A wonderful stag evening!

Randeep(45 NDA), Chaitanya(48 NDA) and self(49 NDA) had conglomerated at the Army Golf Club this evening to bid farewell to yours truly on a preliminary basis and since our wives were out of town, it turned out to be a stag evening! It was also convenient and coincidental since the fourth guy(a non ex-NDA, though a good friend) couldn't make it for the do owing to last minute commitments. Does it sound conspiratorial? If yes, I must emphasise that none of us had a hand in it but for the evening that had unfurled in this fashion!!

And it was a wonderful passage through time when we started from our Academy days, went through our service lives to end up in the present time zone. The anecdotes, the jokes and certain events that happened during the vast canvas of time had us in splits and the people in the nearby surroundings must have labelled us as crazy, if not outright mad! It definitely was a delightful get together and we've promised to meet yet again once our wives are back in town, a few weeks from now.

Just to set the records straight, Randeep was a fifth term 'Sergeant' of Golf Squadron, Chaitanya was a rookie second termer of Lima Squadron while I was a first termer of Hunter Squadron during Spring '73. While Randeep's and my paths had crossed many a time at the Academy, usually for the wrong reasons(the 'sarges' were the guardians of discipline, which was curiously putrid at the beginning of a term when all of us would have had, just, returned from our homes after the term breaks), I got to know Chaitanya more closely when we were together on board INS Amba, much later in 1981!

It was nice to be the 'baby' of the gathering when your seniors felt that you're indeed a babe-in-the-woods and needed to be taken care of. But what I'd wanted to accentuate was that the 'au revoir' sessions have been taking place, everyday, for the past 10 days and the rich food that I've been privy to, at these wonderful get togethers, have taken their toll on my system.

Much to my consternation, I find that I ain't comfortable with all the frills. I'm essentially a 'daal chaaval' man - maybe, a bit too rustic!?