“Sahab, halwa maat banoa”
It was a Long Range Patrol (LRP) meant for 3 days in one of the remotest villages of J&K, with a platoon strength (30 soldiers) , each one of us carrying our own individual ration, weapon, ammo and clothing. The first day was a smooth walk. We gave some of our rations like sugar, tea, dal to the villagers and they in turn gave us freshly plucked apples from their trees. Many of them offered home plucked cucumber along with green chilllies smashed in stones. The walk was such a pleasure as we were in a place where nature was at its best, where not even a single vehicle dared touched its ground.
We halted at a village school as our patrol base. After being sanitized and fully secured the place, we moved out to prepare our lunch and ate whatever we could manage for that day. After the lunch we ventured out and noticed a beautiful river passing by just beside the village school. We all decided that we could catch fishes that should last to serve meals for the next two days. Six of us went inside the river for the adventure trip while 8 of the soldiers were guarding us from all corners of the flanks with an LMG (Light Machine Gun). Man, in just 2 hours time, we caught around 40 kg of fishes. What more could have been pleasurable for a patrol leader who loves mountains and rivers having the same taste with his soldiers, all being PAHARIS.
It was fishes for the next two days meals – fish curry with sukha roti in breakfast, fish curry with rice for lunch, fish curry with rice and roti for dinner. One of the dinners, I tried my hand in the fish curry. I had never cooked fish curry before, but my mom makes wonderful fish curry. When I was young, at times I used to sit beside her while she was cooking, so I had a vague picture about the whole scene, the timings of what ingredients to be put when. I created a mental picture of how to go about it, to cook these lovely fresh fishes in Manipuri style. We Manipuri guys are very fond of cooking meat and fishes, in fact almost all male species are all gifted good cooks of meat and fishes. My specialty for cooking meat has always been PORK, I love cooking pork with all my heart and I like it better when my guests finished up the entire dishes with generous comments. Three of my boys (soldiers) were sitting beside me keenly observing as if I was the best trained chef from a 5 star hotel.
Somehow towards the end I realised I was using a wrong formula and my nervousness was transmitted to the three boys who had so far been accepting that whatever I was doing was a flawless act. Their tentacles started acting as I was stirring it a lot, to which they all unanimously said, “Sahab, aap halwa bana raha hai, yeh masli hai”. We all had a hearty laugh as I jokingly told them that it was altogether a new design and that change is the only constant thing in life and that they should be willing to accept change without cribbing much. And yeah, it did taste real good.
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