UFOs

It was Sid who first mentioned it in a rather matter of fact way. "Daddy, there is a UFO chasing us." I nearly skidded off the road! We were on the 14th day of our little sight seeing trip of the mid-west starting from Chicago and heading north west via I90 to South Dakota, then turning south past Wyoming and Colorado, across the continental divide to Four Corners and the Grand Canyon, before turning back east again to take I40 to Alburqueque, then north on I25 to Colorado Springs and Denver and then out East again in I80 back to Chicago. We had initially thought of stopping for the night at Iowa City, but decided to push on to make the best of the summer daylight hours. I promised the kids we would stop off as soon as they felt they had had enough. The time was past 9pm and dusk was giving way to darkness very quickly. I had to stop off at the next exit that had some decent lodging.

Nick was more excitable of the two. He was giving a running commentary on the red ball of light that appeared to wobble at a very high speed over the trees to the right of the highway. I had a quick glimpse of the object. Sure enough, it appeared to be going parallel to the highway and was travelling at the same speed of the car as it remained in sight just off the rear window. Sid said he was taking a video and was getting a good shot of it. Nick would have fallen out of the window if we had allowed him to open it as he was gesticulating wildly to Sid each time the object appeared to bounce up. I asked the kids to see whether they could zoom in on it, but Sid found it difficult to do so due to the erratic flight path of the object. Nick kept his nose glued to the window while Sid managed to keep it in his viewfinder. He must have taped about 20 minutes of it, when I saw the exit sign ahead. I asked the kids to put the camera away and keep tracking it until we stopped at the car park. But as abruptly as it had appeared, it was gone.

We stopped in front of the motel, scrambled out and scanned the skies for another sighting. Nothing. We collected our bags and wandered into the motel - deadbeat! But we had the tape - proof enough to show the whole world. I couldn't wait to see the results.

We connected up the camera to the TV, rewound the tape and switched it on. Sure enough, there it was, bobbing in the distance. The camera shook quite a bit, but Sid had the thing on tape. And as we watched it, I saw a faint outline of Sids face and the video camera reflected off the side window. For some unfathomable reason, the blob appeared to be moving in unison with the camera. And then it dawned on me. I asked Sid to disconnect the camera and give it to me. I switched it back to camera mode, pointed it at the mirror and pushed the button. And the mysterious ball of red glowed right back at me!! :-(

A Kids view of a war

December of 1971. I was on a holiday from boarding school and as november turned to December in Satwari in Jammu, my thoughts were as far from the daily humdrum of boarding school life as the crisp morning air could make it. The war on the eastern front was already 9 months old and there was rumours of "opening the western front" all through October and November. The only war I had seen at age 11 were the world war biggies on the big screen - Tora, Tora, Tora, the Battle of Britain, In Harms Way etc. In my minds eye, I could see wave upon wave of enemy fighters darkening the sky above us as ack-ack guns opened up with their deadly barrage. I imagined the fate of the pilots of those slow lumbering bombers and wondered what it would be like to be all of 11 years and very dead!

The reality when it happened was almost almost clinical. We heard about the PAF airstrikes on 14 of our bases on the evening news on 03 Dec and our own counter strike on Pakistani airfields. I missed all that action though. In Jammu, except for the buzz in the air, life was almost business as usual. On the morning of the 4th, I was up and awake early and scanning the horizon half expecting to see the row upon row of bombers with their fighter escorts. Nothing. A few eagles rode the wind, the sky was a azure blue and there were birds chirping as usual. Nothing to excite a 11-year old that day. After breakfast, I went to the backyard to chat up Karade who had just been issued a brand new rifle - a gleaming 7.62mm SLR. I hadn't had a chance to look at it yet, but decided that I would get around to it sometime during the day. We had a fairly large house with an even larger estate with two lawns up front divided by the driveway, the guava orchard on the left with the beds of homegrown vegetables in early bloom, two blackberry (jamun) trees and a set of servants quarters and a garage at the back.

What happened next needed post engagement analysis and review for it happened so suddenly. There was this whoosh of air. The first thing I noticed was the birds scattering and taking to flight from the trees around us. I felt punched in the gut by a heavy fist. And then this earth shattering roar that felt like the world had come to an end. Karade was frozen in horror for a moment, jaw wide open, eyes popping, seeking an explanation that came once again, this time, low over the tops of the trees - a glistening streak of metal and flame that extended to twice its body length - an F86 Sabre jet. Karade was already stretching into a full blooded sprint to the corner of the backyard where one of the three trenches were dug out in anticipation.

He paused in flight momentarily, turning back to look over his shoulder and yell out a warning to me - "Baba, jaldi karo...idhar!" And then his foot caught a root and he went down into the trench in a cloud of dust. I scampered in after him, cringing at the level of noise that seemed to be coming from everywhere. As I jumped into the trench, I noticed the rifle propped against the side and without thinking, I picked it up, rested it on the edge of the trench and my right hand slid automatically to find the bolt. I touched smooth metal. Where the hell was the bolt? I scratched the right side of the breech in desperation, hoping against hope that the bolt would appear by magic, my .303 rifle instructors words pounding in my head. No luck. I took a lead on the third aircraft and pulled the trigger hoping the breech was loaded. No luck again.

The next thing I remember was Karade asking me to step back and hand the rifle to him. By then it was over. There were six aircraft in that flight and I had missed my chance to get into the war and contribute. And much later, I figured that the new SLRs had a recessed cocking handle on the left of the breech!

Spirituality of the Himalayas

The Himalayas in the Ladakh region comprising three main ranges - the Zanskar, the Ladakh and the Great Himalayan - is an awe inspiring sight, no matter how many times you fly over them. Some of the peaks towered over us - cold, icy, snow covered, harsh, menacing- these sentinals of the north that has protected this land from marauding invaders and the more inclement weather further to the north. We had dropped below the cloud layer on our final approach into Leh, the capital of the Ladakh region. I was earmarked for an expedition, or at least, that was what I was told - the first Siachen Glacier expedition. I was to keep things under the wraps for some reason and at that time, I did not bother to question things - I was just taken in with the adventure of it all. Leh is a small town nestling at the foot of the Ladakh range. The altitude was 11000 feet, but there was some greenery in the otherwise desolate moonscape. The river Indus flowed past the runway in a wide shallow stream as it was still early spring. A cold gust hit me as I stepped out of the aircraft onto the tarmac and picked up my haversack and looked around for a place to warm myself. An assortment of olive green army vehicles were lined up on one side of a hut that passed as the terminal building. Expecting my ride to be one among the parked vehicles, I saundered across and was quickly bundled into a vehicle which had its heaters running. I couldn't have hope for more!

Two weeks of acclimatization later, I was headed off into the blue on my first assignment. Several hours later we were grinding up the mountain side towards Chang La, enroute to Chushul, the lone outpost overlooking the old airfield and the stretch of Pangong Tso lake that turned and continued beyond the bend into Tibetain Chinese territory. But this is not about the trip up to Chushul or the subsequent 'expedition'. Its about the journey and the people you met along it and the stories that was associated with it.

There is one about a military police chap who appeared on pitch black nights to direct vehicular traffic into a ravine - the Khooni Nullah - on the way up from Udhampur to Ramban. There is one about a friendlier soul who directed people stuck with a breakdown to places where food and shelter was available enroute from Kashmir valley to Gurez in the Kishenganga valley . There is even one about a dedicated spirit that joined each patrol that set out from Tangtse to a particular mountain top each Thursday night.

There was this story about a whole convoy being stuck up on Chang La for a week before the people trapped in it decided to try and make it down to the other side on foot. Walking down the steep mountainside, the group triggered an avalanche that buried 14 people. Nine survivors were dug up that day. A recovery group that came back later to collect the bodies found four of them. Two weeks later, there was still no sign of the fifth body. Someone suggested that they should approach the local baba or holy man to see if he could help and sure enough, he said that on the third day a lone bird would appear and circle the area a few times before alighting on the slow covered slope momentarily before flying away again. They would find the body at the point where the bird landed. Most of the group who heard this, dismissed it straightaway as a lot of gibberish. But some kept the faith. And sure enough, it happened like the baba said. The body had been picked up by the avalanche and smashed up the far side of the stream at the bottom of the reenterant. There was no way any one would have even thought of looking there.

The strangest one I heard was about this great white winged horse that flew across the mountain, with its hoofs catching the ridge lines tens of miles apart. The local even lead me to a spot on a ridge just behind one of our forward localities that had a giant hoof mark imprinted on rock. The story goes that there was a similar hoof mark on each of the three ridge lines visible from there all aligned in a straight line along the line of flight - one on the ride above Haji Pir pass, one were we were standing and one on the ridge line visible in the distance on the other side of the narrow Jhelum valley towards the Kayya Bowl sector.

There are even more gruesome patterns to naming landmarks along the way. The 'one-ton mod' ('mod' for a turning or a hair-pin bend, in Hindi) where a one-tonner had crashed through the concrete siding to the rocky stream bed 150 feet below. The 'Shaktiman mod' where the truck had fallen with the loss of a dozen soldiers, and even an 'Avro mod' where an Avro aircraft had crashed sometime in the 60s. There were no survivors. Some of the twisted wreckage is still visible from that hairpin bend for those who bothered to stop. All these mods were on one route from Leh to the Nubra river valley on the far side of the Ladakh range via the Khardungla pass at 18400 feet, the highest motorable road in the world.

Whatever the truth in the thousands of stories one picks up on the journeys through the mountains, there is no doubt that the harsh terrain does make you more spiritual. There are well established temples on all routes in the mountains. There is the mandatory stop at the top of each climb to offer prayers for a journey half accomplished and to seek blessings for the remainder of the journey. There are memorials all along the way of people whose journeys did not concluded as expected but ended all the same. It reminded me constantly of the fraility of human lives.

Presumed Lost

We had been climbing up from the valley for just about an hour when darkness caught up with us. We were still well below the treeline, but just before the last rays of the setting sun gave way to inky an blackness, I caught sight of the main company headquarters post at 13,400 feet on the ridgeline. I reminded myself not to miss the turnoff on the col that led to the single trecherous path to the top of the ridge. I had met Maj Yadav just a day earlier when I left to return to battalion headquarters located in the valley below at 8000 feet. This post was a full 8 hour walk from base, initially along the valley and then the gradual climb up to the village where I was offered a rather refreshing glass of fresh and boiling hot goat milk. It was the summer of 1991 but the temperatures dropped rather quickly after dusk. I was keen to make it to the treeline before last light, but that was not going to happen now.

The plan was for the half-link patrol to drop me at the village before heading back to battalion base so as to reach it before dark. I knew I would have to wait before the half-link from the post came to get me and lead me back to the post on the line of control. But after that glass of milk, I was all set to move on. I decided that I would meet the patrol on its way down as there was very little chance of us missing each other on the narrow mountain path. But the darkness and my own exhaustion caught me by surprise. In retrospect, I had just come down the mountain the previous day at the breakneck speed of an enthusiastic novice and now, all my muscles were screaming in agony at each step on the way up. We paused a while to catch our breath. Something was moving in the bush, just above and to our left. "Bears! Shit!!" was the only thoughts that crossed my mind. I signalled to my help to stand still. The breeze was flowing down the valley from the direction of the noise towards us so whatever it was, wouldn't catch the scent of our presence. I could still hear dogs barking in the village, now far below us. I began to sidetrack to the right, away from the trodden, narrow path, up the side of the mountain, slowly at first and then more rapidly as we put as much of distance between us and the thing in the bushes. It was then I saw the light through the trees. I was not told about this, but I automatically assumed it was a shepherds hut in the wilderness. Probably the only safe place between here and the post on the ridgeline.

There were three of them huddled over the fire when we walked into the clearing. The hut was minimal, placed at the edge of a clearing that ended on a cliff that fell sharply away to the treeline just a few hundred feet below. I had my first meal for the day - powdered bajra, mixed into hot tea! It was delicious and I was soon fast asleep on that ledge, dreaming about fires and moving bushes and wild creatures of all shapes and sizes pouncing out of the night.

Mauritius - Enroute to the Antarctic

The layover in Mauritius lasted 36 hours. We needed the sheltered space on the leeward side of the island to open up the holds, and extract all the winter clothing and gear needed for the next leg of the journey to the Antarctic. Mauritius is a neat little place tucked away in the middle of no where. "Little blobs of sh..t" was the only expletive that Rakesh had offered that dawn when he bounded into our cabin, woke me and Pat and half dragged us out the door and up a few flights of ladders to the open area just above the bridge. We were still sailing at a steady 24 knots into the fresh morning mist. The blue of the Indian Ocean stretched infinitely before us as the first rays of the morning hit us. "Where the hell is it? I can't see a damn thing?" That was Pat in his usual drawl. Rakesh pointed them out. Nothing more than a few blobs as he had described them. "That cant be it. Mauritius is a fairly large island", I chimed in. This thing in our path did not even seem capable of being landed on for it rose almost pillar like from the ocean. It was well past 10 am when we sailed into the main harbour at Port Louis and dropped anchor.

Strange Choice of Title

Actually, I wanted to write a book. It began a while ago, and like all things, remained a great idea. And I know the "path to hell is paved with good intentions" and thank you for reminding me. I never have got around to it, simply because, when the hell do you get the time to simply sit, collect your thoughts, sift through the deluge, sort the interesting bits, categorize them and put them onto paper in a sequence that holds someones attention for long enough to make him or her turn the page, and the next one and the one after that, to makes sense to someone elses habit of browsing in a section of a bookstore where the store clerk accidently placed a copy. What are the odds of making money on a venture like that? Hats off to those who have actually made it the work of a lifetime. Imagine the freedom it gave you. To let ones thoughts run. To be able to do what you do without any reference to a location to do it in, just because you want to do it. So I thought, why not just start putting the stuff together. Let it flow at random, in bits and pieces, in whatever sequence it comes out in. And once the initial wave of enthusiasm has extracted enough from the far recessess of your memory, and it is out there on paper, take a look at it to see whether it made any sense. Was there a story in there somewhere to tell? Just earlier today, I was watching something on tele, probably a movie, in which there is this kid who wants to write and he says to himself "Sh..t, maybe I can't do this, after all?" And he wrote that down. And then he wrote the next thing that came to his mind, and then the next. And before dawn, he had a 100 pages of jottings on his table. That was the inspiration. So, here goes!