Sambandan was our mess cook when I joined my regiment over two decades back. Shy, reticent, always sporting a smile he was also the only good cook I have ever come across who has not been equally difficult.The relationship between officers and the mess staff is always quite intimate, primarily spurred by the daily interaction, and I had soon developed a fine relationship with this man.
Our unit was under tentage in the desert, in those days. Sambandan came into play when I would be late for breakfast.Everyone was expected to be in the mess before the Commanding Officer’s (CO’s) arrival. An odd misadventure was permissible,however, I found my self once too often in the same boat.
Sambandan would inevitably stop me in my tracks and insist on my returning to my tent. Minutes later, he would fetch me a delightful breakfast, neglecting everybody else on the table.
Sambandan was also the CO's favourite. However, whenever he would be summoned by the CO to the dining room, Sambandan would post himself behind the curtains. No amount of coaxing was adequate for him to make an appearance in front of the CO.
Very often, we young officers would skip dinner and drive out for shikar. With such jaunts often going late into the night, Sambandan would inevitably be waiting for us and insist not only on our having diner, but hot food. It was touching, and invariably we failed to live up to our promises to Sambandan of returning early the next time. Sambandan would smile, dress the game, and then wait for us to finish before blowing off the lamps.
A few years later I was posted on the staff of a brigade headquarters.Returning to the unit after my tenure, I found Sambandan again. This cycle of postings to various headquarters, returning to the unit, moving out again to attend the Staff Course at Wellington had carried on. When I returned after a long staff tenure accompanied by my wife and a child less than two years old, Sambandan befriended both and managed to dig deep into the whole family’s heart.
It was atop a frozen mountain pass that I came to command the unit on having been promoted to a Colonel. Sambandan was due to proceed on retirement shortly. He clasped me in a tight embrace, overjoyed that the blundering young officer of that desert had now become the CO. But, thereafter, my attempts to meet him had not succeeded beyond the cross-curtain exchanges. A fortnight before he was to leave, the young officers had started signing drinks for him.The night before his departure, I signed his drinks. Sambandan was summoned to the anteroom to receive a gift from the officers. He marched in a new pair of uniform and saluted, the cracks in his smile a window to the emotional upheaval that soldiers experience when it is time to shed the uniform. I thought it best not to stretch the ceremony, lest he break. “As I moved back to my bunker, there was a knock on the door. Sambandan walked in“Sahib, I had to meet you”. I put an arm on his shoulder and squeezed it.He remained impassive till I said, “I understand, it pains; leaving the unit...hanging the boots forever”.
And that’s when he clasped me tightly to break, “My youth’s been spent here.Today, I don’t even know how to live without my uniform.”
(Published as Middles in TOI on 26 February, 1999 when I was commanding my unit in Sikkim)
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