Tag: short stories

A rude naval officer !!!

I know I will be castigated and made to walk the plank for the title! Fact is that the term ‘rude naval officer’ is an oxymoron, an anomaly. The officer may hurl the choicest expletives and epithets in the work environment or at a stag party of batch mates but in a social environment, he is an epitome of dignity and grace – the quintessential gentleman. As a matter of fact, most naval officers can put the knights to shame in matters of chivalry and even compete victoriously with the ‘nazakat’ of Lucknavi nawabs. So it was rather surprising when we – self and wife – did happen to run into a rude naval officer.

Once upon a time, in the bygone decade of 90s, yours truly was posted to Mumbai. We were staying in the Officer’s transit accommodation pending allotment of a house. My wife was in the family way – in her last trimester. I was posted onboard a ship which sailed frequently but then, this was not a bother since we were staying in the cocooned safety of naval environment. The naval community is close knit and there is never a dearth of assistance.

Meticulous planning is the hallmark of a naval officer! So I had studied the delivery date given by the Gynecologist and planned my annual leave so as to optimize my home stay post baby’s arrival. Any layman would immediately point out the flaw in my ‘meticulous’ planning – it was based on the assumption that my wife delivers the baby on the exact date predicted by the Gynecologist. So, my wife’s going into labour coincided with my ship being at sea!

The wise and the old amongst us may recall a world sans mobiles. In the early 90s, there were these ubiquitous black telephone instruments which were highly temperamental. Unable to get in touch with any friend, she went down the mess parking area looking for someone to give her lift to Asvini, the naval hospital. She found a young naval officer standing next to a car and requested him for a drop to the hospital which is less than a kilometer away. Ordinarily, such request would have elicited a response marked with alacrity and concern. But horror of horrors, the officer actually demurred. He seemed reluctant and tried to stall the trip. He even suggested that at times the labour pains are false and hence there is no urgency to go to the hospital. After a bit of politeness and time, my wife’s patience was running thin and she demanded that she be dropped to the hospital immediately.  The officer reluctantly went over to the driver’s seat, started the car and drove slowly to the hospital. After what seemed like an eternity and zillion jerks, they reached the hospital. My wife was whisked away to the maternity ward. We never met this officer again for a long time and so, I could not, out of politeness, express my gratitude. At the same time, we were appalled at the indifference shown by him.

About 5 years later, we were posted to Goa. We ran across this officer at a naval party. This time, the officer shed his reluctance and proactively came to meet us. After the usual small talk, he turned to my wife and said “ Ma’am , I am sorry about that day. Actually it was not my car. And I had never driven a car before in my life so I was petrified to drive one – that too with you inside”

The General

( Disclaimer :Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely co incidental)

Anti corruption drive is the rage of the season. Media is going ballistic over errant ministers and bureaucrats while the common man derives voyeuristic pleasure at the discomfiture of hitherto untouchables’ thereby increasing TRPs of the channel.  In saner and sober moments, I think of myself as a member of moral –keeping middle class and enjoy the discomfiture of the mighty and the corrupt when they have the mike thrust into their face.  I regard the whore soliciting customers upfront on the roadside more honorable than these morally decrepit souls justifying their self serving ways in well phrased language.

Sitting in the salon, these screen events seem remote, kind of removed from personal life which goes on in its unassuming middle class way.  However a recent happening demonstrates that we all do get touched by the monster one way or other – and therefore its mandatory that we stand up and fight against corruption.

I had just resigned my commission as a naval officer – from serving at the pleasure of the President of India I was now to serve at the whims and fancy of the Company Director! Being in the navy has its plus points – stay in South Bombay, Naval school for children, clubs, golf etc. When I shifted to the big bad civilian world, the major hurdle was getting the kids admitted to a good school in Mumbai. We tried our best; we were booted out by some principals whilst others made vague promises. In desperation, we decided to shift to a nearby city and get the kids admitted to the Army School where I expected some kind of preferential treatment. Unfortunately, the admission picture was not too rosy there either.

Now I am a principled kind of a bloke who does not like to subvert the system for personal gains. But I am also a doting father – a role which over rides all other roles. At this juncture of life, I was lucky enough to have a  friend who was a close relative of the army top brass in Bombay – General Bones. A phone call from the General to the Principal of Army School would have ended all my woes.

My friend obliged by putting up my case to her Uncle. However, he declined saying that it was against his principles to subvert the system and that her friend (me) should know better than to request a serving army general for such favours. Duly chastised, I accepted the General’s logic and admired his moral stance. I also tried to realign my moral compass since I felt I had lost ground on the moral front by trying to take undue advantage of my friendship. Unfortunately, I could not or did not set off on a pilgrimage to atone for my sins. I got the children admitted to schools in Bombay, drawing consolation in the fact that I have done the morally right thing – taken the path of harder right than the easier wrong. I mentally saluted the General for bringing me back on the path of virtue and righteousness once more.

A couple of years passed – kids settled down to their school. Friends scattered. I was watching the TV. The anchor was reporting the most recent scam saying “General Bones has been summoned  for Court of Inquiry investigating his alleged role in illegally obtaining a flat in Ideal Housing Society ”

The Fauji Patient

The military ingests perfectly normal, fairly intelligent human beings and converts them jnto soldiers. The hard nuts refuse to get digested and are excreted out intact while the pliable ones are metabolized and assimilated into the system.

To be candid, the general populace does carry the impression that defence personnel are a tad dense in their upper floor – a notion which is difficult to dispel. Unfortunately there exists a host of factual and fictional anecdotes which augment the belief. I have one such anecdote to narrate.

Capt RK is a retired army officer serving with us – a smart energetic person. Now, we all know that the city of Mumbai plays host to a variety of viruses – some known, other mutants. RK happened to get afflicted with the mutant variety. Initially, like a true fauji, he refused to accept the fact that he was ill. When the fever persisted and we insisted, he reluctantly took sick leave. The local doctors could not get a handle on the mutated virus. He finally went to a swank clinic where all those pedigreed foreign returned doctors practice. The good old days of General Practitioner who examined the patient, drew on his experience and diagnosed are long gone. Today it’s science and gadgets. So poor RK was subjected to a battery of tests, diagnosed as having some unpronounceable disease and was prescribed a 3 day course of different medicines. These medicines came packaged in a single strip with day 1, 2 and 3 marked in column. The patient was required to take the daily set of red, blue and white pill placed column wise every day.

RK started the medicinal course convinced it will cure him of every ill. However at the end of third day, he felt worse and had blood in his sputum. He went back to the flabbergasted doctors complaining of worsening condition.

The flummoxed doctors ran another battery of tests which yielded the same earlier unpronounceable result. Now those fancy foreign returned doctors just couldn’t fathom what was wrong – the diagnosis was positive, the prescribed medicine appropriate but the end result opposite and inappropriate. For once, the super gadgets seemed to let them down.

The clinic had an ex fauji as the Administrator. He overheard the case discussions in the executive lunch room and looked up the medicine strip. He went to RK and asked “Did you eat the medicines regularly?” RK nodded his head in affirmative. “So you ate the red, blue and white coloured tablets each day?” the ex fauji asked indicating the set of medicine meant for Day 1, 2 and 3. “No sir” came the classic reply from RK, ” I ate the red coloured ones on the first day, blue coloured ones the second day and white ones on the last”

CHAPTER III – REPRISE

I peer through the gathering haze into my laptop to read the FB message ‘Hi Nadeem,  Howz life treating you’; darkness slowly engulfs me. I hear a door open followed by a high pitched scream but on the threshold of new world, I may have well been mistaken. And I don’t care.

Heaven (or Hell?) has a nice antiseptic smell to it. I slowly start becoming aware of the environment – the smell and the sounds. My eyes open to revelation that after life is full of fancy gadgets and tubes protruding from my body. I can make out the beeping of technology which has obviously pervaded the after life too. As my eyes become more focused, I can discern my wife sitting at the bedside. Has she followed me here? I force myself to look around, to think rationally. I discover that I am in ICU, very much alive. The scream I had heard was succour in form of my wife walking into the bathroom.  Unfulfilled in love, unsuccessful in death – I feel waves of nausea and disgust. The drugs are welcome as they push me back into the void.

The next time I surface, I am better prepared to face the reality. And so is my family! I see my son and daughter and wife around – looking expectantly at me, smiling, trying to reach out. My mind is blank. The outflow of blood into the bathtub seems to have obliterated all the memories and desires. I feel relief at having a family, at having someone by my bedside as I re surface into mortal life.

Over the next two weeks, I rest, recuperate and rediscover the joys of being a mortal. The family keeps me company, keeps me going on. I rationalize – Powai is near and real, Gravesend by Tilbury and far. Who is more important – the one who made you feel alive or the one who kept you alive? Confusion. What are my priorities? What are my responsibilities? Unrequited love is romantic but is story book romance real life? Can life really be lived in the pages of a romantic novel? My brains struggle with the questions and slowly start taking control of my heart – for good or bad.

The day of my discharge – wife is running around to get the papers cleared. I have conditioned myself to look forward to going home and spending time with the kids. Memories have been entrapped in some dark, dingy corner of my mind. I am undead. There is this tap tap of someone walking in the hospital corridor. The tall woman is wearing high heeled knee length brown Jimmy Choos, a dark green Dior skirt, soft beige blouse and a matching jacket. The hair is soft, silken, shoulder length wavy; the skin honey coloured and dewy fresh. The face is made up to accentuate the high cheekbones, the eye shadow and mascara highlight the smoky brown eyes. The smell of Elizabeth Arden awakens my senses as I realize that she has learnt my lessons on being a sophisticate quite well. She smiles and says in a husky voice “Hello Nadeem – I have really missed you”

CHAPTER II – REQUIEM

Eternity is a long long time. And I could feel my temporal resolve weakening as I waited for her response on the Facebook.

It is surprising how life can obsessively revolve around waiting for a single response on the Facebook. My Blackberry had the account, the office computer had the site opened and minimized as also the PC at home. Every moment spent in waiting. Hope and anticipation waxing and waning everyday! Bouts of intense despair where the air seemed poisonously heavy and the lungs incapable of drawing it in. Disinterested and divorced from the mundane happenings of everyday life. Hope is all I lived with, hope which was increasingly giving way to dark, dull despondency.

The temporal self is weak; Eternity a vast chasm for the temporal to bridge. To wait for Eternity, I needed to divorce the temporal and take an ethereal avatar. Maybe time as we know ceases to exist on the ethereal plane. Maybe, the astral self could cross the oceans and watch her sojourn in the temporal till it was over and we were united. The idea slowly began to take root.

I had always been a sybarite – loved the good things of earthly life. But those were means to an end and without her presence in my life, meaningless. I followed elaborate rites for my passage from the temporal to the ethereal. No loose ends to be left behind, no other attachments except for my singular goal – Her.

I sit in the bathtub – soaking luxuriously in warm water with a bottle of Elizabeth Arden’s Mediterranean poured into it. I sit surrounded and immersed in her smell as I remember her. A mellifluous voice renders a popular composition of Ghalib, romantic nuances float in the background. The crystal glass on edge of the tub is filled with my favourite single malt on the rocks – the temporal savouring the last pleasures of the physical world. My laptop runs a slide show of all the images I have stored of her and my brain makes those nostalgic moments come alive. And I watch the white foamy perfumed water change colour – from innocent virgin white to a promising irrevocable red. My sights are dimming as I concentrate on the slide show – locking the last vestiges of her physical image, imprinting them on my soul. I have started feeling cozy and lightheaded when there is a tong from the laptop.

I peer through the gathering haze into my laptop to read my last message.  It’s from her and reads ‘ Hi Nadeem, Howz life treating you?’

Oxymoron and Moron

There are two primary stereotypes of armed forces officers created by Bollywood in the minds of the general populace. The first is that of the dashing hero who dances and sings in the Regimental Mess, gets the heroine, goes and lays down his life fighting the enemy leaving a grieving but proud widow behind. The second stereotype is that of an idiosyncratic retired officer who smokes a pipe, uses ‘Bloody Hell’ a trillion times and disciplines everyone around him to the merriment of the viewers. By creating these quintessentially extreme stereotypes, there is no room left in people’s mind for the real life flesh and blood officers who have taken an early retirement.

Personally, I find the larger than life Bollywood stereotype image extremely detrimental when dealing with the corporate HR interviewer. The general perception is that defence services officers are all spit and polish, magnificently endowed with brawn and deficient in brains. So when it comes to the extremely complex corporate world, HR concludes that we won’t be able to cope up and will end up antagonizing everyone by our idiosyncracies.

The truth is that an armed force officer is fairly intelligent and rational. By virtue of facing diverse and difficult situations, he is flexible and adaptable with an ability to innovate to achieve the desired goal. As the saying goes, we are trained for all situations ranging from the ballroom to the battlefront. And if I were to quote my more brash colleagues, from the bedroom to boardroom! After all, how many corporate CVs can boast of the capabilities and expertise to handle diverse tasks ranging from taking the lady of visiting foreign dignitary sari shopping, providing succour to populace during calamities, planning operations with umpteen variables and staring down enemy guns? All this and more, in extreme operating environment, 24X7!

“But Commander, you don’t have the corporate experience or domain knowledge” is an oft heard refrain. As a mid to senior level professional, I feel that “capability” rather than ‘domain knowledge’ is more important. But then, I have decided to quit the services and seek a career in the civvy street, so I need to play by the new rules.

However, I must confess that the new rules are not easy to play by. Self praise is frowned upon in the Services and I still blush when I have to assure the HR recruiter that I am good. HR folks don’t make it easy either. I recall an interview wherein I was trying to draw the analogy between HR as practiced in the Services and HR as advocated by Gary Dessler, author of the book on HRM followed worldwide. After listening to 10 minutes of my earnest explanation, the interviewer stopped me and queried “Who is Gary Dessler?”! Neither is it easy to dispel the mistaken notion that all faujis are dimwits. During the initial phase of my most recent interview I told the interviewer” I want to assure you that an intelligent naval officer is not an oxymoron”. The svelte lady flashed a brilliant smile, nodded understandingly and asked “ Oxy what?”. I had no choice but to reply “Moron!”, realising fully well that I couldn’t possibly crack this interview!.

Meanwhile, my search for a job continues…..