Adventure Camp

I've finally finished that article on life in the Army that was harrying the life out of me. It took almost a notebook full of notes and two nightouts, but is still pretty terrible. It somehow reads like a bad recruiting brochure.

However, writing and researching it dredged up some long forgotten memories. Thanks R for that long reminiscing chat, it really helped. I recalled my experiences at the Young Lions Adventure Camp, that I attended in the summer vacations when I was 10 years old. I had quite forgotten about it (and this might've been my trauma response) until our chat that night. The camp was for the children of officers, to give them some experience of life in the wild. It lasted ten days, but after three, I called home and bawled so loudly, my parents came to get me. Three days were quite enough for me though K- trooper that he is- stayed the whole ten.

When they said the camp would provide hands-on experience, they weren't kidding. We lived in tiny tents pitched on grass. The facilities were rustic, to say the least. During the welcoming dinner, we were asked what our favourite music was. Everyone yelled either Ricky Martin or Celine Dion which were both names I hadn't ever heard of then. Their reason for asking was apparent the next morning when we were woken up at 4 am by Ricky Martin proclaiming his love for Maria. We had to rush, bathe in icy and not very clean water and then report for PT in the ground by 4:30. The end of some pretty vigorous exercising was proclaimed (rather ironically) by Celine Dion informing us soulfully that her heart would go on. It was in camp that I conceived my deep and lasting hatred for that song.

Breakfast would comprise muddy toast and a strange looking poha before it was off to the field for different sessions and workshops. In my three days, we had workshops on fire safety, horse riding, rope climbing and most interestingly, knot tying. Knot tying was most interesting because the first half of the workshop comprised only a lecture by this old JCO. He constantly mispronounced knot as nut. So, I spent the first half hour of the lecture wondering what thumb nuts were, till he finally whipped out a piece of rope and demonstrated.

Evenings were times of peace and quiet in the camp, we would gather in this communal tent and socialize. I made many new friends there, some of whom are in touch with me to this day. Camp wasn't all that bad, though I was horribly homesick and wanted my mother, after being woken up at 4 am two days in a row. Still, the event that pushed me over the brink was the snake's visit. On the second day, when we returned from morning PT (Celine echoing that her heart would go on) there was a tremendous commotion in the girls barracks. A snake had been found in a tent. Soon, these brave looking officers came running with pitchforks and killed it. After breakfast, the snake was displayed to us with its head cut off. We were all invited to touch it while an officer told us with relish that it was a harmless grass snake and that it would make a tasty meal on the field. I took the time to be quietly sick in a corner. That afternoon, the snake was cooked in gravy and served for lunch. That evening, I called home and bawled till my parents promised to come and get me the next day.

I was told that the day after I left, they demonstrated how to kill chickens. You're supposed to flick your wrist while holding a live chick by the neck, till the neck breaks.

Something to look forward to

Life would be so colourless if we didn't always have something to look forward to. There are the tiny things like birthday cake and weekends, and the bigger things like going home or the end of exams, but I always like to have some small secret pleasure tucked away in the recesses of my mind. Then, no matter how bad the day has been or how tired I am, I know there's the promise of something pleasurable ahead.
I'd love to know what you look forward to. Do tell me in your comments.

Where to begin...

My nose is a lot better now, thank you. It drips a lot lesser and is only a faint pink today.
On the other hand, the ennui of the past few days is costing me dearly, I'm running behind on pretty much everything.

I've been asked to write an article on life in the Defense services. You'd think I'd be overflowing with words on the subject, I certainly thought I would be. But I'm drawing a strange blank. I have pages and pages of notes, points to mention, anecdotes, but no structure and no place to begin.

How do I describe in 800 words, a way of life so alien to civilians? A life where every man who sees your father on the road snaps his heels together and says "Jai Hind Saab". A life when you transfer schools every year making new friends each time, some of whom you discover ten years later on orkut, changed beyond recognition. A life in which your father goes away when you're eleven for Operations, and you aren't told where he's gone or what he's doing. A life where a huge community of women left alone with their children in a military camp, spend their time cheerfully organizing Coffee Mornings and Welfare Meets.

I love the Army life, it has made me who I am, and it has given me a tremendous respect for these men and their families who have such indomitable spirit.
Still, none of this is getting me any closer to a smashing opener for my article, and the clock's a ticking.

I Hab A Cold

My body's a little strange. Generally, you're supposed to have a cold, which you carefully nurse so it develops into a fever that then merrily runs its course and leaves you with a hacking cough as a parting favour. This season, my body went all topsy turvy on me, beginning with the fever last week and waiting till I was almost recovered to launch the cold on me. I bet the graveyard cough's just around the corner too.

I've sniffled so much in class today, I annoyed myself. I've sneezed seven times in the past 30 seconds (Yes, I counted) and my eyes are watering so badly, I can hardly see what I'm typing, so please excuse any spelling mistakes. I slept this afternoon with my nose pillowed in a handkerchief, because it's been dripping like a broken tap all day. I've lost the ability to pronounce certain words properly and the moment one nostril gets unclogged, the other one fills up. I've given up hope that I'll ever be able to breathe freely through my nose again. My entire outlook on life has changed, it seems hopeless and filled with hours of shivering, red-eyed torture.

I had a bunch of whimsical posts about frivolous things like Mumbai autos and south Indian food lined up for posting here, but none of them suited my mood. I know this blog generally contains the 'Stars are God's daisy chain' type of posts, but I'm only human. I really needed to rant. And now, I'm off to bed. At ten thirty. Life can really suck sometimes.

My pillowcase

Yesterday in one of my rare fits of cleanliness, I cast around for a rag to wipe my table and mirror clean. The only one I could find was an old, ripped pillowcase. The pillowcase happened to be one I'd embroidered about 8 years ago, as an anniversary present to my parents. Looking at the faded cloth and trailing stitches brought a whole wave of memories.

Very few of you know that I once did a great deal of embroidery. It was in the summer after 5th standard, and Amma was at her wits end with two rambunctious children always in the house. So we were unceremoniously packed off, K to basketball and I to embroidery and music. We lived in Yol then, a tiny military camp next to Dharamshala. Summers in Yol were sunny and carefree. We lived in a house on the side of a mountain. The top of the mountain would be covered in snow every winter, but in the summer, green things grew and honeysuckle covered everything. If you peered down the side of our mountain, you would see a grumbling stream cutting through the valley. On the other side rose more mountains, covered with pine forests and further away- with snow. One of our favourite walks was to wade across the stream and lose ourselves in the pine forest. Whenever Appa was free from his Commanding Officer duties, we would take long hikes to try and reach the snow covered mountain we could see from our terrace. We never did though...

But I digress. I have always admired embroidery and the lovely things you can create with it. After those classes, I also learned to appreciate the tremendous labour that goes into it. But for my restless 10 year old fingers, it was too much to ask to sit patiently and set stitch by tiny stitch. I raced through all the stitches, from the basic chain stitch to the herring bone and shadow work. A cross stitch tablecloth plagued me for two whole months before I gave it up in disgust. Amma was showered with embroidered handkerchiefs that summer, they were the only things I had the patience to make. Appa was also proudly gifted a large white handkerchief with a violet in the corner. To his credit, he carried it around for weeks.

So when my parents' anniversary came around, it only made sense to embroider something for them. We were big on DIY gifts then, and K and I would always compete on who could make the better present. Most of our presents were shamelessly mercenary like cardboard furniture for Barbie or friendship bands, but they were always received by Amma and Appa with exclamations of joy and pride. Monogrammed pillowcases were the way to go, I decided. They would put K's bookmarks to shame. I ruffled through my embroidery book and found a lovely rosebud pattern. I decided "His" and "Hers" would be too much effort, so reasoning brillliantly, settled upon a giant "A". It could stand for either Amma or Appa for weren't they both as one?
I worked late into the night and set the stitches for a huge, curving "A" with yellow rosebuds in the side. The next morning, my parents found the pillowcase gift wrapped and ready on their bedside, and they made several very proper exclamations.

That pillowcase travelled with us, from Yol to Jabalpur and to Secunderabad, then to Meerut and then Secunderabad again, and finally with me, here to Mumbai. I gave up embroidery long ago, but I could still point at that sweeping "A" and proudly tell people that I made that when I was twelve. Now though, the pillowcase has lived its life. It was finally used to wipe my mirror clean yesterday. But it deserved one last hurrah here, before it went. You see, I embroidered it.

It's raining again

Mumbai weather... I've lived here three years now, but I still can't predict it. All I can do is always always carry an umbrella with me, between the months of August and October.
This morning, sun rays from my east-facing window woke me up at an unearthly hour. Now, at 4 in the afternoon, it's dark and rainy and the sky is rumbling like it ate something bad for lunch.

My moods are very attuned to the weather. If it's sunny, I feel sunny, if it's cold, I'm rather sniffly. Rain- that makes me reflective. I've wondered about my purpose in life, about how much I can procrastinate the mountains of work I'm reluctant to do, and generally contemplated my uselessness. (This is not a hint for you to leave reassuring comments contradicting me. I'm not that desperate) In short, I've thought about just about everything these past three hours, but Nuclear Physics. God, give me some concentration!

PS: It's definitely a sign that I'm out of ideas if I dedicate an entire post to the weather. But I had rather blog than mug, so bear with me.

Time and sticky sweets

Two topics that would seem hard to link together in a metaphor, right? But somehow I managed it today in semiconductors class, in that half a minute before I jerked back to attention again.

Time sometimes feels like those brightly coloured sweets you see in shop windows. You pull and pull at it and end up swallowing a great chunk. It isn't possible to delicately nibble, you don't get the flavour or enjoy the sweetness. They come in all colours, from vermillion red to emerald green, to sickly yellow and burnt black.