‘The formation is led by Flying officer Ishaan “Baaz” Faujdaar, flying his HAL-built Gnat,’ proclaims the commentator as the jets dip their silvery wings, raise their snouts and spiral up into the air in a tight formation. All different shapes and sizes, they sport the same roundel on their flanks: a green dot inside a white circle inside a saffron circle. Their fin flash is a vertical rendition of the Indian tricolour – saffron, white and green. Five of them bloom outwards and away like the petals of a fantastic flower, leaving three in the middle to shoot up through the clouds and perform a series of complicated loops, making the ladies gasp in fear and the children whoop in delight.
‘These young guns from Air Force Station Kalaiganga will demonstrate the manoeuvrability and climbing and diving abilities of their jets. Hold on to your hearts, ladies and gentlemen!’
The three jets shoot downwards, freefalling like diving hawks. Two of them slew smoothly to either side while the Gnat in the middle shoots straight up into the air, whirling and buckling like a silver fish hooked at the end of an invisible line. Its movements get faster and faster, until it is spinning. Finally, as the crowd gives a collective gasp, it swoops down to rejoin the rest of the formation.
The spectators breathe again and exchange sheepish looks, some reaching for bottles of water, some wiping their sweat. Even the commentator’s voice, booming through the speakers, is shaken.
‘And that was Baaz Faujdaar, ladies and gentlemen! The pride of his squadron, the Air Force and the nation!’
The original formation of five, led by the cocky little Gnat, swoops low over the crowd in a neat line, tilts first one cheeky wing and then another to the fluttering Tiranga and roars away towards the sun.
• • •
‘Baaz, were those final aerobatics part of the planned programme?’ Raka asks Shaanu a couple of hours later.
‘Of course not,’ responds Maddy lazily. ‘He added ’em to show off to the missus of the defence minister.’
They have just taken off from Palam in the bulbous Caribou. They’re headed for Kalaiganga, a large Air Force station of the Eastern Air Command, outside Calcutta, which houses a division of MiGs, Gnats and Caribous.
‘You were too low,’ Raka says seriously. ‘It was dangerous – you could’ve lost control, broken your stupid neck and killed a bunch of spectators.’
‘Of course they were part of the planned programme,’ Shaanu protests with a laugh as he lounges near the window, tearing the wrapper off a kebab-and-rumali-roti roll. ‘Wing Commander Carvalho and I felt the crowd deserved to see something good, yaar! Poor things had been watching pineapple-shaped jhaankis and Bharatnatyam dances all morning.’
His voice trails off towards the end of this little speech, as though he feels his explanation is not quite adequate. He takes a bite of his roll, leans back and gazes out of the Caribou’s window.
Dazzling sunshine filters in from the round opening, lighting up his grey eyes and bronzed features. He has grown wider around the shoulders since the Flying College. They all have. Their jaws are stronger, their hair longer. Now they really are cool cats, handsome young men in their prime, their awkwardness and rough edges smoothed away.
‘The sarson’s ready to be harvested,’ he says after a while. ‘See, the fields are bright yellow.’
‘You bloody farmer,’ Raka says exasperatedly. ‘You just wanted to upstage my MiG. And the Sukhoi.’
‘The Gnats are the best,’ Shaanu maintains.
‘What?’ Raka chokes in outrage at the obvious illogic of this statement. ‘Why?’
‘’Coz they’re small.’ Maddy grins. ‘Like Baaz.’
Shaanu cracks a reluctant grin in response. ‘Shut up. You know what my grandfat—’
‘Yes yes, we all know,’ Maddy interrupts him hastily. ‘Don’t start waggling your thumb about, for heaven’s sake.’
After they had been commissioned and streamed, Shaanu had hoped to be assigned to the gleaming black metal MiGs, like every other star-struck young Fighter. But the Air Force, in its wisdom, had sorted him into ‘The Streaks’ – the Gnats of 34 Squadron. He had been bitterly disappointed then, but the very first time he clambered up the Gnat’s flank and dropped into the leather seat in the cockpit and inhaled what, over the next four years, was to become a much-loved scent, he had felt like some vital search had come to an end.
Home.
The Gnat’s cockpit was a tiny, bubble-shaped space. The perspex canopy was just ten inches above his head, the walls a foot from his face. The AC kicked in only after take-off, so the first time he climbed into it, the Gnat had been as hot as hell. The G-suit had been tight and clammy around the lower half of his body, and he had begun to perspire. But he had locked down the canopy, strapped up, popped a stick of A1 chewing gum into his mouth and reached for the controls. And as the Gnat lifted off the ground, that old familiar dhookk-dhookk-dhookking had kicked in again.
Shaanu loved how small and light it was. Old Kuch Bhi Carvalho, who tended to get mystic-romantic when very drunk, had once told him that fighter pilots don’t strap themselves into their planes, they strap their planes onto themselves, like soldiers in the old days used to strap their armour onto their bodies. The Gnat is an extension of you, he had told Shaanu, his dark eyes gleaming manically. Its sides are your sides, its belly, your belly. Together, you are Baaz.
Not everyone understood this mystic connection, though.
When his stepfather visited him, curious to see what sort of jet the bastard was flying, his face had fallen ludicrously when he saw the squat little Gnat, barely twenty-two feet from wingtip to wingtip and no more than five feet off the ground, canopy and all.
‘Hain? So small! Tu proper pilot naa, ke?’
Then the old man had pointed to a massive transport carrier parked behind the gleaming row of Gnats. ‘When you will fly that big plane, huh?’ he had asked belligerently.
Shaanu had tried to explain that the transport plane was an inferior aircraft, flown by lesser pilots, but the Choudhary hadn’t looked too convinced. He had slyly produced a battered-looking second-hand camera and hissed to Shaanu to stand in front of the fifty-foot-high transport carrier for a picture. To send for marriage proposals, he had said wheedlingly. ‘If you stand in front of that dinky plane, nobody will marry you.’ Shaanu had indignantly refused, the conversation had ended in a bitter argument and the Choudhary had left the station in a huff.
It’s not like Ishaan needs help attracting female attention, anyway.
Nowadays he spends most evenings at the Sarhind Club, in charcoal gabardine trousers paired with brightly coloured, snugly tailored shirts painstakingly ironed by his room bearer. Sarhind is a colonial-era club at the edge of AFS Kalaiganga, very exclusive but open to officers from the Armed Forces. Under the gleaming chandeliers, Ishaan plays billiards with other young Fighters, relishing the click of ball striking ball, the muted clinking of sparkling glasses on the trays of the uniformed bearers and the sound of gramophone music drifting in from the atrium. When he steps in through the heavy teak doors, marked MEMBERS ONLY, inhales the privileged blend of crisp air-conditioning, beer and perfume, looks around at the rich mahogany panelling, the deep-green walls and the thick, red velvet curtains, he can scarcely believe that he, Shaanu Faujdaar, of village Chakkahera, from the newly carved state of Haryana, is here, blending, belonging, even shining.
Because shining he is. His name crops up virtually every week on All India Radio’s Forces Request, the hugely popular Western music show through which young ladies send out messages and song requests to their military sweethearts posted away from home. ‘You … are … my theme for a dream’ has been belted out for Flying Officer Ishaan Faujdaar more than seventeen times on Forces Request so far, prompting disgruntled Raka and Maddy to accuse Shaanu of mailing the request postcards to the radio station himself.
Ladies are drawn to his frank friendly spirit, that good-natured way he has of both talking and listening like he’s genuinely interested.
There is innocence in Baaz Faujdaar, he doesn’t lech or clam up or flatter but (perhaps because he has three sisters) speaks to women easily and naturally. Admitted, he is cocky and swaggers shamelessly, but he isn’t snooty, even though Fighters are the most revered breed on the base.
The fact that he is a divine dancer helps, of course. But the others dance well too – Rakesh Aggarwal, for one, has all the Shammi Kapoor moves down pat, and he flies a MiG, which everybody knows is much cooler than a Gnat. And Maddy Subbiah, though he’s only in the transport division, is wealthy and from a famous fauji family, and can play the piano and sing, and bears more than a passing resemblance to Pat Boone.
Of course it is possible the ladies may have heard the story of how a bunch of older officers once took Baaz Faujdaar to an infamous red-light area and made him recite the bawdy ‘Code of the Fornicator’, a parody of the solemn ‘Code of the Warrior’ taught to all cadets at the National Defence Academy.
He’d done this good-naturedly enough, apparently, standing atop a chair, butt-naked and beautiful, enunciating every word clearly.
I am a sex fiend, fornicating is my Dharma,
I will train my mind, body and spirit to fornicate,
I will excel in all devices and weapons of fuckery,
present and future,
I will always use protection,
I will be truthful to bluntness,
I will be humane, cultured and compassionate,
I will fornicate and embrace the consequences,
God, keep me erect, I ask nothing else of you!
But when it came to going into a suite with one of the resident beauties, he pulled on his pants and ran all the way home – a distance of a good twenty-five kilometres – because his brother officers, as part of their evil bid to deflower him, had confiscated his motorcycle.
That pimply young MiGGie Dilsher Singh had put out this story hoping to shame Ishaan, but it seems to have made the ladies like him even more.
Or perhaps the real ace Ishaan Faujdaar holds over the other Fighters is simply the aesthetically pleasing sight he makes as he leans over the billiards table to score a shot, his dark grey trousers faithfully outlining the shape of his taut, muscular butt.
Little groups of giggly girls are always coming into the billiards room to stand behind him and watch him play.
‘Hai, Baaz Faujdaar is just so cute, yaar!’
‘You ought to see him in his flight overalls, then,’ says a ribald auntyji. ‘The way that G-suit locks around his waist and thighs but leaves all the vital bits uncovered … uff tabaahi!’
Even married ladies are not immune to his charm.
‘Why weren’t you born twenty years ago, or me twenty years later?’ one of them sighs coquettishly as he tangoes her bulk across the well-sprung wooden floor.
‘Because you and sir are made for each other,’ is Faujdaar’s reproachful reply.
She laughs. ‘You’re blushing! Your cheeks are pink. Ah, you’re such a pure boy, Baaz!’
But he isn’t that pure. He has held some hands under starry skies, stolen kisses behind pillars, scored more than food and fresh air at scenic picnic spots in the nearby countryside. But much to the disgust and disappointment of his brother officers, Baaz Faujdaar, their best and brightest, refuses to take things to the next natural level.
Now he turns to Raka apologetically.
‘I didn’t mean to upstage anybody. I just wanted to have fun – I should have told you, I’m sorry.’
‘He told me,’ Maddy says smugly. ‘Because I’m his best buddy. His buddyroo. His buddy-o number one.’
‘Because you live in my armpit!’ Shaanu clarifies quickly as Raka starts to look stormy. ‘And Raka, saale, you don’t talk. You’re too busy slurping gobi-paneer biryani from Juhi’s beautiful hands to bother with the friends who helped you elope.’
This is true. Raka is newly, blissfully married and does not spend as much time with his friends as he used to. This has especially upset Maddy, who has been Raka’s closest buddy since they both met at the NDA. He’s been grousing about it regularly to Shaanu.
Raka chooses to ignore this jibe.
‘If Baaz confided in you, Maddy, you should’ve told him it was stupid,’ he says roundly. ‘You’re too scared to do those stunts yourself so you’re living vicariously through him. It’s pathetic.’
‘Jeez, that’s low!’ Maddy protests. ‘And when you tag along and avidly watch us chat up the ladies at Anchor Bar, what is that, Mr Married Man? And stop hogging so much biryani, you’re getting fat.’
Raka responds with great dignity, ‘If it’s biryani you buggers are after, don’t worry, Yahya Khan will soon be feeding home-cooked biryani to all of us! He’s gonna arrest Mujib and that will mean war.’
‘Who’s Mujib?’ Maddy asks.
‘Seriously?’ Raka looks disgusted. ‘Mujib ur Rahman, the chap who just got elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.’
‘Good for him,’ is Shaanu’s laconic reply.
‘Bad for him, actually – ’coz President Yahya Khan isn’t letting him rule, because he hails from lallu-panju East Pakistan, not cool cat West Pakistan.’
‘All of Pakistan is lallu-panju, man,’ Maddy drawls. ‘It has no cool cat areas.’
‘It won’t be a war, anyway, it’ll be a civil war,’ Shaanu says. ‘East versus West. Not our problem.’
‘Don’t talk like idiots, guys,’ Raka says soberly. ‘Refugees escaping the violence will clog our borders. We’ll get drawn into it for sure.’
‘Where d’you get all this info, brother?’ Maddy asks wickedly. ‘Have you started reading the papers? Wait, does Juhi give you a cup of fragrant handmade tea in the morning, while you read at the head of the table like the man of the house? How cosy and domestic. Hai!’
‘Haiiiii!’ moans Shaanu, with a hand on his heart.
Raka clicks his tongue.
‘Don’t you guys ever read the papers?’
‘No,’ Shaanu admits sunnily. ‘I just follow orders. And waise bhi, I wouldn’t mind a bit of war. We’ll get to use real missiles then, not dummies. Dhishoooom!’
‘Maybe it’ll blow over,’ Raka says, not with much hope.
‘And maybe it won’t,’ Shaanu concludes, sounding quite happy at the prospect.
• • •
The newly married Mrs Aggarwal has settled down nicely at AFS Kalaiganga. Pretty, outgoing and intelligent, Juhi makes friends quickly and admirers even quicker. With Raka gone for flight training every day, she spends her time decorating their cosy ‘married officers’ quarters’, keeping up with her studies and experimenting with new recipes. She teaches the airmen’s wives how to crochet pretty lace along the edges of their cotton shameez, learns croquet and mah-jong and creates a minor sensation at the May Queen Ball with her daring ‘contrast’ halter choli in the latest cut.
She joins the Air Force Wives Welfare Association, where, being the youngest member, she quickly becomes everybody’s pet. Mrs Pomfret (wife of the Air Officer Commanding, a.k.a. Pomfret, who is both pompous and fretful, besides looking like a fish) is a stringy, battered battle-horse of a lady, without much enthusiasm for ‘doing things’, but jolly Mrs Carvalho, mother of six, is always up for anything and is an encyclopaedia on all things fauji.
‘Your husband, my dear, flies the most elite of all fighter jets,’ she tells Juhi, her bone-china mah-jong tiles clicking as she arranges them on her stand. ‘The MiG 21s, they’re the most expensive jets we have! Well, apart from the Sukhois – but Sukhois are too new for anybody to have a verdict on.’
Juhi glows. ‘What can a MiG 21 do?’
‘Most things,’ says jolly Mrs Carvalho knowledgeably. ‘It pounces and dogfights and intercepts and airdrops bombs too. Hosannah says there’s something wrong with the placement of its fuel tanks, though. As the fuel gets used up, the centre of gravity shifts and the engine can shut down mid-flight.’
Juhi pales.
‘But your Raka is a fine pilot,’ Mrs Ca
rvalho reassures her. ‘The only pilot who can give him competition is Baaz Faujdaar, Hosannah says.’
‘So how come Baaz doesn’t fly MiGs then?’ Juhi wants to know.
Mrs Carvalho sighs gustily, sets aside the mah-jong stand, draws Juhi to her bosom and starts to whisper confidences. When she finishes, gentle Juhi’s eyes are flashing with anger.
‘That is so unfair!’ she exclaims. ‘Can’t we do anything about it?’
‘No,’ says Mrs Carvalho in the flat tone of one who has tried and failed. ‘Let’s talk about something else, shall we?’
All in all, Juhi’s life is blissful. Spring ripens into summer in a happy haze of Easter balls and Holi parties, the Lady Wellesley Swimming Bath reopens and everybody agrees that Mrs Raka looks amazingly fetching in her new ashes-of-rose swimsuit. Raka and she spend three glorious days in Darjeeling. But then her sunny world starts to smoulder and curl around the edges.
It begins with the news of the arrest of that intellectual-looking, pipe-smoking Bengali politician Mujib ur Rahman by the West Pakistani Army, swiftly followed by a crackdown on Bengali intellectuals. Scores of thinkers, journalists and student activists are brutally killed on the night of 25 March, the papers report, when the military enters Dacca University’s predominantly Hindu Jagannath Hall and indulges in an orgy of arson and murder.
Then, when Juhi and the other Air Force Wives go into Calcutta to shop for saris and gold jewellery, eat puchkas and maybe pick up a dragon carpet from Chinatown, they come face to face with a more concrete face of the madness in the East.
There are thousands of refugees everywhere, stoic and emaciated, streaming in from across the border with terrible tales of atrocities – rape and death and the murder of babies. Calcutta is groaning with the sicknesses they have bought with them. Cholera, malaria, conjunctivitis and, most dangerously, a simmering intolerance. Juhi comes back to Kalaiganga feeling thoroughly unsettled.
Next, the Army gets busy at the border and Baaz and the other Gnatties are called in to provide CAS. Juhi isn’t very clear about what exactly they’re doing, but she knows that CAS means Close Air Support. And one evening she sees Baaz’s squadron flying back in a rag-tag formation, one jet lagging behind, leaking fuel and streaming smoke.
Baaz Page 6