ONE LONE STAR

ONE LONE STAR

It was my habit to venture out. Try new things, like once we got into trouble in Sikkim with one of my favourites Sanjoo (Now Lt Gen Sanjeev Kanal). But this incident happened in the deserts. People knew that I used to take long walks alone and love to be with nature. So this late evening, we were free while the major portion of the group was yet to fetch up. Everybody was busy setting up camp. We were also tired after a long journey. This part of the desert was not so lifeless, there were trees and shrubs at distances.

So I went walking. Enjoying the evening breeze. Till I reached a high dune with a sharp ledge. The site was beautiful with the sun that had just set beyond the horizon and was still colouring the sky with its hue. I sat on the warm sand as the wind blew, making it uneasy at the edge as if it would just give way. That creepy feeling below is good at times. And then I decided to let go. It was the best slide of my life, as I felt like a child being wshed down by an avalanche of soft sand. I could climb back up no more so tried talking a detour. It was dark I did not have a watch, and with all my knowledge of astronomy, I could only see the North Star. I could now measure the time lapsed but could not know the exact time. I had to return!

I knew people get lost in deserts, there was no other lights, no guidance and there were life threatening sidewinders too. I kept walking ... hours had passed but no camp in sight! It was past midnight surely. Then I got very tired and exhausted, my water bottle was almost empty. Gradually fear was gripping me, as all sorts of thoughts haunted me. Surely I wouldnt die ... but things could happen. I was lost.

After a lot of deliberation I decided to conserve my energy and sleep under a tree atop a dune till it was dawn. One on my bad nights that I ever had, desperately waiting for light. Everything was so silent dark and cold. But as people say that I can sleep anywhere and snore!

I got my morning tea with a "good morning saab"! Afterall I was sleeping so close to the perimeter of my camp position!

That's getting lost in the desert!

CONVERSATION with SURESH

It was a hot afternoon, even the birds were panting with open beaks within the branches of the trees. I was monitoring the movements of convoys, sitting a distance away from the dusty track with my operator noting down details. I was reading a magazine perched on an unstable camp chair, with an eye on the movements. Then I saw him generating light conversation with a village boy, must be 12, sharing some "khira" that he had brought.

After a while he gradually got closer and came near me, trying to look into the little pile of colourful magazines. He was Suresh. As time went by we got talking. His interest in me , my uniform, what I do was unnatural. He knew so much about the men in uniform. He was studying in a school and his best past time was watching army vehicles and men.

Was he not tired of the heat? All alone, no friends. His only friends were people like me with whom he spoke easily and wondered where we came from and where we went. Men of all shades, cultures, languages, looks! He always wandered. He was not tired, he liked being near people in uniform. Then asked about my son!

He lost his mother when he was young and stayed with his aunt. He does not as to how his mother died, no one tells him. He just weaves stories trying to fit facts and believe in them till they again with new knowledge they dont fit in. But he knows that people did not like his mother...they kept a distance from him. He had no friends, wondered the whole day, ate when hungry and tended to the three hundred sheep his aunt had.

His biggest search was for his father about whom he knew nothing more than that he must have been a "fauji". Thats what people said. Though the discussion generated hatred and animosity, led to rebuking him, wondered what his father would be like?

So he spent time whenever a mlitary convoy passed by, be it the cold nights or the hot afternoons. He was searching for his father...wondering what it is to be the son of a fauji father !

BAJRA KI ROTI

I am very fond of local food. Bajra with white butter and curd is one of them . Even today when i see "them" baking some , I feel like asking for them....social pressures stop me! But once a while I do manage it.

I will never forget that day when a little boy literally ran away with my hot case of lunch. He was sitting on a small dune under a tree whereI had decided to have my lunch. Just then he appeared with a stick in his hand tending his goats. Talkative with bright black inquisitive eyes he had asking me simple questions. He was afraid of our uniform. It seemed that he knew the answers to some of the questions too. He wanted to eat my lunch. When I said that I don't mind going hungry if he really needed to eat. But I would prefer a bajrey ki roti in return. But his behaviour surprised me when I offered my open hot case to him. He closed it, picked it up and ran away.

With no great alarm I got up to look beyond the dune. My driver was also taking his lunch. I waved at him and asked him to follow with the jonga once he had finished. The boy headed for a small lone hut surrounded by a thick interwoven ring of a neat wild thorny bushes. Before I could step inside the precincts, a young woman, whose face I could not see, appeared with a thick cloth that she spread over a cot that had lost its shape. Then came a big glass of light curd, not sweet.

I sat on the cot wondering as to what would happen next. Then came in an old man who sat before me asking questions as if I had comitted a crime. Then he went inside the hut and again came back. I did start feeling uneasy. What if he raised some alarm? No. She came out with a big plate with curd, bajrey ka roti and white butter. I could se her face now, but she hid it well from the old man.

The boy also came and sat before me and said "Now eat, my ma has made it specialy for you." He kept running in and out asking "How many can you eat?"

By then my driver also appeared. She came out with my washed hot case and a forces letter. She asked her son to hand it over to me.

Her husband was in the army. He was also a gunner... he wore the same lanyard., tugging at mine, the boy said.

THE WELL AT RAMGARH

Deserts have always fascinated me. They taught me most of my lessons. I spent most of my army days in the deserts. Today when I talk of nature and mention the deserts, my trainees wonder as to what nature I found in the deserts. Recently at a laboratory at ISABS one had to sketch ones feelings and when it came to the deserts I carried on and on adding details. The activity stopped but my mind went back to the well at Ramgarh. How one afternoon when I had stopped my jeep under the shade of a big khejri the sight of speeding camels that came in kicking dust was overwhelming. so was the calming effect of a line of giggling girls with their matkas. Everything looked beautiful in the golden hue...till the prettiest sight was of a girl who was so silent accompanied by a playful boy.

We had camped there for quite sometime and I had reasons to be under the khejri so often. No not just her, but for the life that existed there. My mind captured every moment, yes she was the heroine. I liked being there. I wished I was the boy who always hung around her, played with all, enjoyed the slush and pranced around. I can write pages on the life at the well and what it did to me!

Then we moved ahead....a month later we were returning that way, but the camp site was changed. I found reasons to go via Ramgarh. We reached the spot may be a little late. Waited and wondered...then started off. Just then that boy came in waving at us. I gathered courage. Asked him "Where was she?"

She was a deaf and dumb girl. Her father was poor and could not afford her marriage. She was sad. One night she walked away and was hit by a speeding truck.