Growing up lesson

As a 7-year old kid I had the most amazing collection of realistic looking toy guns. As a result, while my father was freezing at Se La top as the Brigade Major and his battalion, 18 Rajput was clashing with the PLA at Nathu La in Sikkim, we were ensconced in Separate Family quarters next to where the Sub-Area CSD canteen and the Chief Hydrograher’s residence is. Below us lived Lt Colonel ML Chibber (subsequently the Army Commander of Siachen fame) and his daughters along with other kids were perfect recruits for my ‘infantry platoon’ that I naturally commanded. My cousins, Vir Vikram (now the captain of the Mayo College Old Boys’ cricket team) and Vijit Yadav would, when visiting, be also be given दूध के पतीलाs as helmets and dummy rifles so they could be my Ghatak team.

In those days we could buy chewing gum, and each wrapper had a country’s flag that you could then paste in your little album which the marketing geniuses of the chewing gum company had distributed to all impressionable kids of the area. As a result, each person’s album was in severe competition among the peers. Trouble was, a blasted chewing gum packet with 5 sticks (hence five flags) cost 10 paisa, and if one asked mom for it, one first got a tight slap and then a lecture about how one got cavities in one’s teeth etc.

The Agniveer scheme was yet to be thought up by Army HQ or the PMO (they were five decades behind us), but then a platoon of kids is a lot of fire power. A carefully chosen spot on the road was then selected and covering positions in the drains sited. A speed breaker (again unheard of at the time- Mr Gadkari please note) was made with bricks and two sentries placed on either side to collect ‘toll’ (again we were ahead of the NHAI). Cyclists and pedestrians were exempt, as were two wheelers, but all cars were fair game. If we were lucky, in the afternoon, at least four-five of them would use the road! Daily collections were 40 to 60 paisa, which meant our albums with flags were filling up fast. As the Platoon Commander, I always came first, always and each and every time (again, far ahead of Field Marshal Chetwode who had not met the new breed of Indian politicians!) when it came to distributing the flags. The duplicates went to the others, in order of seniority!

For a week or so we were these gum-chewing, gun-toting extortionists who even spoke with an American drawl while collecting 10 paisa from each driver. No one objected, and paid up with a benign smile. I was even begining to think of a career in organised crime when an army Willeys jeep came trundling along. It had a white hand painted on it with a red cross over it, which meant it was a ‘left hand drive’ vehicle, but that had little significance as far as our platoon was concerned.

The jeep was being driven by a Gorkha soldier, and he dutifully stopped at our barrier. Maybe what happened next was why years later they exempted all army vehicles from paying toll tax! Our demand for the mandatory 10 paisa seemed to flip the ‘Johnny’ who sprang out of his seat and not only slapped me, but also all my platoon, irrespective of them being males or females. Guns, milk पतीलाs (read helmets) went flying, and some of my crack ghataks in a disgraceful display of cowardice ran homewards crying and shouting ‘mummmieeee!’ We even lost the coins we had collected until then!