AFVOA Newsletter of Year 2021

Section 7 – Panorama CV 2 No. 01 / 2021 Page 96 of 123 Section 7 – Panorama 1 1978 Onwards Mrs Sheela Jaywant Genre: Life in the Armed Forces ecently, I told a young Air Force officer that when I got married, it took us 36 hours to reach Ghaziabad (Hindon) from Mumbai. S/he asked me: ‘Why?’ It’s hard to explain to someone who believes a hardship posting is where the mobile- phone signal is weak that there was a time (1978, when I married nili-vardi-kaaley- socks), when we: • travelled only by train/motor-cycles, • hadn’t heard of packers-movers/Bisleri-water, • hand-knitted sweaters for our families, • didn’t own phones/televisions although they existed in the civilian world, • played musical-houses through a tenure because of shortage of accommodation, • cooked on ‘Nutans’; one beer bottle of kerosene was enough to cook a simple lunch for two, provided the wicks were trimmed, • Rarely heard of someone taking a loan; we lived (still do) within limited means. • knew that only COs and above owned cars/houses, mostly if they were Iraq- returned or had rich parents, • communicated in Hindlish-cum-mother-tongues with fellow-brides who came from places one could barely locate on a school-map, with hilarious outcomes. Getting along was a given. • shed tears when our husbands told us what we cooked would be edible if some rum was poured into it (ok, here I speak only for myself). We giggled through all of the above. Life was about duty and adventure. Discomfort was part of the fun, sacrifice (of aspirations/dreams/money) not a big deal. Nothing I’d studied in Bombay/college prepared me for the shock I got, literally, when I poured water from a steel jug into the bucket on which rested my husband-made ‘bazooka’, an Air-Force designed water-heater: a bent aluminum hanger with a metal R