This is the story of my childhood days growing up in an army unit in different states/parts of India. It’s a recollections of my childhood days in the military family quarters, memories return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. I remember the days when I used to barely miss the target or hit it. I have hit the target four times in four different attempts.
The first time I could remember was way back in early 90s in a place called Kimin in Arunachal Pradesh. My mom had sent me to get some groceries from the shop to which I was not willing to go to. I was really upset over the fact that I had to go buy some stuff and as I was walking on the way towards the store, about to turn left, a rival friend of mine (Nandan) who was playing some games with his friends and girlfriends noticed me and started to get smart in front of his girlfriend, called me names and threw stones at me. The stones thrown at me were just missing and were very close to hitting me. I told him don’t act smart and stop throwing stones at me, “oye tuh mujhe phatar mat mara kar, aur yin lakiyou ke bich me hero mat ban ”. I was being teased for nothing, he just wanted to show that off to his female friends. He was so adamant about it and wouldn’t even give it a chance to stop. I was actually just going through my nerves because of how things have unfolded/changed since I was in a rush to get things from the shop. He continued to throw stones at me, and unfortunate for him that I was hit on my hand. The moment I was hit, I was very angry and just spontaneously turned into an angry man picked up the stone to retaliate, my throw was so accurate that it hit him on the head and was bleeding, he started screaming and crying in pain and was running towards his mother inside the house. I realised I was in trouble for being so aggressive, just couldn’t comprehend the whole situation. Scared of my actions and the consequences of it all, forget about everything and made a U turn off to the paddy field to hide myself from the potential danger of being arrested by the enemy’s mother and most importantly my father who was so stern about his son that he would never let me leave my house again because of the idea of coming home with a bad name and reputation. I was so scared of the possibility of getting a good beating from my father because he would never be able to find the truth about my actions and would never let me explain it to him, find the right words for me to express myself in words like I did when I told him that he was the one who started first. I was wearing a singlet and a short, it was July extremely hot weather conditions, the paddy plant/ leaves was very dry and sharp and the sun was very high in there so it was very warm, I had enough of it because it was cutting through my skin and was very itchy, was just trying desperately to get out of the way and get some air and water. The day was coming to an end and I had no other option or choice but to go home and face the consequences for my actions. I somehow managed to get home escape from this nightmare without anyone noticing me but as I was walking away, from the side of the building I heard Saraswoti d calling me Nabin, “aaj baba ko kutai khani vajis hai”. The news of the incident has already spread like wildfire and the people in the area have had their own stories regarding the incident. I had known Nandan’s mother to be a very quarrelsome woman and she was very upset about it, she came to my house and told my parents that I had hit her son and broke his head with a stone, which I came to know quite a few years later when my mother and I had a conversation about the matter.
Second was in Lunglei in Mizoram where I shot the sparrow sitting on the rooftop of our neighbour with a catapult. Third was when I and Bikku brother were walking down the road to the army boys hostel via temple road. A sparrow was sitting on the branch of a tree nearby. Bikku saw it and said he would hit the head of a sparrow. He picked up a few rocks to get a good shot at it but it didn’t work out for him; however the sparrow was unfazed by the fact that the rocks and was not in a hurry to fly, it kept looking around after seeing what it could be. So I decided to take the shot and aimed at the little bird, the moment it left my hand the sparrow was on the ground, my first attempt hit the bird on the head and was down to the ground.
Third was also in Lunglei, where the sparrow was sitting on the fence made with barbed wires attached between them. I was wondering looking for bird and happened to end up in the military camp near the barracks where the fence was used to protect the wood from being used for cutting boards and wood chips, with a catapult looking for birds to aim at and then saw the sparrow in the fence, I loaded the rock in a catapult and released it aiming at the bird several times and the bird seemed to be unfazed by the sight and sound of the rocks. The rock was so close to hitting it and I couldn’t get it off the fence so I tried the next one with a marble, took some time to adjust on the catapult and then aimed at the bird, the marble hit the sparrow just below the neck and was dead on the ground.
The fourth one happened in Mokokchung, Nagaland when I was walking down the street to the horse shed. We were just going for the walk and were trying to pull each other’s legs together remembering the funny things that happened to each of us when we were in high schools and I just shared one incident involving my friend Deven during our school sports week where he was in the middle of a class stretching out his arms and bending down his knees to emulate the trade mark dance moves of the Bollywood actor Salman Khan to which all the school boys and girls around him had a good laugh, he was not aware that the students were watching him as he was going through the dance moves and later realised when everyone had a good laugh and had been laughing at him for about an entire day. As I was trying to explain to other friend he just kept throwing rocks at me to make me stop talking about it because he didn’t want it to be shared, he was throwing rocks after rocks at me so I just said no to him but he didn’t stop. I reminded him that I had a history of breaking heads so please don’t mess around with me with that stuff. He was like oh no it’s just your thinking, you can’t do that every time and was so mad about throwing stones at me. I sensed that things were getting really complicated here at that point in time when he started getting into his own little shell of repeated attack with the rocks and I just picked up the stone and threw at him, it hit him on his head and he was bleeding. I was in the middle of trying to figure out what happened but he didn’t seem to mind it. I took him to the hospital and they did the dressing on his head. I knew that his mom would be upset and worried about him and certainly ask me about the incident. Deven promised me not to tell her about this and told me to make some fake stories to tell her that he slipped while playing basketball. I was like oh no I’m sorry that you were hurt but you didn’t have any problem with that because you wanted your mom away from all that stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment