JOIN USI wasn’t over worried about my son’s personal safety, but his Whats App message to his Mom put her at ease. The only major inconvenience was a forced overnight stay in his office, sleeping on his table. While his Mom commiserated, I became nostalgic about the deluge I had faced in (then) Bombay fifty two years ago while I was a Flight Cadet under training at the Transport Training Wing at Begumpeth ( Hyderabad).
We, the trainee Transport pilots and navigators were then only a couple of hours short of the prescribed flying hours before commissioning. The last crosscountry flight was a same-day return sortie to Mumbai at the end of August. Weather forecast was discouraging enough for the two trainee pilots and a trainee navigator. But our Instructor who was keen to visit his parental home at Santacruz while the aircraft was refuelled, assured us that he would take over the controls in case of extreme conditions. At the fag end of the difficult flight he had to do so for approach and landing in the torrential rain. Large raindrops kept pounding the tarmac after we landed, making early return to Hyderabad out of question. We waited for hours without any respite from the incessant rains. As Flight Cadets we had little money but our instructor graciously gave us some money for buying a lunch at the airport and pushed off to his home. He did come back in an hour but when it became clear that the return flight won’t be possible in a hurry, he arranged to send us to the Officers Mess, an hour’s drive away at Cotton Green.
The drive on waterlogged roads in a Fauji Jonga was exciting; lack of clothes for a change was a problem though. Dressed in our flying overalls, we were further drenched as we dashed through heavy rains to our rooms after reaching the mess. Dinner time presented another problem. Entry to the dining hall was not permitted in flying overalls nor was room service allowed. The Mess Secretary took pity and obliged by sending packed food to our rooms. There were no clothes to change into and sleeping in our soaked overalls was impossible. Sleeping even in underwear wasn’t very pleasant as it too was unbearably / unwearably soaked! We just switched the lights off, striped to the skin and hit the bed. But soon we started feeling cold. Then came the idea of removing curtains from the pelmets and wrapping them around from head to toe.
We then slept like logs. Next morning the bearer’s entry in the room with bed tea woke us up with a start. (Who cared to bolt the rooms from inside.) Disturbed by the noise my roommate turned in the bed and his curtain went up (literally). I forgot I was dressed only in my birthday suit and stepped down from the bed. The shocked bearer turned his face away in embarrassment. The Supreme Court judgement about right to privacy was still half a century away.