I picked up a German word 'liebchen' from somewhere long ago, and I called my little girl Lichibin. Today is your birthday, and as a family ritual, I gift you a story straight from my heart. Happy birthday, Jashan, my love!
OLIVE GREEN TROUSERS
We had Monty to thank for the OG's. He made them part of the school games kit when we were twelve or so. Before that the games kit did not have any long pants, except whites for four or five ceremonial days a year. Thick , coarse, cotton. Invariably ill-fitting. No shame. Ideal for the roughest treatment. The OG's could take us anywhere.
And we were happy to be going 'anywhere'.
'WE' meant four of us - 78, 142, 194, 208 - Huppi, Fatty, Atal, Bachhal - FT, AD, LJ, RH (this dawned upon me 45 years after we left school!). School boundaries were made for us - to define where the fun began. Rules were ours to mould and merge into and become invisible to masters on duty.
We were on the edge of the Cliffs before we were chest-high to the black bears who lived near them. And we used the way up from the Tiffin Top - Land's End path before we knew the one which went up from the khud below the tennis courts (now Lower Baski). There was a grove of pines along the steep slope that went and disappeared over the edge of the cliffs. About four feet ahead of the treeline was a fence of barbed wire. The mist gently blew up the precipice another few feet beyond the fence and kept the lush grass wet and slippery.
Our teachers had taught us well, the schoolboys before us had taught us well, and so had the tough lives that our parents led. We took pride in the hard work and sacrifice of our parents - everyone did, in fact - it came with the times; elders' lives were respected rather than judged. A perfect blend of caution, courage, and faith was ingrained by conditions in every human who lived an outdoors life. And the daily life of an average household would be termed 'shockingly outdoors' today.
We slunk past the outcrop of boulders somewhere in which the bears had their home, very quietly. Before that we had been making quite a racket as we climbed the narrow trail through the pines and ringal bamboos - favourite food for the bears - to make sure that any who was nearby would hear human voices from afar and saunter away from the trail. We got to the edge of the trees. And we had the good sense to hold on to the tree trunks and NOT try to go and touch the barbed wire, not foolishly defy gravity on the slippery and steep slope. We hunkered down in the trees, our mouths agape in awe, fully comprehending that beyond the barbed wire lay certain death! When I came back to the Cliffs after many years, the landscape had changed entirely, The fence and those trees had all gone down over successive years.
I returned to work in the school thirty years after I had left. Robby and I did every trail again, and more. And now there are parts of the hills of Nainital where she has been but I have not. The Easter Monday picnic was held at Tiffin Top, and we were pained to learn that a large portion of the high schoolers had never been up to Dorothy's Seat! Over-protection; elders fearful of shoulderinging the 'blame' if something happened. This was the new order of the world. 'Something', in the case of walking up to Dorothy's Seat meant a bruised shin if one slipped on a path where saree-clad tourists walked every day. No one talked of a 'responsibility' to see the boys and girls grow into consummate young people with confidence on their physical and mental capabilities, to let them learn to live and rejoice in the wondrous sights and sounds that nature had to offer them.
For nine years, we took it upon ourselves to take the whole passing out class twelve to the Cliffs in the last day or two of their time in school. We would first head to Dorothy's Seat while dawn was just breaking, wait excitedly as the sky lit up, stare open-mouthed at the huge red ball that took its own sweet time in peeping up from the horizon and then seemed to hurry upwards in a rush to start its work for the day. Then we would snake our way through the Python Valley, which was freezing in early December and the frost crunched under our feet. There I would regale them with lore of our mountains; they would lift logs and study animal tracks and balance along fallen trees and listen to my cock and bull tales and make up stories of their own that they would some day pass on to their children.
Then we would walk the ringal forest trail up to the Cliffs. And every year for nine years, thirty-odd young people would fall absolutely silent when they skirted the top and looked down at the awesome vista that lay ahead of them in whichever direction they looked.
And I, I would thank my god for the millionth time, for Huppi, who was always our brave, dashing and imaginative leader; for Fatty, who was was the most intelligent and the most nervous one and who consequently made every plan better and surer; for Atal, ever reliable, strong as they come, compassionate as anyone could be, knowledgeable to an unbelievable degree, full of stories of faraway lands and adventures, an unfathomed reserve of wit and humour all the ten years we spent together. And, of course, there was me - very easy to get along with; physically always the weakest one in the group, yet not shunned even once. I cannot say more about myself; but once on every trek or on each escapade, they would carry my rucksack when I was 'konked out' or pull me up a drainpipe to the dormitory window that I did not have the strength to climb up when we returned after midnight from a film show in town. We were glued together, that way, not once did anyone give up on any one.
I think we were already upto our tricks before we were big enough to go from Horsman Wing to Dixon Wing. We had shoe boxes with stag beetles in our lockers, with holes to let the air in, caught mostly from the beautifully blooming hillside below the Infirmary. We had a cave and a chimney to hide in in the khud below the Horsi Field (now Upper Baski) towards All Saints'. (Much later, maybe forty years, a couple of boys decided to miss 'my' swimming finals and used the time to go down to town and get some whiskey, just for fun. They hid this in the area below the Lower Tennis Court (now basketball). It took me less than twenty minutes to find their cache, poor chaps. Much later in life, we understand that the elders have all done before us what we try our hand at now. Also, the elders take time to understand that the youngsters have a right to as much 'mischief' as they went through in 'their days'. Love you, Arjun and friends!)
We would have just entered teenage when we decided to go through the tunnel below the Big Field. There was a drainage tunnel going down from behind the cricket screen at the north end of the games field and opening into the khudside near the Upper Tennis Court. Having grown up on a staple fare of World War 2 pictures like The Great Escape and course books like The Wooden Horse, the tunnel just had to be negotiated. We were small enough to fit into the very narrow space - sneak into it surreptitiously after the Sunday morning games when the school went up for lunch. Huppi, as always, would lead, Fatty and I would be somewhere in the middle, and Atal would be the one at the rear, strong enough to egg us on , in case we needed egging. On times like this, there were always some others too; Gulli would have been part of almost every escapade and excursion. Chou, a few times, maybe. Others who happened to be along. Anyway, we made it through all thirty to forty metres of a tunnel that would have made any escaping POW proud. And we evaded capture by the enemy forces roaming all over the campus.
The adventures grew as we grew. Soon we were climbing and jumping out of badaam trees while out on marathon practice evenings. The legendary Teelu (Jasbir Singh Dhillon) had used his mountaineering skills and gone rappelling down the face of the waterfall below the Golf Links. There was no way we could acquire those skills, but the never-seen pool at the lower end of the waterfall beckoned. Every time we went down the steep hill beyond the fence at the edge of the Lower Golfies, we reached the top of the waterfall and returned exhilarated but unaccomplished. So an alternate route down had to be found. One Sunday,we ventured out onto the narrow ridge at the top of the Echo Hill and climbed down its south face! It was something that no one would ever attempt again, and after a slow descent of more than an hour, the last twenty metres were mostly an uncontrolled slithering fall with shale and stones raining on our heads. We don't know how we lived through that one! The waterfall was as promised. And the way back was a hungry jungle trek, surviving on stream water and wild 'Chinese apples', towards Khurpatal and sneaking back into school. (Almost 40 years later Tiffy, Robby and I rediscovered that waterfall and walked up to where the pool was, from the new motor road called Russi Bypass. The water had changed its course a bit and was no longer falling down from heaven and spraying anyone who cared to be sprayed.)
We graduated to bigger things. Huppi brought in angling gear, and we stood on boulders in the stream at Khairna and learned how to catch fish. Then we would jump into the pool below and swim to our hearts' content. Somewhere along, we had picked up that we must know what lay downstream before we entered flowing water. It was a measure of precaution that stood me in good stead in all my later years.
We rode our first motorcycle at Bhuru's farm. We rushed down to Ramgarh to raid apples and returned with 'bhuttaas'. Pindari Glacier was our first long trek, I think.
We walked through the Corbett National Pork from sunset to one o'clock at night, before the times when it was flooded with thousands of tourists and hordes of vehicles, and the tigers were tolerant enough not to make a meal of young people singing at the tops of theit scared voices in the pitch dark traversing thirty one kilometres from Dhangari Gate till Dhikala. They were blessed days without telephones, and we were let in at the Dhangari Gate just a few minutes before the curfew time of sunset because we had told rehearsed lies that we were going only to the nearest Forest Rest House at Mohan or Ghairal, I forget which.
We walked up from Manali to Rohtang Pass on a high altitude trail to the solitary tea hut where now there are hundreds of houses in the village just short of the Pass. We made it just as it got dark with help of the merciless driving of a local person who had come along when we were enjoying ourselves at a wayside stream many hours downslope. He had known what trouble we would be in if we did not reach our destination by nightfall, and he relentlessly drove us on without uttering more than a few words. The family at the tea shop gave us their two cots to sleep in; I think there were five of us, and an icy draft blew snow all night into our faces through chinks in the tin and mud walls. Our guide had another forty kilometres to walk into the Spiti Valley carrying a goatskin sack heavy with flour.
We lit cooking fires beside streams, walked up and down a hundred glades of heavenly trees, swam down the irrigation canal at Chorgalia, slept on a pavement at Siliguri because cops had chased us away from the railway platform and a place of worship nearby wouldn't open its gates to us in the middle of the night, swam in the Dal Lake. I mention these because everywhere we learned; in the Dal Lake we learned how to stay still and very gently slip our legs out of the weeds below or they could entangle us and never let go. That panic kills.
We ran behind a train on the tracks on our way to Kashmir till the Guard himself pulled us up into his little coach at the back (This time it was Tola, Atal and I.) On our long journey back from Srinagar, Atal and I dozed fitfully sitting in the doorway of an express train simply because it was the only place we could find to sit in. A burly Sardarji pushed us to one side roughly and sat down beside us. Then he stretched a muscular arm across us and grabbed the steel bar across the doorway. Soon Atal and I were sleeping unconscious with our heads resting on his arm. We slept a straight four hours, and he did not once move. When we woke up, he just got up and went away. Atal mentioned it before I did when we finally got in touch after a gap of more than forty years.
Then, one day, school was over, and we went our separate ways.
About twenty five years after school, maybe more, Huppi came to me at Nawab Nagar. It was a beautiful autumn day, and we took a bunch of children out to the 'wilderness' around a seasonal water drainage channel, the 'Nadi', to look for shells, fish and colourful birds. My son, maybe six or seven asked, 'Papa, can I go into the water?' I said something like, 'No son, you'll wet your clothes and it's very cold.'
Huppi gave me a look that told me his thoughts before he spoke aloud, "Surdy, what's wrong with you?"
I do not know how many sages see the world as clearly at the moment of their enlightenment as I saw it then! In went the children, pants and all; and up the haystacks and trees, and anything else that came to their minds! Never again in all the years have I said, 'no!'
And that, has been God's biggest gift to my family. Young people who dare to live! And oldies who haven't done too badly, either!
And I am fulfilled.
Thank you, Awesome Foursome, my soulmates out in the world! Thank you, kind God! It has been an incredible trip, and there is still more to come.
Thanks, olive green trousers that went everywhere we went.
.................................................
And we?
'50' brought his doting family up to school one day when I was working there. We went all around the campus, old friends full of laughter. And he proudly showed his two boys many hidden nooks and crannies where he would smoke cigarettes, sometimes laden with ganja shared by campus workers. A year or two after they visited, his lungs cashed in.... That day in school I understood why the four were never five even though he was with us almost everywhere.
The rest of us are around at sixty two or sixty three.
Atal has carried his dream self wherever work took him, mostly in the U.S. of A. He is a rightful hero to his family and friends. He has held many people's hands when they were lost and alone. And he smokes too much, way too much. And from all of us I say, "C'mon buddy, kick the habit. Please, just let it go."
Fatty has led life as expected of his genius. Very early on, he sailed through an entrance exam that only very few people even of his capability crack. He entered the monolith of the great Indian Railways, and never looked back till he was not pushed right to the top. He brought his boys to Nawab Nagar once maybe twenty years ago, and my heart swelled to see him as he was. Now he's retired and i am sure he has much to look back upon with warmth and pride. And forward, too.
Huppi lived it as he was destined to. Many exciting years in tea gardens in Assam, many more in various parts of Africa. I don't know if I ever told you, he was the one who introduced us to Wilbur Smith, and we would all resonate with his tales out of Africa if ever he were to tell them to us. His farm and mine are twenty insurmountable kilometres apart, and we are so secure in being close that we have not met more than once in ten years. And yet, he has always been an inspiration pointing unseen towards the great outdoors.
Me? I'm okay. Same old barely-strong-enough-to-keep-up and will-someone-hold-my-hand me.
It's been a great journey. Fantastic, actually!
We pass on the best gleanings from our legacies to whomever we can. And very soon we will find a way to get in touch again and look back and bask in the glow... maybe light a few more fires...
(Atal has already started the ball rolling, calling up at regular intervals and pumping up the old hormones!)
(You three fellas, please write down what you want to, and I will edit this post to include anything you write.)
