SWORD FIGHT WITH BEES

“It is the melancholy face that gets stung by the bee”

The Service Senior had taken it upon himself to motivate youngsters to remain positive. "Everything happens for the good," he would often say, and illustrate it with an event from the  second posting of his career. Within a day of his taking charge as SDPO, Alipurduar,  a dacoity took place in the local bazaar. As a young officer, he promptly rushed with a small posse, got down at the bazaar, totally clueless. Prodded and prompted by an agitating crowd, he darted  towards the railway track in hot pursuit when Shiv Poojan Singh, a Bihari constable, tripped over a stone, cut his chin and accidentally fired a shot from his .303 rifle. The bullet hit and injured a fleeing dacoit and the young SDPO, for a moment benumbed by the shot that  narrowly missed him , was hailed as a daring officer and soon became a darling of the local community.

Today, it was time for narrating another story. We were at the IPS Mess, situated in a corner of the sprawling Bodyguard Line. The Bodyguard Line was so  named because the Governor General's bodyguards were barracked there when their protectee lived in Belvedere Estate ( now the National Library) before Wellesley built the Government House ( now the Raj Bhavan, West Bengal) around 1803 . The Service Senior was usually  in his elements in the Mess. Whisky and an attentive huddle seemed to have this effect on him. It was just as well that a particularly unpopular Police Chief had been accorded a farewell that evening and the mood was more celebratory than sombre.

The Senior had an obstinate Punjabi accent which refused to leave him even when he spoke Hindi, English or  Bengali. Squat and well-built , he was nattily dressed. His beard was glued and enmeshed neatly, his shoes wore a luxurious  shine while his eyes blinked and twinkled as emotions of doubt and euphoria competed in furious randomness within his tightly and flashily turbaned head. As was his habit, he would tell the moral of the story at the beginning because he was not quite  sure whether he could finish it before he passed out.Today's was : every cloud has a silver lining. 

Now sufficiently laced, and mighty pleased, too, having managed to successfully harpoon two pieces of chicken reshmi kebab after a couple of wobbly attempts, the Service Senior proceeded with the story. The Huddle closed in since the kebabs and Punjabi accent had made the narration difficult to comprehend. It was about a Monday Muster parade.

In the late 1960s, as  a young Assistant Commandant and the Parade Commander, he had brought the smartly  turned out and finely drilled parade to attention at the Inspection line in the parade ground which was encircled with radhachura and krishnachura trees in riotous blossom. Then, with his sword unsheathed and rising perpendicularly from the waist , the blade glistening , the right elbow held firmly to the side, the scabbard clasped in place  with his left hand,  he marched up along the white -limed line that streaked to the Saluting Base. The man to receive the salute was the colourful Battalion Commandant or CO who waited for the young officer with an air of disinterestedness, nursing a hangover from  a long night of rum drinking and fight with his wife in the morning. 

The Parade Commander, clad in khaki trousers, mazri shirt, black turban, black cross belt and black boots walked up to invite and accompany the Commandant for the inspection of the parade. The young officer, already a bit tense at commanding a parade for the first time, was concentrating so hard that he never heard the buzz nor saw the swarm of  bees which had suddenly invaded the saluting base. So when he brought up the sword hilt to his nose and then thrust the blade downwards in salute, he was totally unprepared for what happened next. The Commandant, who had rarely distinguished himself for alacrity, stepped forward at the first bee sting on his nose , snatched the young officer's sword and scooted away, brandishing it to defend himself against the marauding bees.

The Huddle in the Mess, quite like the children in Mr. Natwarlal listening to Amitabh Bacchan's Mere Paas Ao, Mere Doston exclaimed " phir kya hua?"

" Oye, I was young, I supprinted away in the oppsite deeraction, " he replied before updating ," prade toh sali kab ki visarjan ho gayee." 

The brave Gurkhas and Rabhas , whose ancestors had engaged the Chittagong Armoury Raiders in 1930 , killing 12 of the raiders and recovering 29 police muskets, six revolvers and 2000 rounds of ammunition, were totally unprepared for this. To see a Commandant pluck out the sword from the parade commander's grip and charge like Don Quixote was bad enough. Now  to face a floating carpet of bees was too much in a day.  Muskets, khukhris and valour would be useless against determined bees. There was a stampede of sorts as none waited for a command to break free.

The parade scattered into a number of groups, and so did the bees. The pipe band, a bit hamstrung  by the bloated bagpipes, waddled away like panicked ducks and the Bandmaster, in spirited inspiration from his Commandant, spun his mace as he ran. The big drum and its stand, a dozen colourful  hackles  and a few black Highlander caps were left on the ground as eloquent witnesses to an assembly of  men vigorously charged two minutes ago. 

The young IPS Parade Commander ran for his life, sword less, his empty scabbard flailing limply. The Commandant's also ran, but not towards his house, nor even to the Armoury whose sentry offered him a loud butt salute just as it spotted him from afar. His sharp and scheming mind decided to take shelter in the house of his immediate superior, the Deputy Inspector General of Police, with whom his spats were already famous in Salua. 

The DIG was an old man on the verge of retirement. He was sitting in the first floor verandah of his bungalow in his rattan chair, wistfully looking at his two small grandchildren playing in the huge lawn and enjoying his second  cup of tea with his wife when he spotted the Commandant rushing into his compound , brandishing a sword around and over himself in an animated contest with a swarm of bees. The morning Darjeeling tea which he was slurping had  lifted his languor sufficiently and he could understand very quickly, which was kind of rare by his standards, the implications of the CO's odd entry and the swishing flames of bees.

" Shingh, tum yahan mutt aao, bhago yahan se," he shouted at the Commandant, hoping to stop this armed  lurking house trespass by the day and quickly dropped his tea cup noisily just as a few bees did a buzzing jig around him in figures of  zero and eight.

But the CO  was not to be stopped. He straightway entered into the bathroom attached to the ground floor bungalow office of the DIG and locked up himself. His cries of agony combined with violent clanging of the aluminium bucket, sword and mug to create an intimidating din. A few bees could enter the bathroom. The others, unable to cause further damage to the sword flashing Commandant, and unsatiated,  u- turned and proceeded to sting the two poor grandchildren of DIG who were engaged in a mock lathi fight amongst themselves in the garden.  

Everyone had a story to tell that day. There were quite a few panicked intrusions into houses, not necessarily one's own, even as women were bathing or were in different stages of dress and undress, busy with a myriad chores. Shrieks and curses rent the air. Quite a few fell in the drain situated before the community bathing place and a few cut themselves from the barbed wire fence. 

After the Huddle had recovered from the laughter and availed the refills from a very surprised catering staff of Neelu Babu, the Service Senior continued. 

" Have you aver antered your house with an ampty sacabbard dangling?" he asked the listeners, " in front of your newly married wife and her parents ?"

"Not till now, Sir," I said,  and the others also shook their heads.

Apparently, his wife had shouted at and taunted him.

The Senior knew it was an over reaction on her part, and months of training at Mt. Abu had taught him the virtues of tact over  foolish valour. So he gulped the taunts and waited for the day to be over.

" You tell me, how can you retrieve a sword from the custody of your CO who has been sutung badly by bees," he sought an  assurance from us. 

The Huddle, whose members had been severely reprimanded for pointing at open flies, wrongly placed shoulder insignias and missing collar badges to their superiors, assured the Senior that his apprehension was not entirely misplaced. 

"So the next day I went to the local Railway Hospital where the CO  had been admitted, " he said, and then immediately added with a wink that lit up the proceedings , "but the main reason was to find out and retrieve my sword." 

" Bada burra hua sir, bahut kharab lag raha hai. Ab kaise hain aap?" he asked solemnly,  throughout looking for his sword with  furtive eyes.

The CO lay on his bed,  a bandage around his face, his big fat nose swollen up like a river in spate, the area around his eyes grotesquely puffed as would dough after an overdose of yeast. There was an ugly redness, he was sneezing, wheezing and snot was dribbling out as an after effect of the attack by bees. However, at the sight of his young Parade Commander, he brightened up, hooked his index finger to beckon him to come closer.

"Koi nahin yaar,  kumse kum se kum  saaley DIG ke bacchoN ko toh katwa diya. Hisaab barber hua ( doesn't matter  my friend, at least got even stevens by getting the bloody DIG's children also stung) " he smiled and winked, making no mention of the sword, and then let out a painful groan to snatch some sympathy from the pretty nurse.