LIFE OF AN ARMY PERSON'S DAUGHTER

 Most of you who have followed my blog know that most of our postings were in peace stations. But of course if you are in the Army it is of little concern where you are posted. When you are posted in a peace station you are actually living in a Cantonment.   "On the way to work @ Khadki Cantonment Area"  by Anil Wadghule  is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ A Cantonment is like a town specifically for Army Personnel and their families. These Cantonments can vary in size from small localities to as big as a small town itself. These are generally set up at the outskirts of cities, though nowadays you will find many of them at the centre of cities, since the cities have expanded considerably in due course of time, assimilating the Cantonments in the process. In this cantonments all needs of the personnel and the families are provided for, sine the rules are stricter in the cantonments than

  I was looking through the materials for my next post when I chanced upon an old birthday photo of mine and I remembered of few anecdote that I felt I should share with my readers.  Since the next few posts are from a time before the first post in this blog the main post series would be on hold for a while. Until then enjoy this new spin off  FLASHBACK SERIES. Me as a kid  I was born in the last decade of the 20th century. Being the first kid in the family I was taken care of the most and also went through all the mishaps of having first time parents and since there were no elderly with us my parents had to figure out everything about parenting on their own.  I was taken care of so much that my weight was 16kgs at the age of mere 9 months . They had also created a strict timetable to keep note that I was fed nutritiously and properly. As a result my weight was so much in comparison to my age that my parents were at times hesitant to take me for a walk in their arms.  I understan

As mentioned in our previous post, this and the  next few posts would focus on our grandfather's visit in Jaisalmer.  On our grandfather's arrival our father got leave from office to give him a tour of Jaisalmer. We decided to begin the tour with a nice meal at our favourite restaurant, Desert Boy's Dhani. The restaurant was famous for its Rajasthani dishes and candle light dinners (I believe it still is) which were served in an open roof garden. Our grandfather was unfamiliar with the dishes we ordered, since he was used to common, plain dishes, he'd never had something like Mushroom Masala. After a hearty meal, when the bill arrived our grandfather was awestruck by the amount. As our father began counting the notes to pay the bill, our grandfather couldn't take off his eyes from the notes, add to it the surprise when father gave the additional tip. That was the moment when grandfather blew up saying "Tum bachcho ko akal hi nahi hai ki paise kaha kharch kart

Once again it was time for us to move to our new posting. An Army serviceman can't be at a particular location for more than three years. Until now for over nine years, our posting had mostly been in hilly regions with cool weather. Our next posting was in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.  We were picked from an ice mountain and thrown into hell fire in the month of May .  Hell fire  is the only word in my vocabulary I feel fitting to describe the climatic conditions of Jaisalmer. For those who were brought up in cold hilly regions, this place really doesn't fit right with their health. That's exactly how we were. The travel was long and tedious, we had to travel via two trains to reach Jaisalmer.                                        Jaisalmer Fort   We hadn't been allotted our quarters yet therefore, we began living on rent in civil area in Indira Colony. For the first time we were seen houses which were not made up of bricks or plaster. Due to intense heat of the region, t

 With the changing of seasons, winter arrived. Winter in Thimphu is no laughing matter. The cold is enough to make ice-creams of someone's blood. It is difficult to survive without proper heating at home. There was not a single day during this season when we didn't find the water in our taps frozen along with the drainage. For early risers it is literally hell, so we always made sure that we rise after 9 o' clock something so that we don't have to heat the pipes for washing ourselves.                                                            A Snowy Day                    A snowy day never meant a holiday for our father, on the contrary it was just another day with blood freezing cold and knee deep snow.                                                   Our Father on Duty                  Our father being the maintenance in-charge of The Embassy as a defence personnel had to handle everything from power cuts to minor maintenance. Of course, as a result there was never

Next morning, the sun was already up when we finally awoke. We could feel the cold, that was exactly why we woke up in the first place. Even in the summer the temperature could go down enough to find ice every morning in the water supply. However, since sun rises early in this region we could still use water since the ice had already began melting.     We began exploring the house. It was the biggest house we ever got as our accommodation. Originally an officers mess, it had been converted into a family accommodation. It consisted of four bedrooms, a large, heavily furnished living room, a drying area and a shed  for setting up lungar  during festivals. In our backyard, there was space that we could use during festivals and during tea time. The whole backyard was full of trees and vegetation.                                                          Next to the backyard a river flowed noisily with the water gushing and striking its bank with heavy force. One thing I must warn you about

In this second post of the LIFE OF AN ARMY PERSON'S DAUGHTER, we'll be continuing from where we left. We began our journey to our new posting, The Embassy of India in Bhutan, with excitement and anticipation of new experiences and lots of transport changes.    "Thimphu from the top of the National Memorial Chorten"   by  markhorrell  is licensed under  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0                        Our first destination was Pathankot. The mode of travel was a metre gauge train. For those who don't know about this train let me brief you a little, it is a basically kind of a small sized train, locally known as chhuk-chhuk train, used highly for transportation in Himachal Pradesh. "KSR - Rounding a Curve"   by  Mike Legend  is licensed under  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 From Pathankot we took a train for Delhi. We were to board our train, Guwahati Express, to our next destination in the eastern part of India, namely New Alipurduar. Upon reaching New Alipurduar, we took a bus,

Hey Guys, This is my first blog and I wanted to share some experiences of my life, that is, THE LIFE OF A ARMY PERSON'S DAUGHTER. Whenever I make any new friends and inform them about my Army background, the first question they ever ask is not about the medals or the uniform, it is almost always about the BOXES we use during our travels, A TRADEMARK OF ARMY LIFE. As kids of an Army person, our father, our lives were ruled by strict discipline and more then plenty room for our mischiefs  and shenanigans. In this blog I'll be sharing  my journeys of the various postings, shenanigans and few family trips I went on with my family. So lets get this started. My earliest memories are of Alhilal Cantt, Himachal Pradesh. Our quarter was in a remote area surrounded by forests on all four sides. I still can feel my fascination right now when I got to know that bears and leopards roam outside our homes, in our courtyard at night. Wild animal sightings were quite commonplace and we got used