My sympathetic boss wasn’t idle while I was outrunning the hound of Baskervilles in Hisar. The place may be arid, but it still has enough trees, wheat shoots, and dust to make one feel alive. Apparently, my “desert experience” needed further enrichment. So my boss promptly lined up another “temporary duty”. Trouble duty, actually, but who’s splitting hairs?
I’d just finished my stint at Hisar and was looking forward to the pavilion when my WhatsApp pinged. It wasn’t the usual family forward but a derailment letter from headquarters: “Move to Mahajan Field Firing Ranges ASAP.” My mission was to neutralise a disobedient rocket that refused to fly.
As the Bard almost said, temporary duties never come singly but in battalions. Having barely reached home after four days of travel fatigue, I was to report at the Mahajan field firing ranges in Rajasthan within twelve hours. I painfully noted the lack of a personal helicopter.
Thankfully, my bomb disposal non-commissioned officer was a man of rare resourcefulness. He unearthed ancient railway routes, odd, serpentine lines likely last used by the British cavalry, to get us there. After a long, aloo-poori-fuelled journey, our train screeched into a one-camel railway station at five in the morning. It was pitch-dark. Tanks, BMPs, and trucks slumbered on flatbeds around us. Not a soul stirred.
We walked to the tiny station building, shivering in the cold. Soon, a spanking new Scorpio appeared, sent by the rocket unit along with a junior commissioned officer (JCO). The driver sped like a Concorde through the misty desert roads as I kept urging him not to cross seventy. We arrived at the Mahajan camp just as dawn pinked the dunes, jaal trees, scrub bushes, and army trucks completing the desert tableau.
At the rocket unit, I was cheerily informed that they hadn’t brought any demolition stores. They had dispatched a “begging party” to Ganganagar to borrow some. Until then, I was invited to watch their rocket firing. I obliged. After the exercise, they held a debriefing under a camouflaged shamiana. Officers took turns praising each other and listing “lessons learnt”. I waited for someone to highlight the glaring one, never come to field firing without demolition stores, but it never arrived.
Around half past five, the borrowing party returned, laden with the required explosives. I was summoned to dispose of the rebellious rocket. A small crowd had gathered around the pit where the heavy beast had been lowered. My assistant and I climbed in, set the charges, and used my phone torch to check the connections. We climbed out, attached the detonators to the safety fuze, and shooed away the gawkers. Trucks roared off toward safer dunes. Only one Scorpio remained, ready to whisk us out of harm’s way.
Once the fuse was lit, we double-checked the junction box and jumped into the Scorpio. We’d barely driven a hundred metres when we saw a white Gypsy ahead, stuck in the sand, engine dead. A few jawans were pushing, a few tying tow ropes, completely oblivious to the ticking clock.
I bellowed at them to abandon the vehicle and run. “A Gypsy can be replaced. You can’t.” They stared for a second before I unleashed my best sergeant-major voice. The desert finally erupted into motion. One unfortunate fellow lagged behind, shuffling like a camel in slow motion. Our Scorpio’s bumper nearly grazed him as he staggered along.
The JCO beside me was euphoric, clapping and shouting, “Pandian is running! Pandian is running!” I ignored him, preoccupied with the hope that my detonation hadn’t misfired.
We soon reached the tarmac road, safely outside the debris range. I checked my watch. The explosion should have happened by now. My brain started replaying the procedure: two fuses, a backup charge. Had something gone wrong? I was about to suggest going back when the night sky erupted into a shower of golden sparks. A few seconds later, the comforting boom followed.
The JCO pounded my back, jubilant. “Congratulations, Sahib! Even our CO has never achieved this!”
I was puzzled. “It’s just demolition,” I said modestly.
He shook his head in disbelief. “No, Sahib. Not even the CO could make Pandian run. In BPET runs, he walks after five steps. Today you made him run a full kilometre in desert sand.”
By evening, the miracle had spread through the unit grapevine. “Pandian actually ran today!” echoed like breaking news across tents and mess lines.
Temporary duty over, I returned to the pavilion, back to paperwork and babugiri. Yet sometimes, in idle moments, my mind drifts back to those two days in Mahajan, the rocket, the desert wind, the scrambling jawans, and the slowest runner in Rajasthan spurred into sprinting glory.
And then, unbidden, childhood echoes hum in my head from my school’s first English rhyme lesson: Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, Run, run, run, Bang, bang, bang, Goes the farmer’s gun. Sometimes the desert, too, has its own farmer and his gun.