AFVOA Newletter August 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2020 Page 101 of 237 10 Bhuj to Jorhat: Travails of Rail Travel with an Infant Ms Chandrika Harsha Genre: Life in the Forces he year was 1993 and suddenly things started happening like ‘Rapid Fire’ questions in any quiz programme. My husband was posted as S Accts O at Air Force Station Bhuj and in the month of August we had our second baby, after a gap of nine years after the first one. Within five days of me giving birth, Harsha my husband got his posting orders to Air Force Station Jorhat and this was with immediate effect. A real bolt out of the blue. This posting in Air Force parlance is called as punishment posting. Why I say so is because, before coming to Bhuj, we were posted in Air Force Station, Bhisiana near Bhatinda and we were there for about three years. From Bhisiana we came to Bhuj and in less than two years we were posted to Jorhat. All three places, Bhisiana, Bhuj and Jorhat are hard area posting as per Air Force standards. It was now clear to me that Harsha had rubbed off some senior officer very badly. And any amount of my questioning did not elicited any answer from him. We were advised by many officers to represent our case with ‘P’ Staff for change / cancellation of posting but Harsha was adamant that he will not seek any favours from anyone. Now we were in a dilemma as to how do we travel with a baby less than one month old. The option of me staying back with the kids in Bhuj and moving to Jorhat later after a couple of months was ruled out because we had no support from any of our relatives who were willing to travel to a remote place as Bhuj and being of help to me. T