Thoughts in Words

At that time, that is a full decade ago from now, he was commanding his Battalion as a full-fledged Colonel. In Infantry to command the same Battalion into which one is Commissioned is quite coveted and looked forward to. For each Infantry Officer that is a dream. He was fortunate in this aspect. For many that is the ultimate. They don’t even care for further achievements! By then he was quite deep into married life too, with three children. The youngest was only just about three, then. His wife, who has been with him for about seven years by then, was looking after the Regimental Nursery School. The wife of the Commanding Officer has quite a few duties to perform, mostly de facto. Nursery School was one of those. Ever since their marriage she had been with him mainly in Instructional Institutions, either when he was a student or was an Instructor and on a UN mission. She had thus never noticed him in his full Regimental Regalia, though UN uniform was quite impressive. One

Perhaps I should title this piece as “A Tryst with Truth” or “My Experiments with Drugs”, but that would sound perilously close to plagiarism and downright pompous in case of former and too humble in the latter. (Why Nehru thought of you know what as “tryst” beats me!) So I will stick with LSD which stands for Lysergic acid Diethylamide, whose chemical formula is, just to indicate the complications, C 20 H 25 N 3 O. Obviously it is not a simple chemical as H 2 O! You see the 60s and 70s were the years of the Flower Children and Hippie Culture and Woodstock and Jimi Hendrix. So there was always a magnetic draw towards this unholy fun for those who were in their early adult hood like me. But middle class morality in which I grew up was (don’t know now) a very strong thing! It was extremely difficult to break out of that shackle as a rebel. One reason might have been that it was not a shackle really and another that I actually did not have any compelling reason to rebel, imaginary or

Service in the National Cadet Corps was compulsory for all college students from 1963 to 1968. It was during this period that I was in college. My first day at the parade was a memorable one, being a total fiasco. I was getting ready for my first parade. I wore the dress and was trying to tie the boot lace, a leather one, and it broke! With ingenuity I knotted the two pieces and managed to tie the shoes. Then came the belt, a web belt. I could not adjust it to my waist size. So I carried the belt and cap in my hand and stood line when somebody barked something. When the ustad came around on inspection, he ridiculed me by laughing at my condition and showed me how to adjust the belt and the right way to wear the cap. I felt like a clown in that odd uniform and that ridiculous belt which covered most of my belly and in that cap which was ready to fall off any moment. I knew in my heart of hearts that the breaking of the boot lace on the very first attempt was a bad omen. My NCC