March was a very funny month . My cough and cold had been lingering and every time I felt it was my last sneeze, the drip would start again .

And early in the month our house help’s father went missing. His disappearance came as a shock to us all and for a week we had no idea of his whereabouts. However, the discovery of his decomposing body near his village didn’t come as a surprise and we were relieved in a way for this closure .

But this meant even more pitching in the housework from my side which meant the cough lingered longer. So with all this coughing and sneezing and cooking and cleaning , I was quite happy to get a WhatsApp invite from my brother , in the middle of the month, asking me to join a WhatsApp group that sought to connect/ reconnect the children of retired Indian Naval Officers.

I am not really a fan of WhatsApp groups because they can be addictive and time consuming. Besides, groups made up of disparate age groups can become a waste of time catching up with conversations of others catching up !

But desperate to find a break from the humdrum, I joined in and suddenly found myself caught up with a whole host of memories! Names of people and places languishing in my memory were suddenly now brought to the surface and funnily enough, as people began sharing their stories my own childhood came flashing back.

My brother and I grew up in a time when India was a newly Independent nation with its Armed Forces steeped in British military traditions. We grew up in homes that were still run with military precision, spoke mainly in English even at home , wore westernised clothes and lived a life style that was distinctly different from what the rest of India followed .

We lived in the Cantonment Bubble.

The Cantonment Bubble

Though all cantonments were distinctly different, almost culturally apart from the towns they were in , they were all the same and yet different. Every Cantonment Bubble was different in different military bases. For instance in some old Cantonments people still lived in rambling homes once occupied by British officers. For instance in Pune I still remember cycling past huge bungalows lining wide well planned roads. While some of the bungalows were new and built in cookie cutter fashion with cookie cutter furniture, there were some old stone one with tiled roofs, trellised verandahs and bathrooms that opened to the outside so that the ‘jamadar’ could enter and wash them without traipsing through the entire house .

And the newer Cantonments with their newer constructions still had the ethos of the old with well ordered neighbourhoods completely self sufficient with hospitals , schools, clubs and, cinema halls and shopping centres .

Our lives were governed by our parents’ routines and even though we came from different communities, we all had a commonality that is hard to define or even replicate anywhere else. Most of us had eggs for breakfast, walked or cycled to school . If the schools were far off, we were ‘biased’ there in military vehicles known as One tonners or three tonners ( depending on the capacity) . Entertainment consisted of hanging out with other children in packs or gangs . The games we played were mainly outdoors and very rudimentary like kick the can, hide and seek, throwball , cricket or a unique game that combined rounders and cricket that went by the incongruous game of French Cricket ! On school holidays we hung out at the swimming pool or tennis courts and spent hours going from one friend’s house to the other . We didn’t have televisions or telephones but our mums never worried about us. They knew that we’d be going to the club for a weekly movie show, shake a leg at the May Queen Balls or Diwali or Christmas Dance, spend our scarce pocket money on sticky sweets or icecreams at the neighbourhood shop, and somehow or the other manage to show up home well before the first light was lit at home .

Above all we learnt to go with the flow long before it became the norm and were comfortable with sharing homes and meals with complete strangers whom our fathers considered their brothers. We adapted to new schools, new places and were equally adept at laying the table or polishing the brass as we were at helping our parents play hosts.

Socialising after work was important and integral to enhancing camaraderie and brotherhood amongst the fighting men and their families. So we kids literally grew up as one really large family.

Blast from the past

So these past few weeks have been spent in nostalgia: sharing stories of a common childhood – where birthday parties meant jam sandwiches, wafers ( which we called chips ) and home made iced sponge cakes. Party games were organised by mums or elder siblings and consisted of simple activities like Passing the parcel , 4 corners, I went to market, Dumb Charades and Chinese Whispers. We exchanged memories of bus rides, picnics and music that played on our radios or spun on our turntables .

Each person who joined the group stirred up another memory – a familiar name, a moving anecdote or a black and white photo of a friend from the past .

I wonder how long this group will last for. Within 24 hours the space is flooded with at least a 100 messages. This has become a time consuming addiction and everyday I tell myself – this will be the last day I visit this group .

But then another name pops up and I’m hooked yet again for the next 24 hours !

Ciao