goofing off [aka eid mubarak!]

the last three days have been very zen-like! especially since we rejoined our reading library and the pretty lass behind the counter separated us from 200 camels with a charming smile and some strategic corporeal display! but we now have stuff to read and pass the time. not the usual high-brow stuff but material that entertains!

this was interspersed with much needed sleep periods. necessary and essential in today's stressed times, to recharge batteries [that old saw!] and so on. we are amazed at our ability to sleep at the drop of a pillow. truly.

then of course there was the degustation. regular food intake is important for sound sleep and we adhered to tried and tested principles to aid digestion.

all this because 'twas eid here and we had a 3-day holiday. bad time to be a goat but otherwise quite bracing! and now the weekend is nigh so we shall do more of the same!

a burnt roti and memories of a gurkha

tonight's dinner - dal chawal and a roti - took me back 30 years to my first meal with a fine body of men: the 3/11 Gurkha Rifles.

i was a mere beardless youth at the time with pretensions of serving the country. and the gurkha regiment seemed to be the best place from which to do so.

i distinctly remember grumbling about the quality of the meal - the 1st day of a training camp under the benign gaze of a [surprisingly for a gurkha] 6 ft tall subedar - bhim bahadur chhetri. known as BBC behind his back [never in front of him for he had a habit of pulling out his kukhri and running his thumb along the leading edge with a rather menacing glint in his eyes]. he had seen combat in 1971 so a burnt roti was a mere bagatelle for him. besides he was the mess chief so we couldn't mess with him. BBC was the man responsible for the few times i almost stopped eating. but he had a fund of stories and late at night when i was part of the quarterguard for some misdeameanour or the other and he was suitably primed with rum he told us of gurkha traditions, of battles inner and real, won and lost. but for all his story telling he was a terror on the field and struck the fear of god in us ungodly youth.

move forward 17 years and i was in darjeeling. i went to ghoom loop to pay homage at the gurkha war memorial and came across a man on a wheelchair who looked strangely familiar. i did the homage thing and was walking out when the man in the wheelchair called out "baxi". in a voice that was disconcertingly familiar, loud and authoritative. the shoulders straightened automatically and i turned back. straight to a dusty field near deolali. it was BBC. but a BBC who seemed to have shrunk. was this the same BBC who had kept me up for 3 nights for not polishing my boots? i walked up to the wheelchair and knelt besides the man who had demolished a bunker single handedly in1971. took his hand and felt his thumb. serrated and full of the power of a gurkha. he had retired and returned to his home. he still remembered my grumblings about those meals in that dusty field near deolali. and i was grateful that of all the men he had commanded or trained he remembered me. all because of a burnt roti.