Buddies in blue

After attending an international event in Delhi, a friend of mine from the civvy streets and I headed for a former IAF buddy’s home for dinner. I discovered that he had invited some of my old pals from the Ambala days where we served together in 1963.That is going half a century back.

When we reached, I forgot all about my friend and started hugging the now baldies, graying, some pot bellied ones amongst them until my friend intervened and shouted aloud and said; Hey, Dinesh, how about introducing your friends  to me, dash it.
I took off my shoes and climbed on the sofa and said. There is one amongst us who would stagger past my room after consuming double than the average quota of liquor, night after night, and on hearing this Sandy got up and said, “ I plead guilty to the charge” and shook hands with my civilian friend. I continued with my intros and said, “ I now introduce someone whose digestive systems were overactive and that  he would leave the dining table and rush to the toilet, almost every night”  Spitty responded by shouting at me and saying how come that was the only thing I remembered about him and went and introduced himself to my friend. I proceeded : Then there is one amongst us who was never tired of telling us that he was the youngest pilot to have got the captaicy of four engine Liberator aircraft and that made his CO jealous that he had tough time in the squadron.

My host knew that comment was about him and he shook hands with my friend. Then there was this guy in the tie and I said. Now it is proud privilege to introduce someone whose propensity for verbosity got our goats and while we would use simple language interspersed with four letter words to converse, the gentleman in question would use ‘his world view was, in his scheme of things’ phrases to express his views on something as simple as the dinner served that night.  The right friend bowed and walked up to my friend and shook his hands.

This one was difficult but I had to do it. How can I forget the friend who went through such a personal trauma when he and his roommate went out flying together and he returned safely but our friend and his roommate crashed in the dust storm? The hall was quiet as my friend got and introduced himself.  And finally here is the seedha saddha, simple and innocent one of the lot who kept out of trouble and was careful in everything he did and friends that is me, myself.

Like hell was the high decibel response I received and they said that I was the one who would leave for Chandigarh every weekend on scooter to woo a girl who led me down the garden path only to ditch me. How come they remembered that? After a fantastic evening, my friend and I headed back to our hotel when my friend remarked that some of you guys were meeting after 50 years and you reconnected like it was yesterday. That is what uniform does to us, I replied, particularly, the blue one.  
With all our warts, country always came first.