Category Archives: Stories: fact or fiction

I tell stories, true and false.

An evening at Joet’s Bar.

Posted on by

I have come to attend the 50th anniversary of the Naval 300 Squadron, This is the jet fighter squadron of the Indian Navy that my father sometime commanded.

 

It has been a beautiful evening, the Bogmalo Beach Hotel which I remember being a huge pile of a building as a girl, is actually a rather small – very enchantingly located hotel. The sea is a monsoon grey and roaring – supremely enticing, but the life guard and red flags on the beach preclude me trying to go for a swim. Also childhood memories of ‘portuguese men of war’, poisonously, stinging, jelly fish that come with the monsoon.

I have met most people here after atleast 25 years and some more like forty. They are all older and greyer, but strangely enough, not a one pot belly – even at 75 and above they are fit and dapper and walked at a brisk trot across the beach to old Joet’s Bar.

What stories I have heard today and I am sure will continue to hear. Some, I have just realized how few, have been heard before, but most not. Strange how one can spend a life time with a parent and not know a quarter of their adventure stories. For that’s just what they are, real adventure stories. We think we go off and organize expeditions to climb mountains or raft down a river and it constitutes high adventure. I have been listening to the masters:

After the war with China in 1962, the naval air wing decided to see what was required to deploy a squadron at quick time across the country. So off they went as far North as they could, the airfield  ( a hand rolled concrete runway) at Gorakhpur was It. Talk about organizing and flying 16 sea hawks across the country from Coimbatore to Gorakhpur in the middle of the monsoon, relying on sight flying.  These guys did it, in hops of 600 kms (only amount of fuel their plans carried). Under the clouds, over the clouds, descend to find the road/ railway line/some marker, find flooding for miles and no landmarks. Their supplies and spares, because unlike the airforce they did not have support air craft, came on railway wagons across the country. Maintenance, fixing the planes, all the paraphernelia of running a military airbase done camp style.

Ever hear of aircraft driving on Bombay roads? – they did. Sea hawks, with their wings folded drove to Santa Cruz airport  down the Eastern highway in Bombay, so they could continue flying because the carriers catapult was out of commission and they could not take off from it. People along the road were  saying Namaste to the passing planes, because with their wings up, they seemed like they too were offering their greetings to the early morning populace. What a hoot that must have been.

More stories are sure to follow, I hope anyone reading is going to enjoy them as much as I have been doing sitting at Joets on a lovely monsoon evening, feeling the wind, hearing the sea and listening to tales from a band of very special men who sit around laughing at what they call antics and I call sheer grit and courage.

What school meant?

Posted on by

In this, the 50th anniversary of our school, I have been asked to write what was it that school gave or meant to me. Abstractly I probably know, however  how does one define it. Giving it a shot and hopefully they will find it good enough to put in the new coffee table book?

I joint Welham Girls school in January 1965. A few weeks after my 7th birthday and passed out in Dec 1973 after giving my isc exams a few weeks before my 16th birthday.

What went into the years and how they shaped me and my life is what I am challenging myself to explore here for the first time.

If I take memory back it throws up incidents and moments. In connecting those or rather remembering them may appear what school meant.

That first cold day, in new grey slacks and overcoat –I was a gray little drab of a person, and I met just such another one. Also holding a parental finger and  completely unaware like me, that this was to be the start of a new chapter in our lives. We were suddenly to be left all alone in a completely alien environment of which we had been completely uninformed.

So Joy, my very first friend and I stood in the back verandah of the ugly – also gray junior school building and watched our parents walk out the gate. Not at all understanding that everything familiar was disappearing from our little lives for what would end up being the majority of our transition from little girls to young women.

I think that was the first and possibly most important learning – alone and a necessity to cope. There were no choices here. You couldn’t even sink you had to swim. Accept the change, cope with what came, survive it. Does that lesson toughen you – yes and how?

This is something I’m figuring now as I write. At that point I wonder if  Joy or I even had a thought in our heads. We were just two very lost little girls who cried themselves to sleep that night in utter confused misery. And spent the next few weeks in what the seniors termed the crying club.

In the dining hall that first morning, I was the last person left, trying to finish my breakfast –till then a bad, slow eater. I was hustled out and told to go stand in my line for assembly. I had no idea what assembly was and even less of an idea  which line I was meant to belong in. I can’t remember how I sorted that, but I must have somehow – so I guess there began survival. After a few more unfinished meals I become a gluttonously fast eater and still am. And after being yelled at for loitering and not being where I was meant to be I also learnt to always know where I should be and how to be there well in time.

One night in number 3 dorm as I hacked into my pillow with the kind of cough only 7 and 8 year olds seem to get, an angel in a white nightgown, with one sleeve pinned up (Mrs. Ayling) appeared with a little glass of warm brandy, honey and lemon and sat with me till I slept.  There was never anything that quite matched the most wonderfully warm, cared for feeling that delightful lady gave one lonely child.

Another night. Possibly a year later and I can’t remember the matron, but I do remember the lesson.  During the afternoon in a spirit of generosity I offered someone the pleasure of sleeping with my favorite doll – Padma.  Padma had become for me my only family, my security blanket and the person that kept the demons away; now all those needs generally emerged at night. So during the day magnanimity reigned. Once it was bedtime and Padma had gone to her new,for the night, home. My poor bed had become the terror house of the world. So I went and tried to get Padma back. However whoever had her did not want to be magnanimous in turn and I became ‘a very bad girt who was not willing to share with her friends.’

Who was to understand what other terrors were manifesting themselves. So Padma stayed away and I coped with a million insecurities, and somehow after that – though Padma was still much loved she ceased to be the person who looked under the bed first before I put my feet down.

Did any of you ever have all of your friends suddenly start treating you like you had bad breath and BO all combined. Yes, sent to Coventry: shunned, turned backs, no one talking to you,  and you don’t know why – so you go –

a)    Who cares, they’re just being bitches, I can be by myself, walk alone, eat alone, read my book, not share any fun or chat or tuck or not even go to the playroom on Saturday night.

b)    Then you decide – ok I’ll ask my best friend, but she is the one who turns most viciously away.

c)    So start thinking back what could I have done? And sure enough you find it or some kind soul takes pity on you and finally tells you.

d)    Then of course you didn’t mean it like that, but hey. That’s how it came across – so now say sorry and understand what you did and how it affects people and eventually yourself.

You know this is what the  HR companies are creating programmes to teach people,

We got it growing up.

I also discovered books make great friends.

And you know that thing called a counselor /  therapist that you pay lots of money to go to when you are down, out, confused?  Ever tried an old school friends’ get together – whether with one or two or twenty. They start with lunch and can end with breakfast the next day and you can get everything off your chest, have twenty opinions, all from full lives lived and experienced. From people who are not going to give you jargon, but who care, lots of support , and someone who will actually work with you to help, help, help, if needed.

I sent both my girls to Welham, mainly to get that, a support system for life, plus the confidence to just be you and a sense of survival, which allows you to have that confidence.

You know, it probably happens to all kids sometime somewhere, but if you are home – I think someone is always there to make things better after any and every hard learned lesson. At school, you just learnt it and dealt with the traumas and plodded on. It leaves you with a cushion to bounce off all your life.

Nothing can take you down, if before you were ten you were able to fight and win. Wow, but you can take on the world today, do anything, and go anywhere, what do you have to fear any longer. It can’t be hurt, it can’t be loss, it can’t be alone.

What a lesson in survival and sense of self!!

It doesn’t end there; Miss. Russel took nature study classes in the hedgerows of Dehra Dun. Who knows about the telegraph wire of a spider? I am still showing it to schoolchildren that come on nature camps with me.

That trees when you sit under them and listen, will talk to you, their leaves murmur their branches creak and a falling leaf on your cheek can be as comforting as a kiss. A stream, or river will talk too – it batters itself loudly against a rock wall, because the rock is hard and unyielding and it murmurs softly onto the next soft sandy bend because the sand is soft, yielding and comfortable.

I am writing this while I sit in my camp on the banks of the Ganga and have used that allegory so many times to so many impressionable, learning minds. How much I hope it stays with them as much as it stayed with me.

Jew Singh making Shakespeare much loved instead of not understood and fearful.

I don’t know how much one can keep remembering and writing about?

Maybe these are all things that are not uniquely learnt only at school. But for me that’s where I was and that’s where they were learnt and they shaped my life.

Today I live for 7 months of the year in a tent on a beach on the banks of the Ganga River above Rishikesh. It is more my home than any other.  My shower hangs off a tree, I cannot express the luxury off hot water pouring out of a branch while you watch a full moon setting on a silvered river, or a brilliant peachy sunrise lifting the mist off mountains.

That a corporate team-building workshop feels like a children’s birthday party comes from those growing years.

That I consciously run as many  nature trips for schools as I can possibly manage (while still retaining my sanity) is because I got lucky enough to learn what I learnt – it definitely needs sharing,

I think school taught us to be able, come whatever.

A river rises and….

Posted on by

My home is a tented camp. I run very satisfying trips for myself and the people who come share it with me.They come holiday, have a break, raft some amazing white water, hike lovely hill trails, meet a culture and a people for whom time and distance have no measures. Like me they get a glimpse of a different perspective.Some have pure fun, some touch base with the earth and themselves.

Know that feeling when you stand barefoot in the shallows? One wave washes the sand out between your toes, and the stresses with it. The next embeds your feet deeper and that rooted calm seeps up. Most go home replenished and rejuvenated. Some don’t, “there’s creepies in the tent, beasts in the night and sand in everything!” Discoverers all of us, in some way or other .

Is life satisfying?

It wasn’t always so. I grew up loving the outdoors – swimming, sailing, riding, trekking, snorkeling, climbing. Walking through the fields, sitting by a gushing tubewell, fishing for tadpoles in the canal. If I’d been the son, I would have been a gentleman farmer, watching over my acres and seeing my crops grow. Quite content. A different story.

As it is. I married the right (very wonderful) man. I was a happy wife, became a good housewife, became a happy mother, I lived in a big house, ran a beautiful home. Entertained bankers and CEOs. For those around me, I had it all. It just didn’t seem like it to me.

I became a stressed housewife, an irritable mother; the ‘wife’ ceased to exist, the person ceased to exist. It was
a shambles. The way it was meant to be – wasn’t. How was it meant to be? It fell apart.

The only tenuously right thing, for me, I seemed to be doing was helping friends run an adventure tour outfit.
I opening a similiar one of my own, in partnership with a colleague. It limped along for me as I limped along, still trying to be the perfect homemaker & mother, fulfilling a preconceived notion of how it was meant to be. The task loomed like an unclimbable mountain.

Coming upto the river and camp, running a trip – was like coming home. I was happy, fulfilled, I felt successful. But the guilt loomed – like I was running away, should get home and face the responsibilities. That magical river seemed to be watching it all. Probably decided a sharply taught lesson in building and rebuilding, choices and decisions, and the inevitability of flow, was in order………

For those of us who live on the banks of the Ganga, she’s a friend, soulmate, provider and playmate. I lie on her waves and feel the most comforting sense of solace and peace. She not only washes away sins, but also fear, pain and sorrow. The same waves toss you playfully in a kayak and tumble a 20 foot raft like a handkerchief in a washing machine. She had always been benevolent and providing.

We woke one morning, after three days of incessant, unseasonable rain, to a swollen, brown river.
She’d risen some seven to eight feet through the night and was lapping just outside my tent. It was still raining and she was still rising visibly.

The people already in camp were evacuated. The group meant to arrive was stalled.

The staff and I started taking down tents closest to the water as fast as we could. Setting marker rocks to ascertain the rising water; praying and believing it would stop soon. We’d never seen anything like it.
She didn’t stop. All the tents came down, wet and heavy they were dragged and dumped from high ground to higher ground to still higher ground. The kitchen tent being located above what we considered the high water
mark, was left for last. The whole day had gone in manhandling gear into the forest above the beach. With dark setting in and no beach left, we clambered through the forest to the kitchen tent. Water lapped just outside, still rising. A raging torrent flowed past with piles of debris whirling along in it’s angry spread.

It was time to abandon it all. Pulling gear out of the kitchen with water lapping at our ankles we finally abandoned the kitchen tent to the river – it was too late to save it.

There was nothing more to do, it was dark, we were tired, wet and cold. We sat under dripping trees amidst our piles of semi salvaged equipment- beds, trunks, life jackets, potatoes and bread scattered through the forest
and along the path leading to the road. Every so often we moved higher and watched as she grabbed a tent, a pole, a crate of drinks that we were too tired to move.

She rose all night. We abandoned our camp to the monkeys and any life that chose to make use of it for that long rainy night and went to Rishikesh town. Wet and chilled with all our worldly possessions lying on the forest floor in the path of a wildly raging river.

The next morning dawned bright and clear. The monkeys had eaten all the bananas. The kitchen tent was wrapped around a boulder. The dining tents were buried under a fresh layer of flat white sand where earlier there’d
been rocks.

In two days the beach had appeared again. She’d lifted and flattened, added some sand here and taken some elsewhere. In a weeks time she was back to her sparkling green, lilting self and the only evidence of the
complete devastation was to be seen in the floor matting of the tents hanging in tatters from the tops of the trees above us.

Camp was dried out , up and running: it was hard work but it didn’t feel like it. It got done happily: the sun shone, the birds sang, tents got dried out and mended, kitchen got set up under the trees. It all got put together perfectly.

As I went about doing all this, the thought kept going around in my head – why is this so easy? From complete wipe out to rebuild with humour and cheer. No panic, no despair. The lesson needed to be applied to the rest of my life: choices that make you happy, not feeling guilty about chasing happiness; its not frivolous, it’s essential. Duty, jobs needing doing, responsibility all flow comfortably along.

A large home, a high flying job? Success needs to be an individual measure.

I am successful: I wake up and hug myself in glee, I do the same at night. My home is a tent on the river – if need be it will get bricked, mortared, thatched or tiled. My shopping and provision run is a twenty minute walk and a round drive of fifty two kilometres. I walk up to my jeep through the forest, new plants and flowers, myriad birds. I drive along a lovely hill road with beautiful views of the river and mountains. My suppliers in Rishikesh are friends, small town life has time. We catch up on news as my lists are checked and packed.

The power of dreams and the power of nature !
This is what I want to share with a host of us out there, whose dreams, much like mine, must be getting buried under a myriad humdrums and never become important enough! Please keep them and nurture them, it’s what
ultimately gives you that huggy, champagne feeling. The world becomes a great place to be.

Dreaming Dreams

Posted on by

(An article written for the Cosmopolitan, in it’s avatar of a ‘womans’ magazine’ the year it was first published in India.)

I’m a dreamer. I’ve dreamt forever about writing a story, but I don’t do it. I just imagine: best-seller, childrens story, romance, thriller. I plan plots, schemes, ultimate sex scenes and then get distracted – I stop to watch a bird, shadows on the hillside, stories in the clouds, the way the wind blows sand into patterns, sunlight on the water. I thought a wave broke in the same place everytime, some do, and some flow along for a distance. On the sea, the light catches one spot, until the light shifts. On the river, a gleam gets caught and sped along by the water.

Ethereal things, clouds, shadows, patterns in the sand, gleams and dreams – I found there’s reality to them.

For seven months of the year my home is a tent on the banks of the upper Ganga river. A magical place to live. I woke up this morning with an immense bubble of pure, joyful glee in my throat. Hugging myself and grinning at the leaf shadows dancing on the walls of my tent. I needed very much to share it.

One of my oldest dreams was to live some place that had both mountains and the sea ( as in beaches, surf, swimming, walks through the forest, mist in the valleys). Now as I look outside, there’s a huge beach of silver white sand, the blue green water of the river and early morning mist on the mountains. It’s not the sea, but it sure is very like my dream come true.

Another of the numerous things I dreamt about was learning how to kayak, properly. I can kayak, I know how to sit in it and keep it balanced. Also move it in the direction I want. But, I want to be able to dance through the water, be part of the river, currents, waves. I just haven’t pushed hard enough to learn. It’s that same questioning guilt thing – is it important enough, isn’t there more that needs doing, do I have the time? I don’t have a spray skirt, the waters’ too cold, my arms aren’t powerful enough!

Today the cracked red kayak sits before me on the sand, the sun’s sparkling on the water, there’s nobody in camp to feed my fears and the waves are inviting me to dance. I stop thinking, grab a life jacket, strap on a helmet, push the beautiful craft into the water and paddle away. I am headed for that little rapid upriver from camp. It has rained last night, the water level is up, but my fears and questions are gone. I am going dancing.

This cracked red boat slaps merrily through the little swells – a boil catches the tail, swings us into a perfect pirouette. The bow goes up, the stern dips gracefully, my heart does a somersault and we glide onward.

Hugging the shore, dancing from rock to rock we go, our aim to hit the top of the rapid for the final riotious waltz down. The occasional errant current catches us for a naughty frolic, but my cracked kayak and I make it.

We sit parked behind a rock, watching those fat waves curl and flip, gathering our courage.

Four swift paddle strokes, point her nose, angle slightly left, lean downstream and whoopee – that huge wave kisses my cheek, floods into my skirtless kayak and into that  wild waltz we swing. Spray  in my face, the waves spin me around and toss me up. That lovely wallowing, water weighted boat puts her nose down, swishes her tail, surfs, swims, swings her hips and down the centre we come in the most joyful dance of all time – the river, the cracked red kayak and one un-learned kayaker.

When I learn how to do it, I’ll probably do worse. Today I danced with the river. It’s a high. That bubble of joy still fizzes in my throat as I shower in my makeshift stall – it’s hidden in a gully, the pipe hangs off a tree, I’m curtained by a wildly flowering vine of red flowers. Purple shadows on the hills, silver river, birds coming home to roost, the lamp glow from my tent and the first stars in the sky.

It keeps amazing me how powerful dreaming and nature can be.