillums’, as I call them), but occasionally even a Plaza can succumb to the pressure of the Great God of the Box Office – audience demand – and screen a ‘Sholay’ or a ‘Guide’. One rarely ventures as far as Golcha, though the smaller halls in Delhi are no mystery to me.

Coming back to CP, (as christened by laconic Stephanians; the name has stuck, I notice, and is definitely in currency today, even with auto-rickshaw drivers, the acid-test of public acceptance of place names: ‘Rajiv Gandhi Chowk’ has failed to take off among the hoi polloi), I am taking the air, literally. It is sweet-scented, untainted with any carcinogenic automobile exhaust emissions (there are few cars or bikes; those things cost a lot of money) and thoroughly oxygenated, thanks to the garden in the well-maintained Central Park, where a cozy little outdoor restaurant, Rambles, occupies pride of place.

It’s very peaceful, hardly crowded (as I said, there is not all that much cash in circulation), and serves good food at very reasonable rates. The little coloured lights in the knee-high hedgerows trimming the winding pathway around it give it a fairyland atmosphere. It happens to be one of my regular haunts. That’s where I’ll be having dinner tonight. Apart from a rudimentary breakfast (of Glucose biscuits, and two raw eggs with cornflakes and sugar poured into a bottle of DMS milk and shaken vigorously), I eat out all the time. I’m a happy bachelor, remember?

I do not drink tea or coffee, rarely try soft drinks or ice cream, and never touch alcohol. I call cigarettes ‘one-way tickets on the road to nowhere.’ I’m not really health conscious, though I workout regularly at home. I think it’s because I think I’m internally stable. Youth, health, and raw physical power: these ephemeral things are in season in my



introduced him to it.body, surge through it. I have no use for stimulants; I’m always high…on life. Perhaps it’s because I am content, happy in my total and complete freedom.

The job in the Shriram Group Corporate Headquarters is very satisfying. I am the second officer to the Personnel and HRD manager. There is ample scope to be creative. Argument and fresh/loud-thinking is not only encouraged but mandatory; it is regarded as a sign of constant self (as well as corporate) re-appraisal. The Boss wants everyone to point out flaws in the system, but we’d better have suggestions to remedy them as well.

Regular and handsome ad hoc increments come my way; they are a sign of acceptance and the Boss’s satisfaction with work output. Some of my colleagues need a raise too; I decline an increment (idealistic fool!) and recommend my friend Mohan for it instead, as well as a promotion. He is senior to me, and I have learnt much from him. I owe him. We become close friends. He’s been calling me over to join him in Canada for the last twenty-five years, but I go my merry way, alone and carefree. Friends from college days call me ‘The Outsider’, from the Albert Camus book of the same name. Unconsciously, I have adopted the Arjun Vij way of life. Only (major) difference is, I am a civilian.

So, as I was saying, I was taking the air in CP, strolling along without a care in the world. Late shoppers on their way home to dinner and bed hurried past me. One particular figure registered on my idling brain about two seconds after he had passed. I recalled an impression of a man somewhat shorter than me but with an impressive width of shoulder. In fact, so impressive were the shoulders that I remember they were distorting an outsized camel colored jacket with upturned collar and slash pockets. No one was this wide—except…

“Vij!” I yelled at the retreating back. The figure spun around, catlike in a half-crouch, and peered back at me vigilantly. We closed. He walked lightly, springily, balanced on the balls of his feet, like an athlete about to take a running start. I hoped he wouldn’t start running at me, he’d run me over! One hand was half extended in cautious greeting, just as likely to shake my hand as to flip me over his shoulder. The slitted eyes scanned my face with no sign of recognition; I was taller and brawnier since we had last met, and I was dressed in a steel-gray pin-stripe office suit and tie. His clipped moustache, brushed vigorously upwards commando-style, bristled with aggression.

But when I introduced myself, he broke into roars of laughter. He pummelled my back (it hurt for days afterwards) and kept asking me how I’d spotted him in a crowd. He was really keen to know this. He thought I had fantastic eyesight…for a civilian (it was his ultimate compliment). As I said in an earlier episode, he was completely unaware of his outstanding physical appearance. He kept telling me how fit I looked (sure, about as fit as a Somalian refugee, next to him). A man built like Arjun is easy to remember. No one can make an XXL size American GI jacket look like it shrank at the cleaners in quite the way he can. Spotting him in a crowd is no big deal.

We went over to Rambles. It was like dining with action hero Jean Claude Van Damme, who bore a strong facial resemblance to Vij. In fact, come to think of it, Van Damme is a poor man’s Arjun Vij—a pale, under-nourished version of the original. Over dinner, he filled me in on all that happened in the intervening years. He’d passed out with high grades and got the infantry outfit of his choice, the 8th battalion of the legendary Rajputana Rifles (the Raj Rif, as it’s better known, is the scourge of unfriendly



introduced him to it.neighbouring countries). He showed me his dog tags: they read “Vij, Arjun; Major; IC- 17575”. I was sharing a table with the youngest Major in the entire Indian Army!

17575 was his highly-prized Indian Commission number. Name, rank and serial number: these were the only three pieces of information he was supposed to reveal to the enemy, in case of capture (fat chance of that happening!).

We talked and talked; we exchanged information about kith and kin (both his [elder] brothers were in the army, doing extremely well). He was keen to know where my cousin was (he was very much in Delhi). We exchanged hunting and fishing yarns and gun-lore, two old friends chewing the cud. The office was far away. I envied him his border postings, in a land of ice and snow, where fish and game abounded, enabling him to use the imported fishing tackle sold in the military canteen. He’d shot bear and mountain goat with the standard army issue 7.62 mm SLR (‘Self-Loading Rifle’) or the sten machine-carbine set to single shot (he always referred to weaponry by their full, official names, uttered with pride and reverence). Man, the army was a great vacation as far as he was concerned. (Yes, in peacetime, thought I, a mere civilian).

Those of you who have seen a 70’s movie called ‘Patton’ may remember what Reichfeldmarschal von Runstedt says of the brilliant, controversial American General (played by George C. Scott), while trying to understand his psyche and anticipate his future battle tactics: “Patton is a medieval warrior, lost in modern times: a magnificent anachronism”. I could not have described Arjun Vij better.

He loved the sound of the war bugle, a warrior born to combat. He ate, lived, and slept war, strategy, weaponry, and tactics. Mars had not given him that magnificent body for nothing. Yet Diana also inspired him, wily huntress that she is. There was a streak of originality in him. Anyone on the lookout for a brainwashed assembly-line soldier would be disappointed in Arjun. I knew he had a great future in the Indian Army, for daring unconventionality is the bedrock from which springs innovative genius.

I went over to the Raj Rif regimental center on Saturday afternoon. The sentry noted my bike’s registration number and waved me through; he had been briefed to do just that. Vij was ready with a jug of orange juice and burgers. He informed me I was leaving the Jawa behind, and taking his brand-new Bajaj scooter instead (I got my bike back three weeks later; the tires were bald).

He’d acquired a Holland & Holland .375 magnum rifle, a potent big game weapon. We planned to try it out on the shooting range. Personally, I thought it was a waste of money; the game suitable for this fearsome piece of ordnance was either protected by law, or very hard to reach. I was delighted with the .45 Colt, however. Handguns were always my first love. Proud of his new pistol (and, no doubt, on account of a sudden rush of glucose in his veins), he raised the Colt and fired it skywards through the open window. He grinned, knowing I’d disapprove of such un-civilian-like conduct.

Contritely, he handed it to over to me. My eager fingers closed around the cold butt and turning, I fired two rounds. The detonations boomed and echoed deafeningly off the walls. No one came to enquire about the burst of gunfire. It would have been like asking why the band was playing in a dance hall. This was the Army, after all. Guns had a way of getting fired. One day, we all went duck hunting again, and I finally saw the Holland & Holland in action…but that is another story.




A Farewell to Arms

1971. War! scream the newspaper headlines. India and Pakistan were at it again, hammer and tongs. It is popular fiction that the British divided India and left the two halves to fight each other at the slightest pretext. Nothing could be further from the truth. Partition was promoted by ambitious and holier-than-thou politicians keen to expand their area of operations by playing the communal card (it is still the ultimate trump card in the hands of paranoid Pakistani politicians).

Our erstwhile rulers were glad to withdraw from a colony that had become a headache. Weakened as Britain was after World War II, she dropped the reins with relief into the eager hands of the sub-continent’s new leaders. It was probably a case of frying pan to fire for both halves of a once-undivided, potentially very powerful country…a common enough experience for many newly independent countries of the erstwhile British Empire.

The Indian capital is now like a city under siege. All of a sudden, everyone is very public-spirited. There’s nothing like a common threat to unite enemies, citizens and neighbours—synonyms in a city as impersonal as Delhi. People cross the street to discuss the situation with neighbours they haven’t glanced at, leave alone spoken to, since they moved in. Neighbourhood vigilante groups allocate night patrolling among themselves, armed with hockey sticks and iron rods. There is paranoia about paratroopers dropping from the skies: anyone showing a light brighter than a candle in his house is pilloried till profuse apologies are offered. Blackouts are the order of the night. Windows are either boarded up or glazing is painted black. Black paint is only available in the black market. How appropriate. Upper halves of all vehicle headlights are painted black. Shortage of paint leads to a flourishing cottage industry selling black half-moon paper stickers for vehicle lights. Black days and nights indeed. Good for blackguards.

In any case, use of headlights is banned. Only pilot lights can be used; since street lighting is switched off, this means travel in near total darkness. The common man is severely affected. Life is thrown out of gear. I live in North Delhi, and after work, decide to drop in on my cousin who shares lodgings with another colleague in a comfortable two-bedroom chummery in CP belonging to National & Grindlay’s Bank. The phone rings; it is our cousin, Anand. He is leaving for Lucknow by some night train, and intends



introduced him to it.to have dinner with us; the New Delhi railway station is less than two kilometers away. With the blackout in force, he doesn’t want to take any chances. No point in missing a train just because some fool of a taxi driver is unwilling to drive in the dark. He knows there is an official car which our cousin shares with his colleague.

Anand arrives at 6.45 sharp. He likes to travel with a fully topped-up tank. Disaster! Three refills later, my cousin’s colleague telephones to say that he is taking his fiancee out to dinner and won’t be able to relinquish the car. Esprit de corps enables the cousin to take the blow like a man. Anand is unconcerned: it is his host’s privilege to arrange transportation to the station. My cousin decides that my bike will have to stand-in for the car. Anand doesn’t mind: he knows we are seasoned bikers. One for the road: then, lugging his overnighter, he gropes his way down the stairs to the parking lot. I am stone cold sober, not having partaken of the liquid refreshments, but for my cousin it is now a matter of honour to drop cousin Anand…which he proceeds to do with admirable success.

They are back an hour or so later. Their clothes are much the worse for wear; one or two large rips are visible in their trousers. Scratches and bruises need first aid. The liquid dinner now does double duty, adding a whole new dimension to the term ‘double scotch.’ It turns out to be excellent medication: the abrasions heal quickly.

My motorbike does not. Ramming into a traffic island does not fall within the scope of ‘routine maintenance for motorcycles’ as recommended by the manufacturer. The machine is a near total. My cousin now has three liabilities on his hands: an injured Anand (who phones Lucknow to say that he is unaccountably held up in Delhi for a few days), insurance/workshop wrangles over repairs for the bike (he manfully assumes full responsibility for this), and, lastly, the undersigned. I am unable to commute from my flat to office…and move in with my cousin and his batch-mate.

Vij! In the hullabaloo, we’d forgotten all about our chum in the army. Calls to the Raj Rif Center only elicited the information that the unit was ‘away’. The party could be contacted by post c/o 56 APO. So Vij had gone to war. It struck me that I might not see him again. It was a depressing thought, but half-an-ounce of lead, traveling at 2,500 fps, could cut him down. Knowing him, I knew he’d probably try something unusual. His beloved Raj Rif, the Regimental honour, came before everything else. There were two other Vij’s, the eldest a Lt. Colonel, to hold aloft the flag of the Vij family of ‘Riverside’, 10, Hastings Road, Allahabad. Major Mahesh Vij was the most thoroughly professional soldier I have ever met. Temperamentally very different from Arjun, the youngest of the three Vij brothers, Mahesh, the ‘middleman’, was an ice-cold, calculating, textbook strategist (he enjoyed a brilliant career in the army, retiring as a General). Nevertheless, two spare Vij’s or no, I did not think Arjun was expendable. The war had come very close to home.

Victory for Indian arms! But of Arjun Vij, Major, IC-17575, there was no news. Several weeks passed. None of my letters had been answered. It was apparent from casualty/wounded/ MIA lists that the Raj Rif had, as usual, done an outstanding job, but had suffered casualties. There is no such thing as ‘heavy losses’: the death of even one soldier is a heavy loss. I braced myself for the worst. Finally, the call came, at the office. It was a terse verbal communication that I should report to ward number such-and-such, MH (army abbreviation for ‘Military Hospital’). He was alive! That evening, my cousin, his wife and I drove down to the MH in the Delhi cantonment area.



introduced him to it.Alive? I never saw anyone more alive. If Vij, Arjun, Major, had to be described in just

one word, that word would have to be ‘vital’. He exuded rude health. If anything, he was w-i-d-e-r; the giant shoulders bulged with muscle as if he had secreted cannonballs under the thin fabric of the T-shirt. The glucose factory, too, appeared to be operating at full capacity. It was bitterly cold, and we were swaddled in layers of woollens under our overcoats. Arjun was wearing a flimsy, cream-colored cotton T-shirt and white shorts. He explained that he had been fighting somewhere very high and very cold.

The Delhi winter, severe as it was that year, was balmy, springtime stuff for him right now. In fact, he was feeling a bit warm. Did anyone mind if he switched on the ceiling fan? We hastened to assure him that we most certainly did. He really could not feel the cold. Boy, he must have gone to the North Pole. (Readers can guess for themselves where, and why, Arjun’s outfit had been engaged).

His right foot was in plaster. The card clipped to the rail of the steel hospital bed cryptically said of the nature of the injury, “GSW; RA”. Mystified, I sought clarification from a nurse. “That stands for ‘Gun Shot Wound; Right Ankle’. It’s nothing”, she reassured me. Later, Major Sharma told me what had transpired. The outfit had been ambushed in deep snow. They had taken losses; Arjun had circled the ambushers under covering fire, making a difficult climb without any back up. Armed with his sten machine-carbine in his right hand, and his trusty .45 Colt in his left fist, he had opened fire, running across the enemy position as he went.

The element of surprise neutralized the enemy’s positional advantage; our boys took the opportunity to regroup and assault the enemy post. There was hand-to-hand fighting. Both of Arjun’s guns were blazing. Then the stengun (sorry, sten machine-carbine) ran out of ammunition. As he stopped for a second to fit another magazine, a heavy machine-gun bullet passed through his right ankle. Blood pumped in a double-spray as Arjun went down, but there was also an answering twin stream of lead from his chattering guns. Many an enemy soldier would return home zipped up in a body bag.

Apparently, the field doctors wanted to amputate. Army sawbones are very good at that sort of thing; it saves the government costly surgery and hospital expenses later on. (This penchant for short cuts perhaps explains why doctors, retiring from the Services, find it such heavy going on Civvy Street. The public instinctively feels they will resort to rough-and-ready methods. They survive because of investments made during their long, secure careers, and on their generous pensions. If I am wrong, I beg to be corrected). Death often follows; the shock of amputation can prove fatal. Arjun was fully conscious; he absolutely forbade it. What he needed badly was blood; that was made available when relief helicopters could fly in. He survived the long journey to a base hospital. Then he was flown into Delhi. He was in line for a medal. Arjun was on a high, as usual. It had been a great caper as far as he was concerned. I am sure, where he fell, the enemy dead were piled the highest.

Surgery followed surgery, as the army physicians tried their best to repair the shattered joint. But the ankle is a very delicate, intricate assembly of load-bearing bones. The wounds heal, but the joint is never quite the same again. In course of time, Arjun was moving around with only a walking cast and single crutch. That was when the MH authorities decided he could have visitors. He never called before that because, firstly, he did not think he merited any special attention. Besides, though he never showed or mentioned it, I think he felt deeply about his comrades—those that never returned.



introduced him to it.It is not uncommon for soldiers surviving a war to feel a sense of guilt that they made

it back while their buddies bought it. I also think he wanted to spare us the sight of him bed-ridden and badly injured, in pain. My sister-in-law could only gape at Arjun; urban sophisticate as she was, men like the ‘Mad Major’ were completely beyond her experience. “Did you see those shoulders?” was all she could gasp on our way back to the car. I wonder what she would have said if she had met Matthew Jacob, our belligerent para-commando friend stationed at Agra, he of the bar-room brawls and point-blank-range shootouts?!

One thing I’ll say for Arjun; no man ever tried harder to heal himself. He walked, he swam, he jogged; he surpassed the physiotherapist’s expectations. I think he was terrified that the army would think he was unfit for active duty, and relegate him to a desk job. That was when he started accompanying us on duck shoots. He didn’t have a .12 bore shotgun but that didn’t stop him from lugging the .375 Holland & Holland along.

On one occasion, a flight of crafty ducks descended on a small pond that was surrounded by hillocks. There being no cover of any sort, it was impossible to get close enough to put them up in the air and shoot. They could spot us well before we could get within range to take our chances, and fly off. Those ducks sure had one smart Major in charge of their outfit. Our Major did not like being outmanoeuvered. He worked the bolt-action of his big-game rifle, took careful aim, and fired the cannon. The sound, within the natural amphitheatre formed by the hillocks, was deafening; it echoed and re-echoed.

All the ducks flew off, quacking at us in derision. Something passed close by my head at very high velocity, whistling shrilly; Heavens! I thought; that’s the first time ducks ever shot back at me! Strange, I always seem to get shot at whenever I go duck shooting. I realized the ricochet had probably missed my head by inches.

I don’t think even a standard NATO helmet would have stopped the ricochet of such a heavy bullet at that close range. Vij knew that, too. Better than any of us, he realized what had just happened, or rather, had not happened. He put the gun away, sadly. I think that was the last shot the Holland & Holland fired in his hands on active duty. Vanishing wildlife and a tide of conservation had mothballed that magnificent weapon before its appointed time.

Is it not true that everything carries within it the seeds of its own destruction? Big game rifles had hunted big game – and themselves – out of existence. The human body gradually runs down and stops working on the commands received from in-house genetic timers. The British Empire had spawned for itself a host of problems that brought it crashing down. Within half a century of the end of the Second World War, Britain is under siege from immigrants who have emigrated from its erstwhile colonies. Hardworking, ambitious, thrifty, possessed of sober and regular habits, these Asian British citizens are, slowly but surely, driving the original inhabitants of the British Isles to the wall. Reprisals, like the ones in mid-2001, with a definite racial bias, will only fuel the desire to beat the English at their own game: shop-keeping.

Napoleon’s words are well on the way to being vindicated. British shopkeepers bow before the superior buying power of naturalized Asian British citizens, already alarmingly prosperous, infiltrating into the British Parliament, nobility, and other top-most echelons of society. Time-honoured British institutions such as Rolls-Royce, Sheffield, Manchester, the Trent shipyards, the Welsh coalmines, the Royal Air Force and the once-



introduced him to it.proud Royal Navy, are in foreign hands, defunct or pitifully shrunk. Only Big Ben ticks on, unfazed, into yet another century. The wheel is coming full circle.

One can understand the British need for its decadent, parasitical, and redundant Royal Family; it serves as a last rallying point for ye olde English sentiments. As long as there are Royals at Windsor Castle, it seems St. George is still on England’s side. Till when, one wonders?

England is sinking under the sheer weight of numbers of her erstwhile subjects. The reverse tide threatens the English way of life. Is England under assimilation? Or is she doing the assimilating? If so, why? How does she gain? Only time will tell. Latter-day Edward Gibbons’ of Asiatic origin are already, perhaps, sharpening their quills to write the history of the rise and fall of another empire.

Return to Mars

Those of you who have read the chapter called ‘A Farewell to Arms’ must be wondering why the episode peters out reminiscing about a post-war Britain. Why not, I ask truculently? Why shouldn’t it? Didn’t it start off with how the British left a partitioned country behind, and how the two halves keep fighting each other, remaining weak, poor, burdened with debt, and yet, enthusiastic shoppers for a plethora of weaponry on the world market. It is a pathetic, puerile race to keep up with each other, while vast populations struggle to survive amidst galloping inflation.

Kickbacks from weapons suppliers, transmitted through dealers such as Adnan Khashoggi, who was then the reigning arms dealer, are now rumoured to be an important source of income in certain quarters. Swiss banks groan under the debt burden of interest payments on deposits lying in un-numbered deposit accounts, where, it is common knowledge, vast sums of hard currency have been stashed away. Indian ‘arms dealers’ are mere fronts for the Big Names in the shadowy world of cross-country weapons dealing, a multi-billion dollar industry. These individuals live in extravagant splendour a medieval plenipotentiary would have envied. A soldier’s life is far from all this sordid squalor.

I now reluctantly admit that I chickened out when I saw the climax of ‘A Farewell to Arms’ approaching and tried to divert the reader’s attention from the looming denouement. In any case, I rationalised, the reader must have guessed the inevitable outcome from the title itself. There was hardly any point in overkill. But the fact is that I did not have the guts to face the truth: a little piece of flying lead had wrecked the career of a warrior.

Had Vij, Arjun; Major; IC-17575 fought in an earlier era, his wound would have been dismissed as routine battle damage; he would have been allowed to rest, recuperate, retrain, and resume active service. It was said of Samudragupta that he bore the scars of dozens of grievous wounds on his powerful body. Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Rana Sangha, and Guru Gobind Singh had been seriously wounded many times, but they had recovered and fought on. But these were modern times, and a modern army has modern criteria for deciding what is usable and what is to be discarded.

Arjun was in a quandary. While he got back into sports and sweated it out at physiotherapy, he played all the cards he had and waited for the outcome of his pre-



introduced him to it.emptive appeals. His Medical Report was up before the Board. He shuffled the papers on his desk and wistfully dreamed of another caper. He could be very pushy when he wanted to be, and he was very pushy now. He harangued all and sundry, he wrote long letters to his erstwhile Field Commanders, he pulled all the strings he could reach.

He did not want to sit at a desk at headquarters while his friends went off to the next war. He was a soldier born to combat, a warrior who suffered peacetime only because it was a necessary (but barely tolerable) anti-thesis to war. Peacetime (for Arjun) was a routine break meant for brushing up on weaponry, attending Advanced Courses at the College of Combat, Mhow, and perhaps even gaining admittance to a program/workshop at the prestigious Defence Service Staff College at Wellington, in the Nilgiris. The thought of being put out to pasture in the prime of life was unbearable.

He didn’t qualify. The Board decided that he was no longer fit for active service, and he was ‘de-categorized’ from ‘Category Aye One’ to ‘Category C.’ The Indian Army was regretful but firm. Vij, Arjun, Major, was henceforth to be allocated only staff duties. He would have to mind the stables while other knights rode off to battle. He concealed his disappointment well. He carried on as if nothing had happened. It was peacetime, after all. Soldiers make the most of it. Arjun did that, for once...in his own inimitable way.

After he’d returned my Jawa with hardly any rubber left on the tires (it took him a little more than a fortnight to do that!), I had sold it to one Vinay Shukla. I was tired of it (pun unintended). With Aditya Patankar straddling a Jawa, it was something else; but I was no Patankar. The Jawa did not come alive when I rode it. It wasn’t the machine: it was me. Anyway, I bought a Royal Enfield ‘Bullet’ motorcycle [UPN 3722], a 350 cc, single-cylinder, four-stroke job. This was more like it. Powerful, stable, forgiving of driver errors, highly flexible in traffic, adaptable to any terrain, and perfect for my height, weight, and build, the indefatigable Bullet was (and still remains) my dream bike. ‘Made Like a Gun’ reads the legend on the teardrop petrol tank. That it is.

It is a contemporary of such legendary British motorcycles as AJS, Ariel, BSA, Matchless, Norton, Sunbeam, and Triumph. The Second World War, and the combined military might of Japan and Nazi Germany was unable to kill the British motorcycle industry, enduring and virtually unassailable as it then was. If anything, the War gave it a shot in the arm. Today, it lies in an unmarked grave. The Japanese invasion, led by Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha succeeded in finishing it off. The notorious British insularity and its concomitant – resistance to change – were no longer passports to survival. Shrinking markets necessitate aggressive export strategies. Innovation, adaptability, and economy are the watchwords. They were costly lessons for British industry. Fundamental research is all very well, but more fundamental than that, for the sake of commercial viability, is consumer-oriented research coupled with new approaches to marketing and human resources management.

Far from its original home in distant England, the Indian version of the Enfield Bullet soldiers on bravely: a living fossil, a throwback to the good old days when massive power came in as low as (by today’s standards) 2,200 rpm, and deep, majestic exhaust beats, music to a biker’s ears, could be counted individually, a happy by-product of the single cylinder design with its long piston stroke producing the generous low-end torque. It is a trip down memory lane, a blast from the past, a nostalgic reminder of the glorious age of Empire. The Brits are, naturally, crazy about it; they import it to their foggy little isle by the score, shelling out bagfulls of hard currency for the gleaming machines. It rides alone,



introduced him to it.unchallenged in its class, the only 350 cc motorcycle in India. (A 500 cc stable-mate has since been added, with modest success).

Whatever the Brits can do, our homegrown Sardarjis can do even better. No self-respecting Sardarji will be caught without one in his stable, even if it has to share garage space with a BMW, to name but one famous Sardarji weakness (which is not mere hyperbole; it happens). Please note that a Sardarji knows a good thing when he sees one – be it Baingan da bharta, Birmingham, butter chicken, bhangra or a Bullet – and goes for it unabashedly. His endorsement is the ultimate Seal of Approval, not that the Bullet needs one. No fat-cat cricketer or rock star endorses it; it needs no marketing props. It stands alone, invincible in its sheer unrepeatability.

Vij sees my bike and falls for it. He is off and running, in the original Arjun Vij way. There is a ten-year waiting list for a Bullet, in Delhi. In 1972, it is a status symbol. I had circumvented the queue by buying my bike from (The Chenab Motorcycle Store, Station Road) Moradabad. This is because Moradabad is the nearest large town to where Dad is posted (he looks after a large distillery for K.K. Birla, a leading Industrialist of the country). The purchase is perfectly legitimate; the address on my driving license is care-of my Dad. Bullets don’t sell that well in UP, thirty-five years ago; 6,700 rupees is a daunting price tag.

Vij takes another route; he falls back on the good old Army and its fabled quota. A flood of letters, shamelessly citing his Category ‘C’ and his GSW (RA) injury, issues forth under his signature. The argument put forward is that in the Bajaj scooter that he owns, the right foot operates the brake pedal. Vij has a right foot, true, but it is so badly war-damaged as to have resulted in his de-categorization. Ergo, the Bajaj is declared persona non grata. It must go. The only replacement available in India is the Bullet, where the brake pedal is on the left.

The words ‘available in India’ scare the living daylights out of the authorities; they know the lengths to which the Mad Major is capable of going, in order to get what he wants. If he fails, it shall not be for want of trying. Foreign exchange is scarce. Visions of the mountainous paperwork that will be involved in obtaining clearance for importing a motorcycle for this wounded warrior hover before the eyes of the sluggish babus of the Ministry. They loathe unnecessary correspondence, obviously; Vij gets his approval in a record-breaking time of thirty-eight days.

Hauz Khas is a sleepy little colony where I stay after my cousin shifts to Madras (that’s Chennai today). The peace of a lazy Sunday morning is rudely shattered by a ferocious roar. Heads crane from windows to see what the commotion is all about. The hideous din emanates from a truncated Enfield exhaust. Pointless calling that poor, Bobbitised, chrome-plated tube a ‘silencer’: it is anything but that. It is attached to a gleaming new Bullet that is parked outside my gate. A man with the shoulders of a Titan sits astride it.

It seems to be an arsenal-on-wheels: dummy shells from Oerlikon ‘pom-pom’ anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine-guns are welded to every visible part of the frame, the mudguards, and even atop the headlight. The brass gleams, the handiwork of some beleaguered batman. The bike makes an unmistakable statement: it belongs to an army-man, said army-man man is a gun-nut, and that nut has a screw loose. He is armed, dangerous, and ruthless. To the denizens of this placid neighbourhood, the ogre of ‘Jack



introduced him to it.and the Beanstalk’ fame has arrived, scenting human blood, all Fi, Fi, Fo and Fum. And he has come for my blood, obviously, on account of misdemeanours unknown.

Heads are quickly withdrawn; doors and windows are rapidly shut and bolted. The populace waits with delicious anticipation for the sound of gunfire, for my blood to be spilt, for the wail of police sirens and ambulances. They are disappointed. They only hear roars of delighted laughter (at my surprise); then the ear-splitting clatter fades away as the bike carries us off to some unknown destination. Later, people treat me with wary respect. I keep dangerous company; therefore, I, too, must be dangerous! My own Bullet now resembles me closely, at least to my own eyes: sedate, docile, a mere beast of burden. It is not a war-horse for warriors en route to Valhalla.

As he mends physically, Arjun regroups internally. Outwardly he is still his old irrepressible self but inside, he is engaged in quietly marshalling his inner resources to cope with the changed circumstances. He is in no hurry. Although his world has changed forever, he still has the comfortable, well-paid job with all the perks. As he goes about adjusting to the future, he begins to let his hair down, metaphorically speaking—the wiry hair is cropped, as always, close to the skull (so that an opponent cannot use it against you by pulling or leveraging it, he explains with a grin). He seems to realize that he has to re-focus. There is nothing of the resigned martyr about him, however. He continues to extract every drop of joy from life. The term joie de vivre springs to mind unbidden.

His reading habits change. His shelf now has books on Zen, mysticism and martial arts, rubbing shoulders with Gun Digest, Unarmed Combat, and Shooter’s Bible. I notice the names of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lobsang Rampa, and Eric Van Lustbader. That is when I notice that the chopping edges of his hands have developed bone-hard calluses. Ju-Jitsu, and later, judo and karate, (‘kara’ meaning ‘empty’ and ‘te’ meaning ‘hand’, ‘the art of fighting with the empty hand’, he explains) had always been part of an infantryman’s curriculum. Arjun picks up Taekwondo as well. When Vij comes across anything potentially lethal, he pulls out all the stops. He moves up rapidly through the black belts, becoming a fourth Dan. Some Category ‘C’ guy!

One day, I ask him how it is that a hand of flesh and blood can break all those layers of tiles and whatnot one reads about in the magazines. He patiently explains that there are lines of force in Nature: align yourself with them and you harness them. A despairing look, as that of one trying to explain the Binomial Theorem to a child of six, flits across his Grecian features. He makes a pile of ten bricks between two arms of adjacent chairs, sturdy, oaken, army chairs. He strips down to the waist, bows low before the construction, then assumes strike-mode, cutting arm raised. He seems to be lost in thought.

Suddenly, faster than the eye can follow, his hand has cleaved the bricks as though they were so many cream-crackers. He insists that it is not his hand that has broken the bricks; the Force did that. His hand merely served to channel it, like a lightning conductor does with a bolt of lightning, like a conductor’s baton directs an orchestra through a recital. He did not touch the bricks, which had parted by the time his hand got to them. It all sounds like fantastic gibberish to me. I try to break one brick. Even today, my right wrist still warns me of impending thunderstorms by the dull ache it generates hours before the event, a legacy of my ineptitude at bare-handed brick breaking. Wherever the line of force is, I can neither see nor sense it. I guess it needs the Third Eye.



introduced him to it.In order to maintain coherence in the story, I am now compelled to skip ahead a few

years. I am now in-charge of a medium-sized branch of a bank. Arjun opens his account there. Even after I am transferred, I keep getting reports about his doings. The branch manager who succeeds me is an old friend; he hits it off well with Arjun, and one day, in the course of conversation, they are discussing the higher reaches of martial arts. He does not believe Arjun when he says that there are over 300 ways of killing a man without leaving a trace as to the cause of death, or that it is possible to take the spirit out from a man’s body and then return it.

The banker is hardly possessed of a virile imagination; he is unable to fully appreciate what sort of man he is dealing with. He returns to consciousness on the office carpet: his staff huddles around him, scared speechless. He last remembers Arjun responding to his dare by pressing gently with thumb and forefinger on certain blood vessels and nerves on his neck. He remembers exiting his body…. then nothing.

Arjun is now a Dan of the seventh grade. It is a level beyond the physical aspects of sport. In fact, it is no longer a sport: it is a quest for the Great Mystery, for the meaning of life. A Dan of the ninth level is a Maestro. He is a master of the universe; he has torn the Veil aside to understand what is. He encounters another Reality far removed from the mundane world of everyday life beyond which few men go.

Rumours continue to filter through about Arjun. He is now a Sensei, a Grandmaster. A chain of institutions engaged in training people in the martial arts functions under his direct control across the entire length and breadth of South-East Asia. He is selling better coal in Newcastle. In the latter day breeding ground of unarmed combat techniques, he, a foreigner, towers above them all, as revered as any Great Khan of Mongol times.

Then the curtain falls. No further news gets through. I know he has passed beyond the pale of ordinary men. I bid farewell to my friend in my mind, in my heart, knowing that the message gets through. I cannot take his road, cannot follow him. It is not for the likes of me. Arjun always belonged to Mars, and the God of War has re-assigned his Satrap to another mission. Wherever he is, I know Arjun has attained fulfilment, has successfully carried out his brief. Mars winks at me redly from the night sky, relieved that I understand.

I salute you, Sensei. Till we meet again, then.




El Tomāso

October 1976. My father, my wife, and I went to the cantonment area, Patiala, where Durga Puja was being celebrated. I don’t know whether you are aware of it or not, but this is the time of year when all Bengalis are non compos mentis. Long insulated from the baleful effects of this temporary loss of sanity on account of the Sherwood academic year, which ends in November, and the considerable distance from Bengal, I am revealed as a true-blue Bengali by the enormous quantities of rossogollas I can put away at a sitting.

Nor am I as immune to the malady as the non-empiricist would imagine. A certain vague restlessness, a naked wanderlust, always hits me hard around this time. I remember remarking to my wife that Señor Tomās said he would come to India around the end of September, but there is no further news from him, although he has kept in touch with me all these years, after he left us at Solan for Kuwait almost three years ago.

Señor Tomās, better known as El Tomāso, was my neighbor in Hauz Khas. It was the daily sight of his Bullet that goaded me into buying one, and thereafter we became fast friends. He stayed as a paying guest with a hardy Punjabi family next door that bathed in cold water in the depths of the severe Delhi winter. Ergo, he also perforce had to take cold-water showers, something that was anathema to the warm south in him, for he is from sunny Kerala.

I gave him the duplicate key to my little apartment, so he could use it as a getaway, with its geyser-equipped bathroom, anytime he liked. Tomās never forgot this small token of my regard for him. He was growing out of his job with Ericsson India, and wanted to go abroad—there was an uncle in the BKME (Bank of Kuwait and the Middle East) who had promised to sponsor him provided he managed an appointment letter from Ericsson, Kuwait.

So one fine day, Tomās resigned his job and joined my parents and I in Solan (Himachal Pradesh), my first posting as a Probationary Officer with the State Bank. We were delighted to have him! About three months passed happily, with Tomās well adjusted to the situation. But one day, he bared his heart to my father (this came out much later), revealing his distress at the prolonged visit and wondering why the long-promised



introduced him to it.NOC (‘No-objection Certificate’) has still not come from Kuwait. My father, who was a good palmist, told him not to worry. His NOC was due any day now; thereafter, he would be an NRI forever.

A couple of days later, Tomās came running into the house, found that Dad had gone to the fruit market, located him there and showed him the NOC that had come that very day poste restante. That afternoon, he left for Delhi and a new life with LM Ericsson Telefonatibolaget, P.O. Box 5979, Safat, Kuwait. I bade him a sad farewell, knowing that the chances of seeing him again were bleak. The late Lars Magnus Ericsson had, about a century ago, set up a small radio repair shop in Sweden that had grown into a global communications behemoth which had taken my best friend away from me.

As we returned from the Durga Puja mela at the cantonment area in Patiala, we saw a long, dusty, shark-like shape with thick radial tires in front of the house. Arabic numerals were barely visible on the mud-caked registration plate of the low-slung sports car. I rang the bell and Mother opened it. There was joy on her face. “Guess who’s here!” she chortled gleefully. It was Tomās! I hugged my dear friend whom I’d never thought to see again. He was my partner in many a hair-raising, high-speed Bullet trip over remote mountain roads. His driving skills are simply phenomenal. I am barely good, but Tomās is outstanding, a born rally driver. Anything with a motor and wheels becomes a controlled sub-sonic missile in his hands. Yes, that’s the 6-cylinder Datsun 260 Z Sports 2+2 he’d sent me photographs of, the ones with the new TV tower in Kuwait and the huge oil tankers navigating the Gulf, in the background.

With him were a young, newly married English couple, André and Doreen Winter, very keen on computers, cars, rallying, and photography. M/S Andor MicrosystemsAndor Microsystems are computerizing the Bank of Kuwait. André had a bag full of photo equipment and lenses, from a 300mm telephoto to a 16 mm full-frame fish-eye lens, to go with the Asahi-Pentax ‘Spotmatic F’ body. I wondered whether Tomās had remembered to bring me the small camera I needed: the cameras then available in India were crude, unsophisticated museum pieces. I needn’t have worried; he had remembered to bring my camera.

But what a camera! It was the new MinoltaMinolta single-lens reflex, the XE-1, produced after Minolta Camera Company signed their collaboration agreement with Ernst Leitz GmbH, Wetzlar, West Germany, manufacturers of the legendary LeicaLeica cameras. Details of its hi-tech features would fill this page: Copal-LeitLeitzz electronic shutter, twin metal shutter curtains with vertical travel, infinitely variable shutter speeds on ‘Auto’ from 30 seconds to 1,000th of a second, aperture-priority automatic exposure, through-the-lens (TTL) metering with MinoltaMinolta’s patented averaging exposure system reading a weighted average of the entire scene, multiple exposure capability, self timer, low-battery LED, comprehensive viewfinder readout, depth-of-field preview, ±2 stops exposure compensation on Auto, auto-exposure memory lock, optional full manual override, M90 (Manual, 1/90th second) setting for manual/flash shooting even without batteries, MinoltaMinolta’s patented bayonet mount accepting a mind-boggling array of Rokkor lenses…it goes on and on and on: and all in the expensive matt-black professional finish.

Bulging in a distinctly masculine manner at the front end was a huge chunk of glass weighing 14 ounces: the fabulous 58 mm, f1.2 MC Noct-Rokkor lens, excellent for flash-less, ‘available light’ picture taking. There was even a 200 mm f4.5 Tele-Rokkor telephoto lens, and a 2X tele-extender, all in individual, original MinoltaMinolta cases!



introduced him to it.I was speechless. I’d lost my tongue. Besides, there was a large obstruction in my

throat. No sound issued forth, no matter how hard I tried. I’d asked for a pebble: the man had brought me the whole goddam mountain. In one fell swoop, he had given me the equipment I needed to be a serious photographer.

Ever since I had a tonsillectomy in 1955, I’d been using the Model T of cameras, a ‘Baby Brownie’ box camera giving eight exposures per spool of No. 127 film. It was a gift from my cousin Otima (‘Iron Lady’ Otima Bordia, IAS, elder daughter of Mr. Justice Basu Deva Mukerji—see ‘Escape to Ranikhet’). It had cost her all of nineteen rupees of desperately-saved pocket money, and represented a considerable investment in those days. Through all my boyhood and young manhood, it had stayed with me, faithfully recording fishing trips and outings. After twenty years of hard use, however, the Bakelite body had started chipping, and ingress of light into the chamber meant that its useful life was over. Amazingly, the lens and shutter were still in perfect condition, a tribute to Eastman Kodak’s commitment to quality.

Seeing my interest in photography, an indigent but indulgent maternal uncle had sent me many books on the subject. These I had pored over, absorbing technical know-how as well as tips on better photography. I drooled over the pictures of cameras, especially the single-lens reflexes with their instant-return mirrors, TTL metering, and lens interchangeability that made this type of 35 mm beast the most versatile of all picture-taking instruments. I read and re-read many other books I bought, but alas! I was a cameraman sans camera.

Now, thanks to El Tomāso, the long wait was over. Fitted with the 200 mm telelens, the camera felt familiar in my hands, a gun that did not kill or maim, freezing images on film forever. 36 rounds, single shot or rapid-fire, up close in macro or as distant as the stars, I could now ‘shoot’ anything visible to the eye…or beyond. The mustachioed rally driver from the Gulf had made my dream come true.

The trio had driven overland all the way from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf, through Afghanistan and into India. Tomās over-flew Pakistan, as he did not manage a visa from the Pakis, rejoining the party at Amritsar. I remembered that only five years earlier, the Indian Armed Forces had given the Pakistan army a sound drubbing in the 1971 war (see ‘A Farewell to Arms’), and the memories still rankled across the border. As we tucked into a hearty dinner, we made plans.

It was decided that we would drive down to Delhi, then on to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, and return to Delhi. Then we would fly to Srinagar, in Kashmir. I baulked at this: I could not impose any further, although Tomās insisted that he would take care of the tickets. The Kuwaiti Dinar was then valued at an exchange rate of Rs.13/- to a Dinar, and Tomās was apparently flush with Indian Rupees. Still, I could take advantage of his generosity no further. I put up Rs.5,000/-, which was all I could spare, and which sum I pressed into Tomās’s reluctant hands. That’s all I paid for the camera and probably the best holiday I ever had. In return, I got priceless memories that would last a lifetime. The next day, I took ten days leave and we were off in the 260 Z.

High-Speed cruising, at least of this variety, was something new to me. 150 kilometers an hour on the speedometer and climbing steadily, yet I had total control, thanks to the low center of gravity, wide BridgestoneBridgestone radials and GirlingGirling disc brakes on all four wheels. The Grand Trunk road never felt like this before. Could Sher Shah Suri, who made this road, ever have imagined that one day, people would travel on it at such



introduced him to it.fantastic speeds? The NISSAN Datsun glides, floats; whatever the condition of the road surface might be, it’s no concern of ours. Tinted glasses, power steering, genuine leather bucket seats, 6-track quadraphonic music from the cartridge player, silent air-conditioning—the works!

The shock-absorbing, soundproofing qualities of this famous rally car were legendary. At 175 kilometers an hour (that’s well over 100 miles an hour—the ton! At last!), one cannot hear any exterior noise inside the luxurious passenger compartment. The high-frequency triple horns can only be felt (through the co-pilot’s footrest, or the driver’s foot-pedals), not heard. You know they are working from the way traffic veers sharply to the left, giving me room to overtake.

A quick declutch, a mere tap on the tubby gear lever to shift down to fourth, a slight jab of the right foot, and the engine snarls as the car surges forward eagerly, pressing us violently back, deep into the aromatic leather. Everything fades away dizzyingly in the rear-view mirror. Then slip back into top, and the muted, superbly responsive engine hurls the streamlined projectile at nearly 180 kilometers an hour (112.5 mph) ventre à terre towards Delhi, which now seems disappointingly close as the odometer reels in the distance rapidly.

Agra! I cannot find the words to express the wonder that life was for me then. My heart overflowed with love, happiness, and bonhomie, and my body seemed to be bursting with physical power. Every breath I took seemed to invigorate me even further, as I reveled in the magic of youth. My wife of seven months and I had never seen the Taj Mahal. We were now gazing at it for the first time, and that too in the company of dear friends. After seeing the mausoleum, we wandered about the grounds the whole afternoon. I was not prepared for the sheer grandeur, the breathtaking immensity, of this poem in marble. No photograph of this monument to eternal love can ever hope to do it justice.

It was a fantasy world; the very air seemed to whisper of an ancient love that lives on beyond the grave. The best description of the Taj Mahal that I’ve come across is expressed in poetic, not architectural language: “A teardrop on the cheek of time.” I empathized with Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan – whose name means ‘Emperor of the World’ – but nothing in the world could ever restore to him his lost love, Mumtaz. Her death must have made him realize that he, too, was mortal, and that nothing lasts forever…except love. The monument was, perhaps, his way of telling us that love endures even after the body, evanescent and ephemeral, is gone.

That moonlit night at the Taj, I often pinched myself to see if I was dreaming. There were hardly any people around, and André put the Pentax on a tripod and took many long exposures with the fish-eye lens. We felt very close to our wives. Poor Señor Tomās. Then unmarried, he was very fidgety, trapped between two young couples on their second honeymoon. The restlessness would increase further in Kashmir!

The Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir was distinguished IAS officer Sushital Banerjee, my paternal cousin. When we alighted from the plane and I phoned my sister-in-law Ranu, that beautiful and capable lady at once sent a car to fetch us. It was a Sunday, and I found my cousin was home. He was very happy to see me and my friends: my Dad (his maternal uncle) was his boyhood hero and he would spend hours giving him the massage disciples traditionally give to their gurus, pressing his bulging biceps, muscular back and brawny legs after his workout or game. He was seeing my wife for the



introduced him to it.first time (he sent me a magnificent 18-carat gold Sheaffer’sSheaffer’s pen set as a wedding present, but pressing duties came in the way of his attending the reception at Madhu Mandir, Allahabad); he remarked that if such a lovely lady could not tame and domesticate me, nobody ever would. (Did she? I often wonder.) The lady in question blushed at the neat compliment from this extraordinarily handsome and charismatic man who exuded power and authority.

Sushital regrets that, on account of government regulations, he cannot have André and Doreen as guests in his official residence, but he’ll arrange something even better. That evening, the couple was settled in ‘Armstrong’, a Category ‘A’ houseboat moored on the Dal Lake, with its own dedicated shikara (similar to a Venetian gondola, except that it is paddled, not poled). I have rarely seen such luxury; a lavishly equipped kitchen, two plush bedrooms, a magnificent drawing room littered with genuine antiques, engaging bric-a-brac, and Persian carpets.

There are flowers everywhere, even on the balconies. It is a floating palace! There is no air-conditioning—all you need to do is to open the window! It is verily a paradise on earth, this vale of Kashmir, tailor-made for romance. I envied the young English couple, and guiltily wished that we, too, had a houseboat! But that’s being ungrateful—we were very well looked after. We occupied a lovely suite in the West Wing of the huge house on The Bundh. André was most impressed by the armed guards at the gate, and the magnificent Chinar trees in the beautiful garden.

Trips were arranged for us to see Sonamarg, Pahalgam, Gulmarg, Chashmeshahi et al. From Gulmarg, we took horses to Khillanmarg and on to Alpatthar, beyond the tree line and even beyond the snowline. André had difficulty breathing, and asked me what height we were at—he paled under his tan when he learnt he was at 12,000 feet! That’s over a thousand feet higher than Ben Nevis, I pointed out, the highest peak in the British Isles! No wonder the Englishman had trouble finding enough oxygen to breathe. Doreen, my wife and I were not affected by the height: we must have highlander blood in us.

André is a throwback to Viking forebears; burly, and with a bushy, reddish beard, he could pass off as Eric the Red himself. A last snowball fight, then we galloped downhill to Gulmarg and drove back to Srinagar. One evening, we even got to meet Sheikh Abdullah, the ‘Lion of Kashmir’, a giant of a man in every sense of the term, with his leonine countenance and his massive, six-and-a-half-foot frame—a match for J. Kenneth Galbraith, former US Ambassador to India. Another evening, Lakshmi Kant Jha, the well-known ex-bureaucrat, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and now the Governor of J&K, drops by. He is an old family friend, married to beautiful Mekhala, whose own house was not far from Madhu Mandir.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, El Tomāso had borrowed the MinoltaMinolta and skipped to Trivandrum (now Tiruvananthapuram); he just couldn’t take any more. (A few months later, he too, got married…to Anila, a typical southern bellé with a smooth, dusky complexion and classic features).

There was a last minute glitch: Indian Airlines informed us over the phone that we did not have ‘OK’ tickets, so on the proposed day of our departure, there are no seats available on the plane for any of us! Sushitalda steps in quietly and asks for the Station Officer or some such official who is in-charge of the airport. A few terse remarks are addressed to that worthy. Half an hour later, we learn that a special flight has been ‘arranged’ to accommodate the sudden demand for seats on the busy Srinagar-Delhi



introduced him to it.route. Thus did we return to Delhi on schedule. In India, as everywhere else, it pays to know the powers that be.

Nainital

I wonder if you’ve seen a movie called ‘The Last Valley’, featuring Michael Caine and Omar Sharif, two of my favorite movie stars. ‘The Hundred Years War’ is on, and the fugitive, Vogel, (Omar Sharif’s character) is on the run, trying to escape the conquering army’s advance as it sweeps all before it. At the end of his tether, gasping, he tops a rise, parts some bushes…to behold a scene of such bucolic simplicity that he rubs his eyes in disbelief. The entire country has been ravaged by war, a war that is already longer than most men can remember, but here, in this last valley, the outside world has not intruded; it is a Shangri La, trapped in Time, where things are as they’d always been. Now for a quick switch to India, 1809, somewhere in the Kumaon hills. An Englishman, pursuing a stag, fights his way through rhododendron and bramble bushes to behold a stunning sight: a mile-long, kidney-shaped, turquoise-blue lake mirroring the heavily wooded mountains that surround it stretches before his astonished eyes.

That is the myth of how this most beautiful of hill stations was discovered. I like the sound of it and I’m keeping it. In the years that followed, it became the summer capital of the United Provinces, and the Who’s Who of that erstwhile province descended upon it in the summer. My father went there for the first time in 1915, the year he was born, the year the Great War erupted in Europe and engulfed the globe. He was only four months old then, so I came to know of it from his elder sister, who also added that – one year – he fell off the khirni tree in the vast orchard behind the house at Allahabad and broke his leg, as a result of which the annual family trip had to postponed for three weeks. She says it without any residual rancour, only amusement, a mother to him as much as to her two sons, Sushital and Shambhunath.

I first went up to Nainital when I was about two years old. I cannot remember that visit, but photographs don’t lie. And then came 1957, and I found myself in a new Dodge ‘Kingsway’ taxi, one of two-dozen identical cars bought that very year by the U.P. Tourism Department. When we reached Bhowali, long after Bhim Tal had passed, Father had the driver stop the car. All through the 20-mile drive, my parents wondered why I didn’t puke; they probably felt it was very unsporting of me to hold back such an exciting and important event. Little men in big cars going uphill must puke, it seemed.


In January 1980, Sushital Banerjee, Defence Secretary to the Government of India, died suddenly of a massive heart attack. He was only 53. The gun carriage that transported his mortal remains to the electric crematorium was followed by a motorcade of mourners over four miles long. His friends and admirers, from all walks of life, were legion.

Memento mori


introduced him to it.It is a fact that I never feel giddy even on the dizziest of hairpin bends, something that

was very useful in later years when I was addicted to high-speed runs over the hairiest of mountain roads on the Enfield Bullet. But I was very concerned about them; they looked like they were going to lose their breakfast any moment now. So I made things easier for them by dutifully climbing out of the taxi at Bhowali, near the TB sanatorium, and going through an elaborately faked puke, which did wonders for their morale. Bhowali is where the fruits start, meaning the markets are full of hill fruits and vegetables, and I remember munching on plums and apricots as the road turned left at the Nainital-Almora turnpike and commenced the steep final run-up to Nainital.

It was March, and it was cold! Here and there, in the shadows of buildings or in the lee of hillsides, packed ice, remnants of the winter’s snowfall, still resisted the warmer weather. A chilly breeze was coming off the lake as we set off on foot up the hill to Sherwood, and as I climbed away from freedom, I wondered what the next nine months held for me, for I was venturing into a new life, away from my parents for the first time. It was only half-an-hour after they’d handed me over to the kindly matron at Horseman Wing (the junior school) that the enormity of it all began to sink in, and I’m afraid I blubbered, a big boy of eight, to ease my pent-up feelings.

Despite all the wonders that Nainital has on offer, the lake itself is the piéce de résistânce. Yet, there’s Cheena Peak (I believe they’ve gone and renamed it ‘Naina’ Peak, which is fine by me since that’s the name I gave my beautiful daughter), Land’s End, Snow View, Laria Kanta, Khurpa Tal (where the Mahaseer are so shy and the water so clear that even 4-lb nylon line is visible), Sat Tal, Naukuchia Tal (then wild and unkempt, the only real competitor to Nainital itself, I always felt, where there were actually wild ducks in the autumn), the Church of St. John in the Wilderness (with its fascinating old cemetery where forgotten Englishmen and women lie mouldering in neglected graves, surrounded by the largest rock monitor lizards I’ve ever seen), and Gurney House (an old, badly-designed cottage en route to Sherwood where Jim Corbett lived for a few years—it’s sole claim to fame). Theres’s also Kilbury, Ayarpatta, Ranibagh (where we usually went for the annual choir picnic), and many temples.

In Mallital, which is the upper end of the town both geographically as well as metaphorically, is the fascinating Burra Bazar that now stocks goods from all over the world, for people believe in spending money on things instead of enjoying themselves in the great outdoors, which costs so little but which gives so much. Father said that in his boyhood it wasn’t a patch on Civil Lines, the Connaught Place of Allahabad, what to speak of Calcutta’s markets that rivalled, in their heyday, the best of Europe. This once-great city, now renamed ‘Kolkata’ in the onrushing tide of parochialism that is fragmenting the nation, was once the capital of India, ‘The Jewel in the Crown’.

My grandfather was a collector; not a district official, but a man who collected things—pocket watches, pens, pencils, books, pen-knives, and God knows what else—but a hot favourite was walking sticks. And in Mallital was a shop that had his exclusive custom, affectionately known to the family, even today, as ‘Lathi wallah’s’. Of course, its real name is Laxmi Chand and Sons, the biggest departmental store in Nainital, but when Father first saw it, it was just a little shop that sold walking sticks to tourists.

Old Laxmi Chand is no more, having been gathered to his ancestors half a century ago, and as far as I know so have both his sons, but these polished, handsome, dignified men were always extra-courteous to any member of our family. The elder son told me,



introduced him to it.when I last dropped in to see him about twenty years ago, how my grandfather had entrusted their father with the task of locating and buying for him a house at Nainital, and had even advanced a sum of twenty thousand rupees for the purpose. “Alas!” he said “it was not to be, for your grandfather died suddenly, still in his fifties, in 1935, thereby missing not only the delight of buying his dream house in the hills, but also the news that his fourth son, Brahma Deva, had been selected for the I.C.S.”

I stood at the place, by the Naina Devi temple, where fishing machan No. 1 starts, and where, one drizzly day in June, 1968, we had been in the middle of the biggest Mahaseer ‘bite’ that I’ve ever experienced at Nainital. It was our day, the day appointed by the gods that our cups should run over. I bait a hook with a live-minnow bait, a mahaseer takes it in a reel-scorching, rod-whipping run. No sooner have I landed it than Father’s reel lets off a scream of protest as a big fish runs for mid-lake. As soon as we’ve managed to land that, I have to run back to my rod that is threatening to get away from under the rock I’ve pinned it under, the reel wailing as line is stripped from it by some ravenous fish. A small mountain of mahaseers is piling up on the shore behind us.

Kishori Lal, ace angler and local champion, is puzzled; he places his rod two inches away from mine, but still it’s my rod that gets the fish. He switches to live-bait, the fish start taking our atta-baited hooks. Humiliated, destroyed, but eager to try and fathom our secret, he examines our gear, our atta, even our can of minnows. When nothing turns up, he humbly asks me if he is using the right hook: it’s fine, it’s a No. 9 Mustaad (Oslo, Norway – India has still not got around to mastering the art of making fish-hooks!), no problem—except one—he’s not catching any fish! It was weird, wonderful.

It happened only once more: on the Ramganga, at the great rapids beyond Buxar. It was a pleasant day, May 1969. We have fished this stretch of rather violent whitewater before, with fair to middling success. A repeat is all we are looking for. The gods decide to give us a surprise. Some distance away, Tika Ram has got his Bar-B-Q going, and the smell of a double-omelette, herb-flavored kababs and puris is wafting to my nostrils. It’s about time I had some breakfast, I’m famished; chhota hazri was at sun-up, when we left Seohara, about 6 am. It’s almost 10 am now, and I need revictualling. No way the gods are going to allow that. The green, solid-fiberglass ‘Atlas’ (made in France) rod leaps in my hands, and the fish is off downriver, cleverly turning his body sideways, using it like a sail to harness the water’s force to best me. I start running with the fish, the rod whipping in my hands, a live thing, the reel screeching in agony.

Back half-an-hour later, I gesture Mother away, no, I’m not hungry, lemme fish, will ya? Go up to Father to report: 14 pounds. He turns to say something, his reel interrupts with a blood-curdling scream, I get the shock of my life. He’s running with it, it’s a big one. I cast out; something closely related to Godzilla rips off about thirty yards of 7-kg line in two seconds before snapping it like sewing thread. Father is back; he’s panting slightly but there is a triumphant gleam in his eyes, the one he always has when he out-smashes me in badminton or pockets that impossible, screw-back in-off at billiards. That’s a neat 20-pounder he’s towing, its tail dragging in the sand. The fish pile up, but they take our tackle apart in the process.

Finally, at 3.30 pm, the ‘bite’ ends. Our heads are spinning; we have caught nine prime mahaseer (score: 4-5; Father wins) in 5½ hours, lost a lot of line, almost all the spoons and spinners, we’ve never had so many break-offs before. Has someone upriver



introduced him to it.poured glucose and ganja into the water? The fish had gone berserk! The jeep will somehow have to hold this lot. Lunch at last!

Nainital had given us a foretaste of things to come. Father was a man of few words (as men of action invariably are—which explains why I am so full of words), but he often stood at some points on the lakeside or in the surrounding hills, and said he had once stood on this or that spot with his father. So when I first took my son Rahul to Nainital with me, I went and stood with him at those same old places. And as I stood there, with the sound of the temple bells pealing softly in the background, I thought of that other father and his son who had stood at this very spot all those many years ago. And as my son and I looked out over the rippled surface of the great lake, I felt as if they were also with us just then, and we – four generations of us – stood there in silent harmony, gazing out over the lake we all loved so much.

It had a succession of administrators who obviously had no feel for the place. One introduced mirror carp in the lake. The mirror carp, a fast growing, fast multiplying bottom feeder muddied the waters by its habit of constantly grubbing about in the shallows. It was a bad choice for a lake full of mahaseer, a species that lives a cleaner sort of existence and thrives only in clear, well-oxygenated water. Besides, the mirror carp wasn’t a game fish, coming in like a tame donkey to the landing net.

Another dignitary had decided that there should be no weeds in the lake, thereby overturning a natural law. Deprived of their food and natural cover, the lovely, pinkish minnows with that endearing spot on the tail were decimated in no time. The mahaseer population staggered at this sudden depletion of one of their principal food sources, and declined in numbers sympathetically. The weed-beds were also their egg-laying fields, providing the fry with not only their food—microorganisms and crustaceans—but also shelter.

Oxygen levels in the lake plummeted as the weeds were cleared, and in the ensuing winter, when cold, oxygen-less water brought the fish to the surface for warmth, they perished in vast numbers. Pollutants from the hundreds of hotels poured into the lake, but the authorities stood by and twiddled their thumbs helplessly. Suddenly, sighting or catching a mahaseer in Nainital Lake had become a rarity. I thought of the vast, carefree shoals that had once patrolled the shoreline, and wished I could find a viable alternative to the bumbling babus that have, in their abysmal ignorance, tampered with nature and wreaked such havoc on habitats and eco-systems. But one never knows: there might be some sort of titanic upheaval, some cataclysmic catastrophe that will rid us of them forever. Nature never forgets.

I remember the time we were trolling off the St. Joseph’s jetty, and about six feet of line hesitantly left the reel. There were three Australians in the water, and as we warned them that we had baited hooks out, the line curved right into the midst of them. It was comical to see the looks on their faces as they up-ended immediately and dived down, and I wish I’d hooked one of them in the pants for swimming in a fishing zone. There was a five-pounder at the end of the line, however, so all’s well that ends well. Another time, we had trolled the lake and having caught nothing, told the boatman to head for the Boat House Club, that was the nearest to Grand Hotel. I had put out about fifty yards of line in a desperate attempt to ensure stealth by keeping maximum distance between bait and boat.



introduced him to it.As the boatman headed out into mid-lake and made an abrupt right-angle turn, the

line became slack and must have sunk deeper than it usually did, and as the boat pulled away, the steel rod, held lightly in my left hand, thudded hard onto the gunwale, the line drew taut, and the reel started screaming its head off. I was disgusted; I thought I’d snagged the mooring cable of one of the buoys. But as line continued to melt off the reel, I struck back, lifting the quivering, arcing rod and just hanging on. It was a fish! The long, mad dashes finally petered out when the line was close to machan No.1, and after getting the boat turned around, we went right back there. A few more short runs later it came in to net, a golden, 9 pound mahaseer that had fought like a fifteen pounder.

Unless something is done fast, Nainital Lake is doomed…one administrator even had the rocks painted in bright hues, and the sober white sails of the yachts have taken to wearing loud colored stripes. Giant hoardings dot the once-green hillsides, and an aerial ropeway disfigures the skyline as it takes armchair sightseers to Cheena (sorry, ‘Naina’) Peak. If poisoned Lake Erie in the Great Lakes system of North America can be cleaned up, so can this much smaller expanse of water. Poor, aging Nainital has started looking cheap – a painted tart – and I go there no more. I wish to remember her as she was.


an abstract from memories are made of

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great puff derby

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