The army officer who impressed me the most, did so by being utterly unimpressive. An ex-fighter pilot - medium in stature, speech, and demeanour, more like a middle-rung manager or a well-to-do small entrepreneur. Nothing like the arrogant fly-boy jocks you see anywhere. No Abhinandan style, wannabe South Indian film hero’s moustache either.
Despite being dyslexic and petrified of heights, I had a fetish for choppers and nurtured a secret hope of getting a private helicopter licence. Till my age, bad eyesight, the severity of my dyslexia, and the domestic and financial imprisonment of being a caregiver and a lousy breadwinner permanently relegated it to the basket of broken dreams.
This gentleman flew MiG-21s when in the forces. So I asked him what it actually felt like - the adrenaline rush, the euphoria, the sense of freedom, or being one with the limitless sky. His reply was something I was completely unprepared for...
“Well, you are strapped into a very uncomfortable seat with extremely poor frontal visibility, sitting in front of what is essentially a rocket in terms of thrust. All we cared about was fulfilling the flight plan - climb to a certain altitude, fly a certain distance, in one direction or another maybe do a manoeuvre or a barrel roll. By then you are almost out of fuel, and your only concern is landing safely.”
That was the most truthful, matter-of-fact account from any military man I had ever heard. So much for Top Gun! More like Zero Fun. As descriptions go, it comes second only to that of a cavalry colonel whom I asked how the Indian home-grown Arjun tank measured up. He replied with a shrug, “Well, they work...”
Among other serving or retired officers I came across, most were unassuming, at time completely unremarkable gentlemen. The majority were in the forces to earn a living, a career like any other. Not because of some self-sacrificing patriotic binge, as it's now fashionable to say. Some were corrupt. And, as in all sectors involving uniforms and guns - plenty were full of arrogance and shit.
The Army intelligence personnel though, the few I had interacted with, were vastly superior to those from civilian agencies - both in analytical skills and processing data. Though most of them were old-school, from an era before narrative-building and logo design took precedence over field data and operations.
Personally, though, I have never been at ease with the armed forces. The reasons are neither ideological nor entirely based on their track record. Though growing up in Northeast India during the insurgency years - when military excesses were widely documented - this too had a role to play.
Like many things in life, the seed laid in something more mundane: In this case, a lifelong resentment towards an uncle.
A career military officer, a known philanderer, a bully first to his younger siblings and then to his wife and children, and a condescending asshole to the rest of us. I remember him vaguely from childhood because he only visited us to entertain his military friends at our house. Bringing only subsidised canteen liquor, while my father - on his university lecturer’s salary - paid for the rest. His excuse was convenient: Our grandmother disapproved of drinking. Likewise, I was told that he borrowed money from everyone and rarely returned it. Thankfully, he was usually posted elsewhere, so we saw little of him.
During one visit, when I was in high school, I remember sitting with them in our kitchen. He first told his son, who was a year younger than me, “If you don’t study well, I’ll send you to Guwahati to stay with him,” pointing at me, the very nadir of human existence.
Shortly after, when my mother asked where he was posted, he replied Ahmedabad. I naively asked if the city was really as dirty as reported, as the newspapers then were full of stories about its civic issues.
“Have you ever been there?” he snapped.
“No, I read it in the papers,” I replied.
“Then shut up!” he roared, beaming all around as if a mission had been accomplished.
That day, the line was drawn.
We rarely saw each other’s families after that. He expressly forbade his children from interacting with me as a bad influence, not that it bothered me in any way. Something they dutifully adhered to with abject filial piety to this day.
After retiring, he became a school principal, tried being a lawyer, and held a token position in a trade lobby. During that time, whenever people asked him about me - because to them, he was my uncle first - he would go on tirades about how useless I was, unemployed at thirty, and a burden on my father. Conveniently negating my occupation as a freelance journalist and automotive writer. At the same time, never failing to boast about his own children’s academic qualifications and career.
For a short while he headed the local Sainik Board, but was reportedly eased out. When he died, he was cremated as a civilian, not as an army officer befitting his rank.
Towards the end, we had a few cordial meetings and even shared drinks at my father’s house, exchanging surprisingly friendly banter. For a change he was respectful. I also wished him on every occasion - perhaps the only nephew who did, something his own children never did even once to my parents.
I could never quite understand why I did it: I had neither any respect or affection for him, nor anything to prove. Perhaps it was just my way of dealing with my deep resentment of his early and persistent disrespect.
And, I never once stepped inside his house.
Needless to say, relations with the next generation remain cold, bordering on nonexistent.
The wall holds. What began with my uncle’s persistent disrespect, hardened over time into an antipathy towards encompassing the institution that defined his life.
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