Chapter 12: jurithewriter has started writing her story: D2

 

The wives dressed in traditional bridal wear in one of the innumerable NDA parties. Location, my memories say it is the Officer's mess 

The house allocated to my father after the teachers quarters was located in the same sector, called D2. NDA had an enormous campus where it housed all the permanent civilian teaching officers, the uniformed officers from the defence services who stayed for brief periods, all the staff along with their families who handled the non-teaching departmental functions of the Science Block and the Sudan block, the junior commissioned and non-commissioned officers, jawans, and the 300 odd cadets. The precisely set up houses were bracketed into convenient sectors and each sector was identified with an alphabet along with a number. So there was D3, D2, E2, E3 and so on. These were our postal addresses as well.

NDA is a protected wild life sanctuary. All the houses and bungalows were spaced in a way that between the rows of houses would be a wide strip of uncut forest where deer, peafowls, hyenas, foxes freely move around along with snakes, mongoose and a variety of birds.

The D2 area was midway on a hill, flattened naturally for a distance before sloping up further onto E1. One approached D2 from the Officer’s mess at the foot of the hill and drove or walked or cycled over the steep road, crossing a haunted massive imli (tamarind) tree on the left and a beautiful golf course on the right. D2 started where the hill was flattened midway. On the left the road diverged into a circle lined by bungalows, then there were two more roads, one after another on the right, which led to a few more bungalows and all these roads finally converged into the road where D2 would end and D3 would begin. At the farther end of the flat land, the road sloped uphill again leading to E1. At this end of the flat land was the D2 circle, a concrete circle of the height of a bench with pristine white spider lilies on manicured lawn grass on a bed of fertile soil inside the concrete circle. At the centre was a pole with a flag, I think, I don’t exactly remember if there was flag or it was just a solitary pole.

The circle saw three trifurcations, one uphill to E1, one towards the flats (our initial residence) and one towards the approach road from the Officer’s mess. On the right, was a bright red clean unchipped bus stand, next to a bright red post box next to a large cartoon shaped dustbin which said ‘Use me’.

Behind the bus stand was a playground with see-saws and swings, I see dreams of this often, vivid and haunting dreams.

A couple of steps ahead of the bus stop if one turned right one would reach the flats. Just a few feet before reaching the flats, on the left was the centralized pump house from where water to all NDA households was pumped after being run through a filtration process which ensured all of us had access to a twenty four hour supply of crystal clear water. The pump house had several guava trees with plump fleshy guavas. Between the pump house and the flats was a small uphill kutcha dirt track which led to a row of houses in E1, in the next lane, and went through the intervening forest track.

The flats were two storied blocks with four apartments each. They were spacious and the ground level flats had enormous front and backyards. My father’s allocated house was on the first floor. Our immediate neighbour was the Bhutias, from the foreign language department, the Guptas were below us and diagonally opposite were the Georges. In the day time my dad went to office, mum did her MA studies in Pune University, and evenings were spent partying with friends or attending official dinners or going to the movies. Jumi and I were taken care of by Rukma Bai and Rosy in their absences.  As a protocol, kids never accompanied parents to these parties or dinners or movies. The haunting park dreams that I see intermittently are probably from the innumerable evenings spent with Rukma Bai and Jaya in the park.