Finally, a Punjab tenure

Brig Sandeep Thapar

Despite being a Delhiite, I had not travelled much to Punjab. Chandigarh, being close to my maternal grandparent’s hometown of Ambala, was perhaps the outer limit of my Punjab sojourns. So after I joined my battalion, anytime the boys asked me ‘Saab kithon de o tusi’ (where are you from), I would sheepishly murmur ‘Dilli’. Or to a ‘Punjab vekhya?’, I would nod and try to change the topic. I would keep imagining the open fields, village lanes, tubewells, rivulets and, of course, the beautiful village belles the troops often talked about.

In 1993, our unit moved to Dera Baba Nanak, a border village in Gurdaspur district. It was a sleepy town in an underdeveloped Gurdaspur then; its only claim to fame was the Chola Sahib gurdwara headed by Bedis, the direct descendents of Guru Nanak Devji and the view of Dera Sahib, Kartarpur, (the birth place of Guru Nanak Devji) you could get from a few strategic locations. 

The first few weeks were a series of shocks and revelations. There was new terminology one had never heard back home. Jhona was paddy, sheller (rice husk removal/polishing factory), kallar (barren land), bambi (tubewell), gapha (fistful of anything), paiya (250 gm/ml) and many more. Fresh vegetables, milk and its derivatives were simply amazing, though not for all. My wife, who joined me for a brief period, discovered this much to her own discomfiture. Fond of milk, when offered a ‘kade wala’ (big) glass of fresh buffalo milk, she hastily gulped it down. Immediately thereafter, she lay down for three days with stomach cramps. It seemed the city-bred could not digest pure milk.

Our area of responsibility included Kasowal, an enclave across the Ravi. My company was the first to be stationed there. We crossed the mighty Ravi over a pontoon bridge, my first. It was March or April; the landscape was golden. We moved into a ring bund, a square, enclosed dhussi bund, the relevance of which was understood by me only in monsoons. During rains, the Ravi assumed alarming dimensions, the 100-yard crossing was now almost half a mile wide. The troops relocated on top of the dhussi bunds. I had de-inducted and Maj KK Sircar was now the company commander. Soon the entire enclave got submerged in 4-5 feet water.

The CO somehow could not find time to visit the enclave. This did not go well with the infantry brigade commander. He expressed a desire to visit it. The commander and CO crossed the inundated river, where Major Sircar was waiting with a tractor. The commander and CO sat on the tractor and were about to start when the former asked the company commander: “Where is my star plate, friend?” “Right here, sir,” said Major Sircar, duly affixing it on the tractor. With all tracks submerged, navigation was important — you didn’t want to drown your brigade commander. So Major Sircar, 5 ft 2 inches, fully erect (lest he drowned) walked in front of the tractor, guiding it to the headquarters.

My Punjab tenure was cut short since I qualified for Staff College and left within a year only to return about a decade later to command a battalion in Pathankot.