(SPECTACLED WOES) IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT

-


In my childhood I loved to go to my maternal grandparent’s village. Riding tractors, watching thresher separating grain from chaff, feeding green fodder into the chaff cutter and bathing on the tube well were sources of adventure and enjoyment.   It all ended the year I got spectacles for myopia.  

The first day itself when I was moving towards the fields, I could see a group of girls giggling and saying   Dekh padhaku nun, bahar vi ainak laa ke ja reha hai (look at this studious guy, he is going with spectacles to relieve himself.)

The next day was another fiasco.  My Nani (maternal grandmother) asked me to write in the account book the grains being brought in at her atta chakki (flour mill), while she was weighing it. In one case Nani told me to write unanja kilo (49). I had not formally learnt  Punjabi counting but my mother tongue being Punjabi, I guessed it was 59 Kg since it rhymed with ekvinja (51), bavinja(52) etc. The lady who deposited the sack of grain had a look at what I wrote.

 In the evening when she came to take back the atta, she insisted on taking 59 Kg as per what was written in the book. Though Nani remembered what she weighed, she had to honour what her grand child had written. While going back I saw the lady wobbling under the weight of extra load. As per my parent's teachings, I volunteered and carried the  sack for her to her house.  Losing ten kg of atta  and seeing her grandchild assist the lady, thoroughly annoyed my Nani. In no time I was branded as 'pada likha bewakoof'(PLB) or an educated idiot.  The word spread and PLB was my nickname in my maternal grand parent's house.  On her death bed my Nani said to my mother, "jeeto, teri tan kismat maadi hai, aihdi ainak te padai te paise barbad na kar" (Jeeto you have all the bad luck, don't waste money on his spectacles and studies). 

At one point I also thought that I was a PLB. A beautiful girl in the school commented, "you look like an intellectual". I didn't know the meaning of intellectual. So, I didn't react as desired. I saw the dictionary a month later when the girl had already moved out on transfer.

The title of PLB remained with me till I topped the university in BA Honours.

In the Army I had great difficulty while  training in the academy. In one speed march at night, while crossing the Tons River I was stumbling on every second stone as my sweat on the lens was creating problems with the refractive index and I was not able to judge the depth.

In the commando course Subedar Khalid, the instructor said, "while coming down on the Tarzan swing look at me. I will lower this red pennant and you leave the pulley to fall into the water."

I raised my hand. Everyone was surprised. I said, "Saab I will not be able to see this small pennant from that distance so if you don't shout 'down' you will see me pasted like a poster on the wall on the other side."

Khalid saab understood and I was able to complete my Commando course.

I avoided swimming in the fauji pools. Swimming without spectacles ran the risk of banging into some lady and thus landing up in trouble. In 2020 I ordered powered swimming goggles but that year God gave us the COVID.

During the courses and  sand model discussions the best of my friends used to avoid sitting next to me, lest the instructor will call out, "That officer sitting next to speco khalsa..........."

When someone proposed her name for the marriage, I remembered having seen my wife with thick glasses. I remembered guruji's ( my Hindi teacher) words
चश्मे वाली प्रेमिका, चश्मे वाला प्रेम ,
नयन बेचारे रहे प्यासे, मिला फ्रेम से फ्रेम।
बोलो तारा रा राl
She had got her corrective surgery done. Now, I am eagerly waiting for the onset of cataract, so that I can get rid of spectacles.

My woes in an operation will be narrated in a separate episode.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 58 - WISDOM OF VETERANS

-
Image
  " Kisi bhi Jawan ko kabhi gali mat dena (Don't abuse a Jawan)," said Subedar Bhagat Singh (Retd) when I met him during my first leave after passing out. Subedar Bhagat Singh met me when I was coming back from the shop after purchasing milk.  I had touched his feet. As advised by my father I was to touch the feet to pay my respects to all the ex-servicemen of the village, when I met them in public,  irrespective of the rank they retired. It was already twenty minutes and the discourse of Subedar Bhagat Singh was not coming to an end. I could get away only when someone called, " Tipu teri mummy bula rahi hai (Tipu your mother is calling). On the second day again, I met Subedar Mela Singh and he took off. All this while my mother was waiting for the onions for the tadka . After four days my mother got fed up of my standing in the street, listening to the ex-servicemen. She banned me from leaving the house. In those four days I got some good practical lessons f
Read more

IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 52 (SPARSH)

-
Image
IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 52 (SPARSH)     There is an old joke. A lovey dovey couple was traveling in Punjab Roadways Bus. Public display of affection was a big taboo those days. So as per plan the girl said, “I have a headache.” The boy said let me treat you and he leaned to kiss her on the forehead. She said, “I am fine.” So every five minutes the girl would come with a pain in some part of her body and the boy would make it vanish. At a point a man sitting in the rear seat taps the shoulder of the boy and asks, “Kaka tere kol bawasir da vi ilaj hai? (Son, can you treat piles also)      I don’t know why but every time I attempt doing something with SPARSH I am reminded of this old joke. Though the only and far off similarity I can see is that the Hindi meaning of SPARSH is touch. Or maybe in the back of my mind somewhere I feel that SPARSH was a treatment to the non-existent piles in the erstwhile system of pension disbursement.      I was among the first batch to move on to SPARSH in
Read more

IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 51 (CULTURAL AWARENESS)

-
Image
 IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 51 (CULTURAL AWARENESS) “ Khalse, your religion doesn't believe in co- existence," said a senior from South India. "What makes you feel so, sir?" I inquired. "Your people chant in Gurudwara, Raj karega khalsa baki rahe na koi ." I smiled and said, "In this it is not Baki but Aki which means impure. So, the sentence means that the pure (can be from any religion) will rule and the impure will cease to exist. " He didn't speak for a few seconds and then said, "I feel bad because I ill-treated some of the Sikhs when I was deployed in Punjab post 1984. I was carrying that bias in my head." "Don't worry sir. "   I could still see regrets on his face so I said, "In 1994 I was deployed in South Kashmir. On a cold morning I asked a man moving on foot with his daughter, " Khidhar ja rahe ho (Where are you going?)"  I was on road sensitization duty 2 kilometers South of Anantnag town.
Read more