Monthly Archive for January, 2006

Beyond the Call of Duty

Published on January 29, 2006 in Stories. 4 Comments

In the war that changed the world….
Victory was not achieved by one man….
But by the lives of many.

May 20, 1944
Camp Toccoa, Georgia

More long marches tomorrow. Then obstacles with Cpt. Foley and weapons training with Sgt. Moody. Everyone is dead tired.

My unit, the 506th paratrooper regiment is an all volunteer unit. Our officers drill us continuously. I’ve trained for months and I haven’t even jumped out of an airplane yet. The army has never had an airborne unit before, and that makes the brass nervous, and what makes the brass nervous makes us train even harder.

June 1, 1944
Camp Toccoa, Georgia

Cpt. Foley summoned the Baker company for a briefing. It seemed that we were finally going into the war arena.
This was the big one. Operation Overlord. Air and seaborne invasion of Normandy.
On H-hour D-day, seaborne infantry will attack 5 beaches code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The airborne will be landing 6 hours before H-hour, before the aero-naval bombardments.
We have to catch the Douve river crossings linking Utah and Omaha and protect the flanks of Utah beach. As one of the pathfinders for my unit, I’ll be landing ahead of the main force to plant beacons for marking landing zones. At first light the main force of the invasion will hit the beaches.
If we pull this off the Germans are in for one hell of a surprise.

June 5, 1944
2330 hrs
Outskirts of St. Mere Eglise, France

It was time. I bailed out of the airplane and landed on the patch of land. I quickly removed my harness and moved ahead. I looked up. Pvt. Heath was slowly coming down in his parachute. Suddenly I heard some gunshots. I cautiously moved ahead. There was a lone German soldier ahead. I took aim with my M1A1 carbine and put a single bullet through his head.
I went ahead and around the corner. Pvt. Heath was dead. He was dangling like a puppet from his parachute which got tangled up in a tree. I saluted him and took the beacon. There was no time to waste.

I finally found the dropping zone and planted the radio beacon and waited.
I heard the drone of the planes. The main force was approaching. I saw the ironic white of the chutes opening above the heat of the battle.

The Germans too noticed this and opened fire. Luckily we had the walls in front of the houses to take cover. One guy with a MG42 machine gun was creating a lot of problem. I had to make a quick move to finish him off. I cocked my carbine, shouted to Pvt. Wier to cover me, and rolled to my right. In the middle of the roll, I fired. Luckily it hit the machine gunner. He fired his last shots as he fell down. But I had completed my roll to the next wall by then. After that, it was fairly easy to take out the remaining guards, because they were unprepared to counter this quick attack.
Cpt. Foley urged us, “Everybody move..Come on”. We went on towards the village of St. Mere Eglise.

June 6, 1944
0020 hours
St. Mere Eglise, France

Nobody seemed to have dropped where they were supposed to. I hadn’t yet seen anyone from my unit yet, but luckily I hooked up with Cpt. Foley and Pvt. Wier from Baker Company. We also had men from Able, Dog, and Fox Companies with us… what a mess.

We were getting ready to capture the village of St. Mere Eglise, about 5 miles from Utah Beach. We were approaching through a narrow trench with minefields on each side.

Captain Foley said there’s two platoons of German paratroopers in that village.
I’d say we’ve got a serious fight ahead of us.

Finally we reached the end of the trench. Cpt. Foley said, “All right guys, get set to move, On my command.
“LET’S GO. LET’S GO!!”

One by one, we jumped out of the field into the open ground. That was close to suicide, but we had no other option. The Germans were waiting for us in the buildings ahead.

“MG42′s! Hit the dirt!”, shouted Cpt. Foley, “Get suppressing fire on those 42′s.”

We suddenly heard the drone which was quickly approaching towards us.
“Incoming!”, “Mortars!”, everybody was screaming.
As if we had asked for more, the German had started mortar attack.

However, this proved a little helpful as we could now take cover behind the massive cattle which fell dead on the ground. But it still was not easy with the mortars going on. We had to keep moving forward. We get caught here, we’re dead!
We eliminated the enemies one by one and moved slowly forward, taking cover.
I heard the drone of another mortar shell, coming towards me. It dropped mortar just a few feet ahead of me. I saw Pvt. Wier’s body flying high in the air because of the impact. Another good soldier dead! I started feeling the pain. I also had got some burns and cuts from the shrapnel. We went forward, nevertheless.

“Keep your heads down!”
“Down! Damn it, stay down!”
“Watch your angles”
Cpt. Foley was firing orders. I was wondering which one had the higher rate of fire – his mouth or his SMG!!

When we got close enough to the building, Cpt. Foley ordered me, “Clear that building; toss a grenade. Then get that gunner down on the half-track and let’s go!”
Damn! Why has it to be me always?

I went closer to the window and tossed a grenade inside.
“Achtung!”
“Werfen sie ihn”
Next thing I saw was the grenade was coming back to it’s owner.

“Fire in the hole! Take cover!”
I dived just in time to escape from the grenade.

The Germans came outside by then and we could take them out easily as we were in position.

We finally cleared the building and moved ahead. Next target was the anti-aircraft gun. We took out the Germans soldiers who manned the AAG and planted an explosive.
“Good job, son! Squad, move up, GO GO GO!”, came the order from Cpt. Foley.

We cleared the area of the remaining troops. This was proving to be a bitter battle.

June 6, 1944
0410 hours
St. Mere Eglise, France

“Alright fellas, take 5, but listen up. We’ll hold this place ’til reinforced, but this is just a tiny village in a war and country full of ‘em, so our work has just begun.
“For those of you who’ve seen your first action – welcome to the Big Time. For those of you who’ve seen it before, trust me – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
“We’ll redeploy those German machine guns, setting up a defensive perimeter. Keep your guard up and your buddies in mind. Good work!”

I yearned the war to be over as the words of Cpt. Foley faded in my ears.

Courtesy: This story is inspired by the game “Call of Duty”

Republic Day

Published on January 26, 2006 in General. 3 Comments

Well! This change in topic is partly because I want to break the monotony in the previous few posts. Better put, Republic day was the perfect alibi for me to change topic.


I started loving the Republic day right from my childhood, not mainly because of patriotism (Not that I’m not patriotic).
One reason was that it was a holiday.
Second and the main reason was that there was this republic day parade telecast live on TV. It was indeed a treat to see the soldiers marching to the tunes of the bands and tanks, missiles, helicopters and fighter planes zooming past.

The entire parade takes place in the main vista of the India Gate in New Delhi. India Gate was constructed to commemorate the Indian Soldiers who died in 1st World War and the Afghan Wars. The names of the soldiers who died in these wars are inscribed on the walls.

I always feel a surge of energy going through my nerves when I see this. I wanted to be a soldier. I had this desire in one corner of my mind, but never got the determination to be one.
First thing, I am not that healthy and muscular. They would chuck me out of the NDA the moment I enter.
Secondly, of course, my mother was absolutely against the concept of me being a soldier. “You are a brahmin”, she’d say, “You don’t have enough nerves to be a kshatriya (warrior)”.

Pondering on that, I doubt whether it were those vehicles of destruction which enthralled me. No. It was a different feeling. A feeling of pride on being born in my motherland. This Republic day was just a splinter which would rekindle the fire back to its grandeur.

Reminds me of the sanskrit adage

Janani Janmabhumischa Swargatapi Gariyasi

which means “Mother and Motherland are greater than heaven”

Love you mom…
Love you India….

The best days of my life – Part 3

Published on January 14, 2006 in Memoirs. 6 Comments

2 men and an egg
All the extra-curricular clubs came to our hostel for their club orientation… well… sort of canvassing (and bullying and coaxing), as they got a major part of their funds from the membership fee we pay. The most memorable one was that of “Adventure Club”; they had come up with an idea analogous to “Who Dares Wins” program in AXN.
They have a packet full of eggs. One of them is a boiled egg. People should pair up. One person from each pair should take an egg and smash it on the other’s head to see if he gets the boiled egg. Those who get the boiled egg will get 50 bucks.
I decided to watch it from a distance, because I couldn’t stand the thought of messing up my hair (It was already too messed up and untameable) and clothes. Besides, I hated the stink (It’s S.T.I.N.K for me) of eggs.
I saw people smashing the eggs ruthlessly as if they had some past enmity with their teammates. And the victim wouldn’t leave the other one either. He would take some of the oozing eggwhite from his head and apply it on the other’s face or dress, whatever comes to his hand first, because the other one will now start running for his life. Well… If he ran like that straight into the Olympic stadium, he would have got the gold and quenched India’s thirst for an Olympic medal!! It seemed that they were happier getting the raw egg rather than the boiled one.
KP came to me and asked what was the probability that BG and Jithu, who were waiting for their chance, will get the boiled one. Apparently, he had done some calculations and wanted me to look silly if I couldn’t solve that particular “mathematical” problem.
I simply rolled my eyes and said, “The probability is 1″
He shot me a look,”What???”

Flashback: I was in a quiz competition in my 8th grade. This dude KP was also there. So was BG. Then the question came. There was a fort locally called Tipu Sultan’s fort in Palakkad. For those who don’t know, Tipu Sultan was a king of Mysore in India who had fought against the British East India Company in 18th Century. The question was to give the year in which Tipu came to this fort. We all guessed some year. BG guessed, “He has never come”.
So simple. Yet so brilliant. It was indeed the correct answer. It was, in fact, made by Hyderali, father of Tipu Sultan.

Back to Common Room: I said, “That guy BG is way too lucky. He will get the boiled egg. I am sure.. Cent percent”
And it came to be true. BG was lucky after all.
They got a fresh 50 rupee note in their hand and it was not there after 5 minutes. All of us literally carried them both to the canteen and ordered several Pepsi.
Satan said, “Dude, if you wanna know how to spend 50 bucks in 1 minute, ask us.”
(Oh… Satan is Deepu… He got that name for his wicked manipulations. :D )

If you want to earn 50 bucks in 1 minute, ask Ferby
Ferby (not his actual name) was another dude who was responsible for this “inverse” devilish prophecy from Satan the very next week. He was tall, dark and ahem… ahem… was he handsome?
He had such a dark complexion that we had named him IAS (Not Indian Administrative Service, duh!! It is Invisible After Sunset.) We used to joke that if you wanted to see him after dark, the only way was to ask him to grin.
He was also called Ferocious Kchraaaaw (sounds like a roar). (That name, in fact, was given by the Ayamees)
He later renamed (of course it was nothing official) himself as Ferocious Caligula, because he said he liked the Roman ruler Gaius Caesar also known as Caligula. (If you’d ask me, I’d say Caligula was a total crackpot. Some say that he made his horse a consul. Check wikipedia for more details)

He earned some easy money one day by running with only his undies across the hostel wing. (So says the Satan. There’s no way to know whether it is the truth.)

A hidden talent
Debutante was the cultural event specially for the freshers. And it was the first time I was talking to girls from other disciplines. The entire event lasted 4 days. On the third day evening, there was no interesting competition to watch, so I decided to take a break. I saw that there was a creative writing competition in another 10 minutes and the participation was open. So I decided to write that. Problem was… I didn’t have a pen with me. And the hostel block was too far away…Way too far (say 200 meters) for my lazy feet to carry me to and fro. No problem…I asked a pen directly from one of the organisers. So unprepared was I for that!
They had kept some thermocol cut-out with a candle, umbrella and blah blah; which looked like some modern art or surreal painting or whatever. Those who are regular in my blog will know that I lack the writing skills of a literary mastermind. I’m just a normal writer. I was just myself and wrote whatever came to my mind when I saw that silly cut-out. The result was an essay titled

“Ways to catch the crocodile in Lake Placid”

(The cut-out looked like a crocodile for me). Basically it was very much like the Acme gadgets used by Wile.E.Coyote in “Roadrunner show”. They will be shiny and ultra-modern, but they always fail.
At the end of the day, they announced the results, and I got the first prize. For 4 pages full of poor jokes, these dumbasses gave me the first prize!!! I couldn’t believe my ears. I got a fair amount of fans from the fairer sex after that.
Besides that, I got first for Instrumental and Eastern Vocals.

Caligula strikes again
We had drama competition the next day, but we had no script. We thought of using the popular dramas (Shakespeare et al.) and tried to select one.
Ferby said, “We will make our own. I will write one. I have an idea.”
“Crap!”, BG verbalised what others thought.
It was 11 in the night on the previous day and the drama was at noon the next day.
Ferby went smug-faced to a corner of his room and started penning his drama. He completed it by 1 am. We were still arguing which drama to select (you call it “square one”) when he came to us and described his work.
“Brilliant!!!”, all of us said in unison, because none of us had understood any of it. The name translated to “Shadows”. It was the world of shadows. That’s the only thing I understood (to date). It looked like a typical art film. And the brilliance of an art film is in the fact that nobody should understand it.
We decided who all will enact the parts and started mugging up the dialogs. That was a full night out. The next day, we performed, and as expected, we got the first place.
Kudos to Caligula!!!

Rockmime
Rockmime is by far the best and craziest invention of NITC people. We would spend 2 days carefully making custom-looking guitars, microphones, keyboards and drums which would be a replica of those of the rock band we are miming, then shatter them to pieces in 5 minutes.
We would select a rock band and a song to enact, then prepare the replicas of their instruments using cardboard, thermocol, chart paper etc. (Lots of research goes into this…watching lots of videos of live performances of the band). Then we would wear clothings like the original band does and do the actions like they do when the song is playing in the background.
We did “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC. There was this tough part where the lead singer has to carry the lead guitarist on his shoulders when he is playing the lead. This was the toughest part.
Oh..I just love rockmime. One thing awes me however. We are completely exhausted by the time we finish our 5 minute performance jumping and head-banging. How the hell do these rock bands perform like this for hours on end??

More fun and frolic in the coming parts. Keep pinging….

The best days of my life – Part 2

Published on January 3, 2006 in Memoirs. 9 Comments

I can’t recall the exact order of occurences anymore. However I will keep it in a loose chronological order. No more days or dates from now.

Ragam…It should rather be called Rag ‘em
There was no way Ragam was going to stop the ragging process.
Now that the freshers were allowed to go out, the other state guys took their juniors outside the campus and ragged them. We were lucky enough. Our Keralite seniors were not much interested in ragging.

After evading capture from seniors for 2 days, I was caught on the night of 3rd day. We were sent to get some buckets from the final year hostel. We went there. I was told to stay back. The rest moved ahead with the buckets. The reason: Simple enough! They were one player short for a game of playing cards which we call 28. I was the scapegoat because I was looking tensed while others looked confident. According to me, 28 is the game where you have to use your brains the most (and know some tricks) among all card games. I was not very good at it at that time. So, obviously, we started losing and wearing small embellishments made from parts of coconut tree in our ears. (That’s the price the loser has to pay. Believe me. You look very very stupid with those little “ornaments”). I had to play like that till 2 am, then they let me go.

A question of color
There was this general misconception that people from Northern India are very fair and from Southern India are of darker complexion. There are people everywhere in India with a multitude of complexions.

Our hero in this is Vinu, my roommate. He was from Kerala. (In fact we studied in the same school and college). He was very fair (In fact, so fair that we started calling him “Ghost” somewhere during our 2nd year). So apparently the second character, Jidesh, thought that he was a North Indian.

We were brushing our teeth in the restroom of our wing, when Jidesh (we call him Katta… Katta means muscle.. I will tell about that later) suddenly asked Vinu…
(In Hindi) How are you liking this place? Is Kerala good to stay? What about the food?

I coughed and the lather of the toothpaste in mouth spilled out. I was barely able to control my laughter.
Vinu replied (in pure Malayalam., the language we speak in Kerala.)
Edaaa Njanum oru Malayali aadaa…
(Translation: Dude, I am also from Kerala)
You should have seen katta’s face blushing redder than a beetroot. :D

Music Troupe auditions
I was so psyched about the prospect of getting ragged that I was keeping a low profile. But somehow my seniors got to know that I played the Violin and was a part-time professional. Then came the notice that the music troupe was conducting auditions. I didn’t want to go because I was scared of getting ragged.
But they knew me by now and called me specifically. I was scared to say no to them, and this was more profound than the fear of getting ragged. So I went. (I was not convinced even by the fact that ragging has been fun so far at the receiver’s end also)
They were in fact very nice chaps. I went there and played my violin. I sang some songs too. I got selected. And I would say that the jamming sessions in the music club and our performances were the best parts of my 4 year college life. Looking back, I can feel nothing but gratitude to that anonymous senior who leaked the fact that I knew violin.

NRI
The NRI (Non-resident Indians) had some seats reserved for them in our college. They had special entrance tests, their fee was higher than normal. And there were quite a lot of NRI people in our batch too.
I had my reservations against the NRI students. I initially had the feeling that they were prejudiced and pompous. They seldom talked with others and confined themselves to their closely knit group. I thought that they had an air of arrogance which resulted from the fact that they had better learning facilities in their schools in Dubai and all. Because of that I used to call them “Nasty Rabbit-hutch Indians”, “Nasty Repulsive Indians”, or, more often “NaaRI” (meaning stinker) behind their back.
I was so wrong.

They became so friendly later in our first year that I regretted even having a thought like that. They were as normal as anybody, the only difference, perhaps was the slight difference in the culture they have grown up in.

Most of them quickly became my friends – Tony, Rana, Derrin Joseph or DJ as we called him had this amazing ability to sing rap songs. (Think of imitating the impossibly fast songs of Eminem). I enjoyed playing Table Tennis with him. He also was the storekeeper (his PC was the storehouse) of DivX movies in our final year.
And who can forget Baba, who I think is the most frequent visitor of my blog( as Chaos). This guy was so energetic even in his speech.
There was Justin. Jaadu, as we call him. “Jaada” in Malayalam roughly means “arrogance”. Hang out with him, and you are guaranteed to have a fun time.
And Benita who looked the typical geekish innocent girl.
And lots of others too…

After all, the NRIs proved to be “Nice…Really nice Indians”

Slipping away
I never knew when I started slipping away from what I thought to be the primary goal of engineering life – studies. My scores were a quickly diminishing exponential curve. On one internal exam, I found the courage to copy because I hadn’t studied for the exam. I have helped other fellows before, but never been at the receiving end. So I was tensed. And that resulted in some carelessness and I was caught copying. (Lots of guys around me were doing that too, but they were pros in that.)
My marks were canceled in that exam. That meant I was getting 0. That meant I failed. I went to my professor and started pleading and crying (shedding crocodile tears, that is.). Finally he let me write the third improvement exam. For others, it was improvement. For me, it was life or death. While I was writing the exam, the professor didn’t trust me much so he kept on standing near my bench and staring at what I wrote. This was very uneasy for me. However, my friends got the leeway to do their copying work comfortably because the professor didn’t notice them even for a single second. When the results came I had 15 out of 15. The professor called me up and started advising in a kind manner…”See?? You have the caliber to perform. Then why are you indulging in these activities like copying?”. Those words came in through one ear and went out through the other.

At the end of the year I had a not-so-bad 79% marks. I didn’t top the class as I had wished on my first day, but still I was among the top few students. In the coming years, I was going to lose that position too.

Gul Jil praises me for skills that I don’t have
We had to do Mechanical Workshop too in our first year. This guy, Gul Jil, took control of out workshop in mid-semester. He looked like the cousin of Laden with his looooooong beard. He was a total psycho..an eccentric.

He was checking my lab record when he flipped the pages back. I told him that was already checked by the previous professor. He gave me a who-are-you-to-stop-me look and continued flipping back. He stopped at the page where I had drawn a picture of a lathe. It in fact was traced out of a picture from a text book. He looked into that for quite some time and asked me, “You do painting, don’t you?”..
“Painting?? Me?? Miles apart. I don’t even know how to paint the wall,” I thought…
But I said very modestly, “No sir, I don’t know painting or drawing.”
He didn’t give up, “Man. Then you should cultivate that art. You have a flair for that. I can see it here.”
I was laughing in my mind. Man..This is getting better and better.
He didn’t stop there. He wrote an “Exceptionally Good” comment over the signature of the previous professor.
Was I in cloud nine? Naah!

So goes the chronicles of my life. And I assure you there’s still more to come. With the pace I am going, I think it will have 10-15 parts. :-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Published on January 1, 2006 in General and Life etc.. 2 Comments

I know it’s 11 hours past the New year eve now. Nevertheless I would like to wish all my fellow readers a very fantabulous 2006. May this year be the best in life for you.

At 0000 hrs on 1st Jan 2006, I was driving through MG Road after seeing my brother off at the train station. And I was awed by the crowd that had gathered there. The entire Brigade Road was closed for traffic to accomodate the crowd gathered to celebrate there. Pity… I missed that party.