VIJ THE WARRIOR

Mussoorie! That’s where we were going, our motorcycle ‘gang of

four’. I was in second year at college, and spent weekends at my
uncle’s government accommodation (a lovely, spacious bungalow on
Purana Qila Road, New Delhi). Our friend Suresh revealed that he had
been selected for the Class I Central Services, and wanted to check out
the Academy at Mussoorie. Since we knew one or two persons already
under training there, arranging accommodation at Mussoorie would not
be a problem. Then Suresh remembered he had a class-fellow called
Vij who was undergoing training as a cadet in the Indian Military
Academy at Dehra Dun. Dehra Dun thus became the first stage of the
expedition, the base camp for the final assault on Mussoorie.

Driving up to Dehra Dun and Mussoorie has lost much of its glitter
today. In recent years, I had often driven up in my little Maruti…and
hadn’t enjoyed the journey half as much as I should have. There
seemed to be an inordinately large number of heavy vehicles traveling
in either direction with sundry Paul Reveres at the wheel, possessed of
urgent information of national import. Caution had not only been
thrown to the winds, it had apparently been struck from the lexicon.
The car carried all the family I had, and I didn’t relish the way people
risked your life on the road. I had always felt that if one must risk a life,
it should be one’s own and not those of others. A whole new
generation of ill-trained drivers, with the road sense and manners of a
mentally retarded buffalo, had seemingly appeared overnight and
changed the equation for keeps.

But in 1967, all that was a generation away. The Rajdoot motorcycle
had recently been launched in India, in collaboration with Cekop of
Poland. It was an inexpensive, ruggedly basic machine from the House
of Escorts, and it was an overnight success. The Japanese invasion was
almost two decades away. For now, the Rajdoot was the best value for
money, and the university crowd did not shy away from it. Marketing
manoeuvres precipitated by the entry of up-market foreign makes had
not forced it into its current ‘Doodhwala’ image, aiming it pointedly at
the rural market (where it went on to re-invent itself in the most
brilliant product re-positioning exercise I’ve ever seen in India).

I had no motorcycle in college, there being a tacit understanding

with Dad that I’d get one from him the day I got a job (he gave it to me
five months before that event, a new, dark-green, 250 cc ‘Jawa’—the
precursor of today’s eclipsed ‘YEZDI’), which was perfectly acceptable
to me. My cousin was two years older and more insistent, and his
father could absorb the impact of supporting a college-going son,
motorbike and all.
 Even in those relatively cheap times, it nevertheless involved what
was, in value-of-money terms, a not inconsiderable financial outlay.
But he was a large-hearted gentleman, and took it without blinking. I
think he loved his son much more than he ever cared to admit. Actions
spoke louder than words for Brahma Deva Mukerji, ICS. It was on an
almost-new and shiny Rajdoot, therefore, that we set off for Dehra
Dun.

Forty-odd years later, I cannot recall the exact details of the

journey. Suffice it to say that it was simply glorious. I had always been
mad about motorcycles, ever since, as a three-year old, I had started
riding on the petrol tank of Dad’s classic bike, the now-legendary 250
cc 4-stroke, single cylinder BSA. I still recall with joy the deep, staccato
exhaust beat that emerged from the gleaming, pipette-shaped, heavy-
chromed silencer, the individual, well-spaced notes blending into a
thunderous roar as Dad opened up the throttle on Thornhill Road.

Alas! The single-cylinder, 2-stroke Rajdoot engine had an uneven,

tinny beat, hardly conveying the impression of robust construction, but
it was capable of carrying two people in comfort (the floating-arm
suspension was outstanding) at a steady 60 kph all day. Stopping
occasionally at roadside dhabas for tea and snacks, we entered Dehra
Dun as dusk was falling. The other Rajdoot belonged to Suresh, also
with a pillion rider.

From the fact that we were immediately directed to Vij’s quarters by

the helpful guards, readers will understand what relaxed, laid-back
days those were. In spite of two wars with our neighbors, paranoid
security-consciousness had yet to take root. Here were four scruffy-
looking civilians on dusty motorcycles, clad in jeans and jackets, and
all the guards could think of was that we looked like we could do with a
hot bath and a square meal. Our dishevelled appearance was our entry
permit. No awkward questions were asked of us, no papers had to be
produced for scrutiny by some officious popinjay, no cooling of heels in
some spartan visitor’s room. My opinion of the Indian Army, already
high, shot through the ceiling.

We were told to look for ‘Karen Coy’. Who was this coy Karen, I
wondered, already feeling every bit the civvy that I was. She sounded
nice. Bad luck! ‘She’ turned out to be ‘K’ Company’, better known as
‘Karen Coy’, ‘Coy’ being army abbreviation for ‘Company’, a group of
soldiers! We stood outside barracks occupied by maybe half-a dozen
cadets. One stood out from the rest by virtue of his extraordinary
physique. To call him ‘husky’ would be a gross understatement.

He was not tall, barely 5 feet 8 inches in his shoes, but he looked
shorter. Incredibly wide shoulders bulged with solid muscle; his
deltoids were like cannonballs. The deepest chest I’ve ever seen in a
man, with massive pectorals worthy of the greatest gladiator, and
arms like pythons. A trim waist with a clear-cut six-pack rippling in
washboard array topped slim swivel hips. The shorts (all he wore)
exposed muscular legs.

Yet it was not a gym-made body. It was an obviously natural

physique, a gift from Mars himself. Its bulk and definition didn’t
register, so perfect was the symmetry of it. There was nothing of the
oily, clumsy pahalwan about him. And hence it did not put one off; the
overall effect was pleasing to the eye, to put it mildly.

The best part of it was that he was quite unselfconscious, totally

unaware of his Olympian build that separated him from his fellows,
cadets all. I soon learned that he enjoyed testing and punishing his
powerful body much like a boy with his new bicycle; he pushed it to its
limits just for laughs, to see how far it could go.

He would take a telephone directory and rip it in half, or he’d blow

and blow into a football bladder until it burst. Some lungpower! I’ve
seen him tighten a regulation army web-belt, Brasso-ed, Blanco-ed and
everything, around his waist, then expand his stomach till the poor belt
could take no more and exploded in defeat. Then he would collapse
weakly onto his camp cot, and laugh and laugh till the tears ran down
his cheeks. I was feeling sorry for the Pakistanis already.

If this account of Vij’s mad feats of strength conveys the impression

that, physique notwithstanding, he was mentally challenged, I have
inadvertently done him an injustice. IMA cadets are selected after
successfully competing in an All-India examination against hundreds of
thousands of aspirants. He set aside time for studies, and was near the
top of his class (the IMA has a rigorous academic syllabus, and cadets
who are all-rounders get the plum postings). He read quite a lot, and
even wrote articles for some army publication or the other. He was a
keen photographer, I learnt, when he showed me his treasured Contax.

He was to become, one day, a Command diver and boxer. He

always seemed to be suffering from an overdose of glucose. His energy
had earned him the nickname of ‘Speedy’, a sobriquet that
embarrassed him no end (nicknames in the army are a status symbol,
a practice inherited from the British, and often stick for life). He was
hugely popular; it was obvious from the way his mates accommodated
us by immediately vacating the barracks for our group. Later, I was to
learn with deep regret that, in the ’71 operations, many of them made
the ultimate sacrifice.
The next morning, we were rudely woken by reveille at 5 am, an
hour when no self-respecting civvy would rise. In the army, not leaping
out of your bunk at reveille meant you were dead meat. The sergeant
major bawled us out before he realized that these scrawny specimens
weren’t part of his bunch. What the hell, we thought, once up, might as
well go through the whole routine. It was a bad decision; cold water
shower, followed by rope climbing (Thapa’s and Johnny’s rigorous
discipline and training stood me in good stead), then rounded off by a
two-mile run (the school marathon fondly remembered). This entitled
one to another shower, and breakfast in the mess—as much porridge,
as many eggs, toasts, and lashings of butter as one could put away.
Burp !! Ooops !!

Then on to Mussoorie by taxi, Vij in grey mufti, a grey Fedora

jammed firmly on his close-cropped, bullet-shaped skull. The IAS
academy, ‘Whispering Windows’, a round of the scenic spots…then
back to Dehra Dun. I never saw Vij take a drop of alcohol, ever. He had
no use for stimulants. The Glucon-D factory inside him injected raw
energy into his bloodstream 24 hours a day. His face was always
ruddy, flushed with the heady experience of being alive. He consumed
liters of orange juice every day. It was his only weakness. He shunned
cigarettes but did not sermonize if you happened to like a puff or two.
He simply enjoyed being Gentleman Cadet Vij, Arjun, of Karen Coy.
Unaffected, fun loving, vigorous, a keen sportsman, serious about a
career in the army (his first and only love; he never married), fond of
(and knowledgeable about) firearms, Vij was that rare commodity—a
man’s man.

It was time to go. We mounted our bikes and took off on the road
back to Delhi. I glanced back at the IMA gate just before the bend in
the road. He was still there, lustily waving the Fedora. Then he was lost
to view, and the years swallowed him up.

Vij, Arjun; Major; IC - 17575

Late autumn, 1972. I am enjoying an evening stroll in Connaught
Place. Traffic, scanty and sedate, flows in both directions around the
central park. Walking around the Inner Circle is such a delight; no
hawkers, no pavement encroachments, very few beggars. Fountains
play over coloured lights, the shop windows are full of goodies, and
soft music comes from somewhere. Couples stroll hand in hand, lost in
each other.

I am a bachelor, about twenty-two, footloose and fancy free. My

wallet bulges with currency notes. Dr. Charat Ram is an exacting
taskmaster, a brilliant man who drives his team (and himself)
relentlessly…but we are handsomely compensated. I am drawing a
princely salary of a thousand rupees a month. Petrol costs less than a
rupee a litre, and my Jawa motorcycle is giving me 40 kilometers per
liter, no matter how hard I flog it. Mileage is passé; performance is
everything.

‘Gold Armour’ shirts cost sixty rupees each (I make it a point to

have half-a-dozen in stock), a top-of-the-line Zodiac tie costs thirty
rupees, a high-quality Zodiac belt, forty. Senson’s on Janpath charges
sixty hard earned rupees for tailoring a pair of form-fitting men’s
trousers. It’s worth every paisa; they do a fantastic job. The best calf-
leather boots come for three hundred rupees; a lavish dinner for two at
Volga or York’s can set one back all of sixty rupees.

The mutton lunch at Bankura, Janpath, goes for 5/50, the chicken
one for 7/50. It is a balanced meal and the servings are generous. In
spite of a hearty appetite, I can barely manage to eat everything on
my plate (I hate wasting food). A packet of India Kings, advertised as
ITC’s premium brand, sells for Rs.7/50. Wills Navy Cut cigarettes,
always a reliable index of inflation – a rival to petrol as such – is eighty
paise a pack of ten (up from 67 paise in my college days). Gillette razor
blades come for two rupees a packet of five. A rear shock absorber for
the bike means an outlay of over seventy INR.

My small bachelor apartment in Hauz Khas (fully furnished) exacts a

dreadful toll of one hundred and fifty rupees every month (roll up your
eyes in horror!), paid on the first day of the following month. My office
is in Himalaya House, the only multi-storied building on Kasturba
Gandhi Marg (formerly called Curzon Road). Surya Kiran follows
shortly, along with the American Library and The Hindustan Times
building.
Skyscraper after skyscraper springs up before my eyes. Gone are
the sleepy, sprawling bungalows, with the lovely gardens and lawns we
so admired from our windows on the 12th floor. Demand and supply,
“make ’em an offer they can’t refuse.” Delhi’s skyline begins to
change. Parking space, there for you to take, is going to become a
problem soon. Fortunately, Himalaya House has basement parking for
people who work there.

A leisurely fifteen minutes’ drive through moderate traffic gets me

to work. I enjoy driving in Delhi. The flow of traffic is smooth,
disciplined. The cops are a benevolent bunch of sleepyheads who often
look the other way, more embarrassed than you are at a slight
infringement of a traffic rule. It’s easy to crash red lights, but few
bother. There is no hurry, no panic, and no road rage, no drivers at the
wheels of imported limousines jabbering away into their mobile phones
as they weave from one lane to another. The old rich of Delhi are still
around, a highly educated, cultured, sober and dignified lot who love
the city. The rise of a hitherto unknown class of carpetbaggers has yet
to make its presence felt in any significant way.

There aren’t too many cars: mostly cyclists and a thin stream of
two-wheelers. Come Friday night, I never miss an English movie.
Chanakya is my favorite cinema hall, not far from ‘home’, although the
newly renovated Plaza and Odeon are giving it competition. But I have
to admit that Chanakya’s décor is superb, and so is the selection of
movies. A ticket in the Dress Circle costs about six rupees, and there
aren’t that many takers.

Rivoli is small, low profile, but often steals a march over competitors
on account of its penchant for offbeat, different films, which usually
click well with its small target audience. Dress Circle tickets can cost
about five rupees per head. The seats aren’t too comfortable, but they
are adequate, as are the sound and décor.

I don’t see too many Hindi movies (‘phillums’, as I call them), but
occasionally even a Plaza can succumb to the pressure of the Great
God of the Box Office – audience demand – and screen a ‘Sholay’ or a
‘Guide’. One rarely ventures as far as Golcha, though the smaller halls
in Delhi are no mystery to me.

Coming back to CP, (as christened by laconic Stephanians; the

name has stuck, I notice, and is definitely in currency today, even with
auto-rickshaw drivers, the acid-test of public acceptance of place
names: ‘Rajiv Gandhi Chowk’ has failed to take off among the hoi
polloi), I am taking the air, literally. It is sweet-scented, untainted with
any carcinogenic automobile exhaust emissions (there are few cars or
bikes; those things cost a lot of money) and thoroughly oxygenated,
thanks to the garden in the well-maintained Central Park, where a cozy
little outdoor restaurant, Rambles, occupies pride of place.

It’s very peaceful, hardly crowded (as I said, there is not all that
much cash in circulation), and serves good food at very reasonable
rates. The little coloured lights in the knee-high hedgerows trimming
the winding pathway around it give it a fairyland atmosphere. It
happens to be one of my regular haunts. That’s where I’ll be having
dinner tonight. Apart from a rudimentary breakfast (of Glucose
biscuits, and two raw eggs with cornflakes and sugar poured into a
bottle of DMS milk and shaken vigorously), I eat out all the time. I’m a
happy bachelor, remember?

I do not drink tea or coffee, rarely smoke, avoid soft drinks or ice
cream, and never touch alcohol. I call cigarettes ‘one-way tickets on
the road to nowhere.’ I’m not really health conscious, though I workout
often at home. I think it’s more about internal stability. Youth, health,
and raw physical power: these ephemeral things are in season in my
body, surge through it. I have no use for stimulants; I’m always high…
on life. Perhaps it’s because I am content, happy in my total and
complete freedom.

The job in the Shriram Group Corporate Headquarters is very

satisfying. I am the second officer to the Personnel and HRD manager.
There is ample scope to be creative. Argument and fresh/loud-thinking
is not only encouraged but mandatory; it is regarded as a sign of
constant self (as well as corporate) re-appraisal. The Boss wants
everyone to point out flaws in the system, but we’d better have
suggestions to remedy them as well.

Regular and handsome ad hoc increments come my way; they are a

sign of acceptance and the Boss’s satisfaction with work output. Some
of my colleagues need a raise too; I decline an increment (idealistic
fool!) and recommend my friend Mohan for it instead, as well as a
promotion. He is senior to me, and I have learnt much from him. I owe
him. We become close friends. He’s been calling me over to join him in
Canada for the last twenty-five years, but I go my merry way, alone
and carefree. Friends from college days call me ‘The Outsider’, from
the Albert Camus book of the same name. Unconsciously, I have
adopted the Arjun Vij way of life. Only (major) difference is, I am a
civilian.

So, as I was saying, I was taking the air in CP, strolling along without
a care in the world. Late shoppers on their way home to dinner and
bed hurried past me. One particular figure registered on my idling
brain about two seconds after he had passed. I recalled an impression
of a man somewhat shorter than me but with an impressive width of
shoulder. In fact, so impressive were the shoulders that I remember
they were distorting an outsized camel colored jacket with upturned
collar and slash pockets. No one was this wide—except…

“Vij!” I yelled at the retreating back. The figure spun around, catlike
in a half-crouch, and peered back at me vigilantly. We closed. He
walked lightly, springily, balanced on the balls of his feet, like an
athlete about to take a running start. I hoped he wouldn’t start running
at me, he’d run me over! One hand was half extended in cautious
greeting, just as likely to shake my hand as to flip me over his
shoulder. The slitted eyes scanned my face with no sign of recognition;
I was taller and brawnier since we had last met, and I was dressed in a
steel-gray pin-stripe office suit and tie. His clipped moustache, brushed
vigorously upwards commando-style, bristled with aggression.

But when I introduced myself, he roared with laughter, pummelling

my back (it hurt for days afterwards) and asking me how I’d spotted
him in a crowd. He was really keen to know this. He thought I had
fantastic eyesight…for a civilian (it was his ultimate compliment). As I
said in an earlier episode, he was completely unaware of his
outstanding physical appearance. He kept telling me how fit I looked
(sure, about as fit as a Somalian refugee, next to him). A man built like
Arjun is easy to remember. No one can make an XXL size American GI
jacket look like it shrank at the cleaners in quite the way he can.
Spotting him in a crowd is no big deal.

We went over to Rambles. It was like dining with action hero Jean
Claude Van Damme, who bore a strong facial resemblance to Vij. In
fact, come to think of it, Van Damme is a poor man’s Arjun Vij—a pale,
under-nourished version of the original. Over dinner, he filled me in on
all that happened in the intervening years. He’d passed out with high
grades and got the infantry outfit of his choice, the 8th battalion of the
legendary Rajputana Rifles (the Raj Rif, as it’s better known, is the
scourge of unfriendly neighbouring countries). He showed me his dog
tags: they read “Vij, Arjun; Major; IC- 17575”. I was sharing a table with
the youngest Major in the entire Indian Army!

17575 was his highly-prized Indian Commission number. Name,

rank and serial number: these were the only three pieces of
information he was supposed to reveal to the enemy, in case of
capture (fat chance of that happening!).

We talked and talked; we exchanged information about kith and kin

(both his [elder] brothers were in the army, doing extremely well). He
was keen to know where my cousin was (he was very much in Delhi).
We exchanged hunting and fishing yarns and gun-lore, two old friends
chewing the cud. The office was far away.

I envied him his border postings, in a land of ice and snow, where
fish and game abounded, enabling him to use the imported fishing
tackle sold in the military canteen. He’d shot bear and mountain goat
with the standard army issue 7.62 mm SLR (‘Self-Loading Rifle’) or the
sten machine-carbine set to single shot (he always referred to
weaponry by their full, official names, uttered with pride and
reverence). Man, the army was a great vacation as far as he was
concerned. (Yes, in peacetime, thought I, a mere civilian).

Those of you who have seen a 70’s movie called ‘Patton’ may
remember what Reichfeldmarschal von Runstedt says of the brilliant,
controversial American General (played by George C. Scott), while
trying to understand his psyche and anticipate his future battle tactics:
“Patton is a medieval warrior, lost in modern times: a magnificent
anachronism”. I could not have described Arjun Vij better.

He loved the sound of the war bugle, a warrior born to combat. He

ate, lived, and slept war, strategy, weaponry, and tactics. Mars had not
given him that magnificent body for nothing. Yet Diana also inspired
him, wily huntress that she is. There was a streak of originality in him.
Anyone on the lookout for a brainwashed assembly-line soldier would
be disappointed in Arjun. I knew he had a great future in the Indian
Army, for daring unconventionality is the bedrock from which springs
innovative genius.

I went over to the Raj Rif regimental center on Saturday afternoon.

The sentry noted my bike’s registration number and waved me
through; he had been briefed to do just that. Vij was ready with a jug of
orange juice and burgers. He informed me I was leaving the Jawa
behind, and taking his brand-new Bajaj scooter instead (I got my bike
back three weeks later; the tires were bald).

He’d acquired a Holland & Holland .375 magnum rifle, a potent big
game weapon. We planned to try it out on the shooting range.
Personally, I thought it was a waste of money; the game suitable for
this fearsome piece of ordnance was either protected by law, or very
hard to reach. I was delighted with the .45 Colt, however. Handguns
were always my first love. Proud of his new pistol (and, no doubt, on
account of a sudden rush of glucose in his veins), he raised the Colt
and fired it skywards through the open window. He grinned, knowing
I’d disapprove of such un-civilian-like conduct.

Contritely, he handed it to over to me. My eager fingers closed

around the cold butt and turning, I fired two rounds. The detonations
boomed and echoed deafeningly off the walls. No one came to enquire
about the burst of gunfire. It would have been like asking why the band
was playing in a dance hall. This was the Army, after all. Guns had a
way of getting fired. One day, we all went duck hunting again, and I
finally saw the Holland & Holland in action…but that is another story.

A Farewell to Arms
1971. War! scream the newspaper headlines. India and Pakistan
were at it again, hammer and tongs. It is popular fiction that the British
divided India and left the two halves to fight each other at the slightest
pretext. Nothing could be further from the truth. Partition was
promoted by ambitious and holier-than-thou politicians keen to expand
their area of operations by playing the communal card (it is still the
ultimate trump card in the hands of paranoid Pakistani politicians).
 Our erstwhile rulers were glad to withdraw from a colony that had
become a headache. Weakened as Britain was after World War II,
Britannia dropped the reins with relief into the eager hands of the sub-
continent’s new leaders. It was probably a case of frying pan to fire for
both halves of a once-undivided, potentially very powerful country…a
common enough experience for many newly independent countries of
the erstwhile British Empire.

The Indian capital is now like a city under siege. All of a sudden,
everyone is very public-spirited. There’s nothing like a common threat
to unite enemies, citizens and neighbours—synonyms in a city as
impersonal as Delhi. People cross the street to discuss the situation
with neighbours they haven’t glanced at, leave alone spoken to, since
they moved in. Neighbourhood vigilante groups allocate night
patrolling among themselves, armed with hockey sticks and iron rods.

There is paranoia about paratroopers dropping from the skies:

anyone showing a light brighter than a candle in his house is pilloried
till profuse apologies are offered. Blackouts are the order of the night.
Windows are either boarded up or glazing is painted black. Black paint
is only available in the black market. How appropriate. Upper halves of
all vehicle headlights are painted black. Shortage of paint leads to a
flourishing cottage industry selling black half-moon paper stickers for
vehicle lights. Black days and nights indeed. Good for blackguards.

In any case, use of headlights is banned. Only pilot lights can be

used; since street lighting is switched off, this means travel in near
total darkness. The common man is severely affected. Life is thrown
out of gear. I live in North Delhi, and after work, decide to drop in on
my cousin who shares lodgings with another colleague in a
comfortable two-bedroom chummery in CP belonging to National &
Grindlay’s Bank.

The phone rings; it is our cousin, Budro. He is leaving for Lucknow

by some night train, and intends to have dinner with us; the New Delhi
railway station is less than two kilometers away. With the blackout in
force, he doesn’t want to take any chances. No point in missing a train
just because some fool of a taxi driver is unwilling to drive in the dark.
He knows there is an official car which our cousin shares with his
colleague.

Budro arrives at 6.45 sharp. He likes to travel with a fully topped-up

tank. Disaster! Three refills later, my cousin’s colleague telephones to
say that he is taking his fiancee out to dinner and won’t be able to
relinquish the car. Esprit de corps enables the cousin to take the blow
like a man. Budro is unconcerned: it is his host’s privilege to arrange
transportation to the station. My cousin decides that my bike will have
to stand-in for the car.
 Budro doesn’t mind: he knows we are seasoned bikers. One for the
road: then, lugging his overnighter, he gropes his way down the stairs
to the parking lot. I am stone cold sober, not having partaken of the
liquid refreshments, but for my cousin it is now a matter of honour to
drop cousin Budro…which he proceeds to do with admirable success.
They are back an hour or so later. Their clothes are much the worse
for wear; one or two large rips are visible in their trousers. Scratches
and bruises need first aid. The liquid dinner now does double duty,
adding a whole new dimension to the term ‘double scotch.’ It turns out
to be excellent medication: the abrasions heal quickly.

My motorbike does not. Ramming into a traffic island does not fall
within the scope of ‘routine maintenance for motorcycles’ as
recommended by the manufacturer. The machine is a near total. My
cousin now has three liabilities on his hands: an injured Budro (who
phones Lucknow to say that he is unaccountably held up in Delhi for a
few days), insurance/workshop wrangles over repairs for the bike (he
manfully assumes full responsibility for this), and, lastly, the
undersigned. I am unable to commute from my flat to office…and
move in with my cousin and his batch-mate.

Vij! In the hullabaloo, we’d forgotten all about our chum in the
army. Calls to the Raj Rif Center only elicited the information that the
unit was ‘away’. The party could be contacted by post c/o 56 APO. So
Vij had gone to war. It struck me that I might not see him again. It was
a depressing thought, but half-an-ounce of lead, traveling at 2,500 fps,
could cut him down. Knowing him, I knew he’d probably try something
unusual. His beloved Raj Rif, the Regimental honour, came before
everything else.

There were two other Vij’s, the eldest a Lt. Colonel, to hold aloft the
flag of the Vij family of ‘Riverside’, 10, Hastings Road, Allahabad. Major
Mahesh Vij was the most thoroughly professional soldier I have ever
met. Temperamentally very different from Arjun, the youngest of the
three Vij brothers, Mahesh, the ‘middleman’, was an ice-cold,
calculating, textbook strategist (he enjoyed a brilliant career in the
army, retiring as a General). Nevertheless, two spare Vij’s or no, I did
not think Arjun was expendable. The war had come very close to
home.

Victory for Indian arms! But of Arjun Vij, Major, IC-17575, there was
no news. Several weeks passed. None of my letters had been
answered. It was apparent from casualty/wounded/ MIA lists that the
Raj Rif had, as usual, done an outstanding job, but had suffered
casualties. There is no such thing as ‘heavy losses’: the death of even
one soldier is a heavy loss. I braced myself for the worst.
 Finally, the call came, at the office. It was a terse verbal
communication that I should report to ward number such-and-such, MH
(army abbreviation for ‘Military Hospital’). He was alive! That evening,
my cousin, his wife and I drove down to the MH in the Delhi
cantonment area.

Alive? I never saw anyone more alive. If Vij, Arjun, Major, had to be
described in just one word, that word would have to be ‘vital’. He
exuded rude health. If anything, he was w-i-d-e-r; the giant shoulders
bulged with muscle as if he had secreted cannonballs under the thin
fabric of the T-shirt. The glucose factory, too, appeared to be operating
at full capacity. It was bitterly cold, and we were swaddled in layers of
woollens under our overcoats. Arjun was wearing a flimsy, cream-
colored cotton T-shirt and white shorts. He explained that he had been
fighting somewhere very high and very cold.

The Delhi winter, severe as it was that year, was balmy, springtime
stuff for him right now. In fact, he was feeling a bit warm. Did anyone
mind if he switched on the ceiling fan? We hastened to assure him that
we most certainly did. He really could not feel the cold. Boy, he must
have gone to the North Pole. (Readers can guess for themselves
where, and why, Arjun’s outfit had been engaged).

His right foot was in plaster. The card clipped to the rail of the steel
hospital bed cryptically said of the nature of the injury, “GSW; RA”.
Mystified, I sought clarification from a nurse. “That stands for ‘Gun
Shot Wound; Right Ankle’. It’s nothing”, she reassured me.

Later, Major Sharma told me what had transpired. The outfit had
been ambushed in deep snow. They had taken losses; Arjun had circled
the ambushers under covering fire, making a difficult climb without any
back up. Armed with his sten machine-carbine in his right hand, and
his trusty .45 Colt in his left fist, he had opened fire, running across the
enemy position as he went.

The element of surprise neutralized the enemy’s positional

advantage; our boys took the opportunity to regroup and assault the
enemy post. There was hand-to-hand fighting. Both of Arjun’s guns
were blazing. Then the stengun (sorry, sten machine-carbine) ran out
of ammunition. As he stopped for a second to fit another magazine, a
heavy machine-gun bullet passed through his right ankle. Blood
pumped in a double-spray as Arjun went down, but there was also an
answering twin stream of lead from his chattering guns. Many an
enemy soldier would return home zipped up in a body bag.
Apparently, the field doctors wanted to amputate. Army sawbones
are very good at that sort of thing; it saves the government costly
surgery and hospital expenses later on. (This penchant for short cuts
perhaps explains why doctors, retiring from the Services, find it such
heavy going on Civvy Street. The public instinctively feels they will
resort to rough-and-ready methods. They survive because of
investments made during their long, secure careers, and on their
generous pensions. If I am wrong, I beg to be corrected). Death often
follows; the shock of amputation can prove fatal.

Arjun was fully conscious; he absolutely forbade it. What he needed

badly was blood; that was made available when relief helicopters could
fly in. He survived the long journey to a base hospital. Then he was
flown into Delhi. He was in line for a medal. Arjun was on a high, as
usual. It had been a great caper as far as he was concerned. I am sure,
where he fell, the enemy dead were piled the highest.

Surgery followed surgery, as the army physicians tried their best to

repair the shattered joint. But the ankle is a very delicate, intricate
assembly of load-bearing bones. The wounds heal, but the joint is
never quite the same again. In course of time, Arjun was moving
around with only a walking cast and single crutch. That was when the
MH authorities decided he could have visitors. He never called before
that because, firstly, he did not think he merited any special attention.
Besides, though he never showed or mentioned it, I think he felt deeply
about his comrades—those that never returned.

It is not uncommon for soldiers surviving a war to feel a sense of

guilt that they made it back while their buddies bought it. I also think
he wanted to spare us the sight of him bed-ridden and badly injured, in
pain. My sister-in-law could only gape at Arjun; urban sophisticate as
she was, men like the ‘Mad Major’ were completely beyond her
experience. “Did you see those shoulders?” was all she could gasp on
our way back to the car. I wonder what she would have said if she had
met Matthew Jacob, our belligerent para-commando friend stationed at
Agra, he of the bar-room brawls and point-blank-range shootouts?!

One thing I’ll say for Arjun; no man ever tried harder to heal himself.
He walked, he swam, he jogged; he surpassed the physiotherapist’s
expectations. I think he was terrified that the army would think he was
unfit for active duty, and relegate him to a desk job. That was when he
started accompanying us on duck shoots. He didn’t have a .12 bore
shotgun but that didn’t stop him from lugging the .375 Holland &
Holland along.
On one occasion, a flight of crafty ducks descended on a small pond
that was surrounded by hillocks. There being no cover of any sort, it
was impossible to get close enough to put them up in the air and
shoot. They could spot us well before we could get within range to take
our chances, and fly off. Those ducks sure had one smart Major in
charge of their outfit. Our Major did not like being outmanoeuvered. He
worked the bolt-action of his big-game rifle, took careful aim, and fired
the cannon. The sound, within the natural amphitheatre formed by the
hillocks, was deafening; it echoed and re-echoed.

All the ducks flew off, quacking at us in derision. Something passed

close by my head at very high velocity, whistling shrilly; Heavens! I
thought; that’s the first time ducks ever shot back at me! Strange, I
always seem to get shot at whenever I go duck shooting. I realized the
ricochet had probably missed my head by inches.

I don’t think even a standard NATO helmet would have stopped the
ricochet of such a heavy bullet at that close range. Vij knew that, too.
Better than any of us, he realized what had just happened, or rather,
had not happened. He put the gun away, sadly. I think that was the
last shot the Holland & Holland fired in his hands on active duty.
Vanishing wildlife and a tide of conservation had mothballed that
magnificent weapon before its appointed time.

Is it not true that everything carries within it the seeds of its own
destruction? Big game rifles had hunted big game – and themselves –
out of existence. The human body gradually runs down and stops
working on the commands received from in-house genetic timers. The
British Empire had spawned for itself a host of problems that brought it
crashing down.

Within half a century of the end of the Second World War, Britain is
under siege from immigrants who have emigrated from its erstwhile
colonies. Hardworking, ambitious, thrifty, possessed of sober and
regular habits, these Asian British citizens are, slowly but surely,
driving the original inhabitants of the British Isles to the wall. Reprisals,
like the ones in mid-2001, with a definite racial bias, will only fuel the
desire to beat the English at their own game: shop-keeping.

Napoleon’s words1 are well on the way to being vindicated. British

shopkeepers bow before the superior buying power of naturalized
Asian British citizens, already alarmingly prosperous, infiltrating into
the British Parliament, nobility, and other top-most echelons of society.

Time-honoured British institutions such as Rolls-Royce, Sheffield,

Manchester, the Trent shipyards, the Welsh coalmines, the Royal Air
Force and the once-proud Royal Navy, are in foreign hands, defunct or
pitifully shrunk. Only Big Ben ticks on, unfazed, into yet another
century. The wheel is coming full circle.
One can understand the British need for its decadent, parasitical,
and redundant Royal Family; it serves as a last rallying point for ye
olde English sentiments. As long as there are Royals at Windsor Castle,
it seems St. George is still on England’s side. Till when, one wonders?

1
"The British are a nation of shopkeepers."
 England is sinking under the sheer weight of numbers of her
erstwhile subjects. The reverse tide threatens the English way of life. Is
England under assimilation? Or is she doing the assimilating? If so,
why? How does she gain? Only time will tell. Latter-day Edward
Gibbons’ of Asiatic origin are already, perhaps, sharpening their quills
to write the history of the rise and fall of another empire.

Return to Mars
Those of you who have read the chapter called ‘A Farewell to Arms’
must be wondering why the episode peters out reminiscing about a
post-war Britain. Why not, I ask truculently? Why shouldn’t it? Didn’t it
start off with how the British left a partitioned country behind, and how
the two halves keep fighting each other, remaining weak, poor,
burdened with debt, and yet, enthusiastic shoppers for a plethora of
weaponry on the world market. It is a pathetic, puerile race to keep up
with each other, while vast populations struggle to survive amidst
galloping inflation.

Kickbacks from weapons suppliers, transmitted through dealers

such as Adnan Khashoggi, who was then the reigning arms dealer, are
now rumoured to be an important source of income in certain quarters.
Swiss banks groan under the debt burden of interest payments on
deposits lying in un-numbered deposit accounts, where, it is common
knowledge, vast sums of hard currency have been stashed away.
Indian ‘arms dealers’ are mere fronts for the Big Names in the shadowy
world of cross-country weapons dealing, a multi-billion dollar industry.
These individuals live in extravagant splendour a medieval
plenipotentiary would have envied. A soldier’s life is far from all this
sordid squalor.

I now reluctantly admit that I chickened out when I saw the climax
of ‘A Farewell to Arms’ approaching and tried to divert the reader’s
attention from the looming denouement. In any case, I rationalised, the
reader must have guessed the inevitable outcome from the title itself.
There was hardly any point in overkill. But the fact is that I did not
have the guts to face the truth: a little piece of flying lead had wrecked
the career of a warrior.

Had Vij, Arjun; Major; IC-17575 fought in an earlier era, his wound
would have been dismissed as routine battle damage; he would have
been allowed to rest, recuperate, retrain, and resume active service. It
was said of Samudragupta that he bore the scars of dozens of grievous
wounds on his powerful body. Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Rana Sangha,
and Guru Gobind Singh had been seriously wounded many times, but
they had recovered and fought on. But these were modern times, and
a modern army has modern criteria for deciding what is usable and
what is to be discarded.

Arjun was in a quandary. While he got back into sports and sweated
it out at physiotherapy, he played all the cards he had and waited for
the outcome of his pre-emptive appeals. His Medical Report was up
before the Board. He shuffled the papers on his desk and wistfully
dreamed of another caper. He could be very pushy when he wanted to
be, and he was very pushy now. He harangued all and sundry, he
wrote long letters to his erstwhile Field Commanders, he pulled all the
strings he could reach.

He did not want to sit at a desk at headquarters while his friends

went off to the next war. He was a soldier born to combat, a warrior
who suffered peacetime only because it was a necessary (but barely
tolerable) anti-thesis to war. Peacetime (for Arjun) was a routine break
meant for brushing up on weaponry, attending Advanced Courses at
the College of Combat, Mhow, and perhaps even gaining admittance to
a program/workshop at the prestigious Defence Service Staff College
at Wellington, in the Nilgiris. The thought of being put out to pasture in
the prime of life was unbearable.

He didn’t qualify. The Board decided that he was no longer fit for
active service, and he was ‘de-categorized’ from ‘Category Aye One’ to
‘Category C.’ The Indian Army was regretful but firm. Vij, Arjun, Major,
was henceforth to be allocated only staff duties. He would have to
mind the stables while other knights rode off to battle. He concealed
his disappointment well. He carried on as if nothing had happened. It
was peacetime, after all. Soldiers make the most of it. Arjun did that,
for once...in his own inimitable way.

After he’d returned my Jawa with hardly any rubber left on the tires
(it took him a little more than a fortnight to do that!), I had sold it to
one Vinay Shukla. I was tired of it (pun unintended). With Aditya
Patankar straddling a Jawa, it was something else; but I was no
Patankar. The Jawa did not come alive when I rode it. It wasn’t the
machine: it was me. Anyway, I bought a Royal Enfield ‘Bullet’
motorcycle [UPN 3722], a 350 cc, single-cylinder, four-stroke job. This
was more like it. Powerful, stable, forgiving of driver errors, highly
flexible in traffic, adaptable to any terrain, and perfect for my height,
weight, and build, the indefatigable Bullet was (and still remains) my
dream bike. ‘Made Like a Gun’ reads the legend on the teardrop petrol
tank. That it is.

It is a contemporary of such legendary British motorcycles as AJS,

Ariel, BSA, Matchless, Norton, Sunbeam, and Triumph. The Second
World War, and the combined military might of Japan and Nazi
Germany was unable to kill the British motorcycle industry, enduring
and virtually unassailable as it then was. If anything, the War gave it a
shot in the arm. Today, it lies in an unmarked grave. The Japanese
invasion, led by Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha succeeded in
finishing it off.
The notorious British insularity and its concomitant – resistance to
change – were no longer passports to survival. Shrinking markets
necessitate aggressive export strategies. Innovation, adaptability, and
economy are the watchwords. They were costly lessons for British
industry. Fundamental research is all very well, but more fundamental
than that, for the sake of commercial viability, is consumer-oriented
research coupled with new approaches to marketing and human
resources management.

Far from its original home in distant England, the Indian version of
the Enfield Bullet soldiers on bravely: a living fossil, a throwback to the
good old days when massive power came in as low as (by today’s
standards) 2,200 rpm, and deep, majestic exhaust beats, music to a
biker’s ears, could be counted individually, a happy by-product of the
single cylinder design with its long piston stroke producing the
generous low-end torque.

It is a trip down memory lane, a blast from the past, a nostalgic

reminder of the glorious age of Empire. The Brits are, naturally, crazy
about it; they import it to their foggy little isle by the score, shelling
out bagfulls of hard currency for the gleaming machines. It rides alone,
unchallenged in its class, the only 350 cc motorcycle in India. (A 500 cc
stable-mate has since been added, with modest success).

Whatever the Brits can do, our homegrown Sardarjis can do even
better. No self-respecting Sardarji will be caught without one in his
stable, even if it has to share garage space with a BMW, to name but
one famous Sardarji weakness (which is not mere hyperbole; it
happens). Please note that a Sardarji knows a good thing when he sees
one – be it Baingan da bharta, Birmingham, butter chicken, bhangra,
blondes or a Bullet – and goes for it unabashedly. His endorsement is
the ultimate Seal of Approval, not that the Bullet needs one. No fat-cat
cricketer or rock star endorses it; it needs no marketing props. It
stands alone, invincible in its sheer unrepeatability.

Vij sees my bike and falls for it. He is off and running, in the original
Arjun Vij way. There is a ten-year waiting list for a Bullet, in Delhi. In
1972, it is a status symbol. I had circumvented the queue by buying
my bike from (The Chenab Motorcycle Store, Station Road) Moradabad.
This is because Moradabad is the nearest large town to where Dad is
posted (he looks after a large distillery for K.K. Birla, a leading
Industrialist of the country). The purchase is perfectly legitimate; the
address on my driving license is care-of my Dad. Bullets don’t sell that
well in UP, thirty-five years ago; 6,700 rupees is a daunting price tag.
Vij takes another route; he falls back on the good old Army and its
fabled quota. A flood of letters, shamelessly citing his Category ‘C’ and
his GSW (RA) injury, issues forth under his signature. The argument put
forward is that in the Bajaj scooter that he owns, the right foot
operates the brake pedal. Vij has a right foot, true, but it is so badly
war-damaged as to have resulted in his de-categorization. Ergo, the
Bajaj is declared persona non grata. It must go. The only replacement
available in India is the Bullet, where the brake pedal is on the left.

The words ‘available in India’ scare the living daylights out of the
authorities; they know the lengths to which the Mad Major is capable of
going, in order to get what he wants. If he fails, it shall not be for want
of trying. Foreign exchange is scarce. Visions of the mountainous
paperwork that will be involved in obtaining clearance for importing a
motorcycle for this wounded warrior hover before the eyes of the
sluggish babus of the Ministry. They loathe unnecessary
correspondence, obviously; Vij gets his approval in a record-breaking
time of thirty-eight days.

Hauz Khas is a sleepy little colony where I stay after my cousin

shifts to Madras (that’s Chennai today). The peace of a lazy Sunday
morning is rudely shattered by a ferocious roar. Heads crane from
windows to see what the commotion is all about. The hideous din
emanates from a truncated Enfield exhaust. Pointless calling that poor,
Bobbitised, chrome-plated tube a ‘silencer’: it is anything but that. It is
attached to a gleaming new Bullet that is parked outside my gate. A
man with the shoulders of a Titan sits astride it.

It seems to be an arsenal-on-wheels: dummy shells from Oerlikon

‘pom-pom’ anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine-guns are welded to
every visible part of the frame, the mudguards, and even atop the
headlight. The brass gleams, the handiwork of some beleaguered
batman. The bike makes an unmistakable statement: it belongs to an
army-man, said army-man man is a gun-nut, and that nut has a screw
loose. He is armed, dangerous, and ruthless. To the denizens of this
placid neighbourhood, the ogre of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ fame has
arrived, scenting human blood, all Fi, Fi, Fo and Fum. And he has come
for my blood, obviously, on account of misdemeanours unknown.

Heads are quickly withdrawn; doors and windows are rapidly shut
and bolted. The populace waits with delicious anticipation for the
sound of gunfire, for my blood to be spilt, for the wail of police sirens
and ambulances. They are disappointed. They only hear roars of
delighted laughter (at my surprise); then the ear-splitting clatter fades
away as the bike carries us off to some unknown destination. Later,
people treat me with wary respect. I keep dangerous company;
therefore, I, too, must be dangerous! My own Bullet now resembles me
closely, at least to my own eyes: sedate, docile, a mere beast of
burden. It is not a war-horse for warriors en route to Valhalla.

As he mends physically, Arjun regroups internally. Outwardly he is

still his old irrepressible self but inside, he is engaged in quietly
marshalling his inner resources to cope with the changed
circumstances. He is in no hurry. Although his world has changed
forever, he still has the comfortable, well-paid job with all the perks. As
he goes about adjusting to the future, he begins to let his hair down,
metaphorically speaking—the wiry hair is cropped, as always, close to
the skull (so that an opponent cannot use it against you by pulling or
leveraging it, he explains with a grin). He seems to realize that he has
to re-focus. There is nothing of the resigned martyr about him,
however. He continues to extract every drop of joy from life. The term
joie de vivre springs to mind unbidden.

His reading habits change. His shelf now has books on Zen,
mysticism and martial arts, rubbing shoulders with Gun Digest,
Unarmed Combat, and Shooter’s Bible. I notice the names of Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, Lobsang Rampa, and Eric Van Lustbader. That is when
I notice that the chopping edges of his hands have developed bone-
hard calluses. Ju-Jitsu, and later, judo and karate, (‘kara’ meaning
‘empty’ and ‘te’ meaning ‘hand’, ‘the art of fighting with the empty
hand’, he explains) had always been part of an infantryman’s
curriculum. Arjun picks up Taekwondo as well. When Vij comes across
anything potentially lethal, he pulls out all the stops. He moves up
rapidly through the black belts, becoming a fourth Dan. Some Category
‘C’ guy!

One day, I ask him how it is that a hand of flesh and blood can
break all those layers of tiles and whatnot one reads about in the
magazines. He patiently explains that there are lines of force in
Nature: align yourself with them and you harness them. A despairing
look, as that of one trying to explain the Binomial Theorem to a child of
six, flits across his Grecian features. He makes a pile of ten bricks
between two arms of adjacent chairs, sturdy, oaken, army chairs. He
strips down to the waist, bows low before the construction, then
assumes strike-mode, cutting arm raised. He seems to be lost in
thought.

Suddenly, faster than the eye can follow, his hand has cleaved the
bricks as though they were so many cream-crackers. He insists that it
is not his hand that has broken the bricks; the Force did that. His hand
merely served to channel it, like a lightning conductor does with a bolt
of lightning, like a conductor’s baton directs an orchestra through a
recital. He did not touch the bricks, which had parted by the time his
hand got to them.
 It all sounds like fantastic gibberish to me. I try to break one brick.
Even today, my right wrist still warns me of impending thunderstorms
by the dull ache it generates hours before the event, a legacy of my
ineptitude at bare-handed brick breaking. Wherever the line of force is,
I can neither see nor sense it. I guess it needs the Third Eye.

In order to maintain coherence in the story, I am now compelled to

skip ahead a few years. I am now in-charge of a medium-sized branch
of a bank. Arjun opens his account there. Even after I am transferred, I
keep getting reports about his doings. The branch manager who
succeeds me is an old friend; he hits it off well with Arjun, and one day,
in the course of conversation, they find themselves engaged in a
discussion on the higher reaches of martial arts.

The manager thinks Arjun is joking when he says that there are over
300 ways of killing a man without leaving a trace as to the cause of
death, or that it is possible to take the spirit out from a man’s body and
then return it. Hardly possessed of a virile imagination, the banker is
unable to appreciate what sort of man he is dealing with. He returns to
consciousness on the office carpet: his staff huddles around him,
scared speechless. He last remembers Arjun responding to his dare by
pressing gently with thumb and forefinger on certain blood vessels and
nerves on his neck. He remembers exiting his body…. then nothing.

Arjun is now a Dan of the seventh grade. It is a level beyond the

physical aspects of sport. In fact, it is no longer a sport: it is a quest for
the Great Mystery, for the meaning of life. A Dan of the ninth level is a
Maestro. He is a master of the universe; he has torn the Veil aside to
understand what is. He encounters another Reality far removed from
the mundane world of everyday life beyond which few men go.

Rumours continue to filter through about Arjun. He is now a Sensei,

a Grandmaster. A chain of institutions engaged in training people in
the martial arts functions under his direct control across the entire
length and breadth of South-East Asia. He is selling better coal in
Newcastle. In the latter day breeding ground of unarmed combat
techniques, he, a foreigner, towers above them all, as revered as any
Great Khan of Mongol times.

Then the curtain falls. No further news gets through. I know he has
passed beyond the pale of ordinary men. I bid farewell to my friend in
my mind, in my heart, knowing that the message gets through. I
cannot take his road, cannot follow him. It is not for the likes of me.
Arjun always belonged to Mars, and the God of War has re-assigned his
satrap to another mission.
Wherever he is, I know Arjun has attained fulfilment, has
successfully discharged his brief. Mars winks at me redly from the
night sky, relieved that I understand.
I salute you, Sensei. Till we meet again, then.