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 !