Military Milieu

Disclaimer: All the characters, candy floss, vanity fair, incidents, places in this article are purely NOT  imaginary. They do exist in ‘real’ and ‘flesh and blood’. The painful hearings I have put up with, the mental agony I have gone through are very much true. However, this article is meant not to hurt anybody but to provide solace to the other sufferers   😉 :p

A military wife’s ‘Kung fu’

 ‘O wow!’, ‘So cool!’ , ‘You must be partying hard!’ , ‘Lucky you!’,’ You keep seeing new places’ –No, no.…these are not the examples that I use to explain ‘Interjections’ to my students. These are the exclamatory sentences used by people on knowing that I am a military wife.

Yes! We do party, Its cool to travel, It’s awesome to live in a house and a place that resembles a cottage in a resort, but wait! How long can one party? How long can one stay like Thoreau cut off from the civilization? How long can we travel like a nomad? Not for long..isn’t it! Still we – military wives do all this and more, Courtesy: ‘The love of our life-our husbands’

Imagine yourself putting up with the ‘dumb wife’ of your boss by smiling often at her mediocre sense of humour, less than average to zero ‘IQ’, you being taunted ‘at the drop of the hat’ only because she feels insecure in your presence, you being treated like a slave just because you are multi-talented etc. , etc. must be very frustrating and suicidal, isn’t it? Be surprised to know that many of the soldiers and their wives  go through this horrendous tasks every day( Yes, you heard it right!)

We too have to put up with our husband’s boss’s wife who may resemble a RaGa, a Digvijay Singh or a Shobaa De in their speech, IQ and outlook. Of course, if I can call the other person a ‘Pappu’, they too can call me a ‘Feku’! So, it’s more or less a mutual feeling always. Even some of the military personnel resemble these caricatures but then they do it in moderation and are a handful in number, unlike their counterparts.

On a positive note, we as military wives sometimes  shudder at the thought of putting up with such dumbos and go into a hibernation by faking PMS, headache or burn-out at workplace just before parties or another get-together to save ourselves from repeated mental torture,vanity fair, plastic smiles or bleeding ears post-hearing of monotonous  phrases like ‘You Never KNOWS’, ’Why don’t you take an off from work, to attend XYZ event’, ‘OMG..dat guy in the serial is so cute’, ‘You know we should have stopped ‘ABC’ attack through chakras in Pranic Healing’ blah blah blah. Sadly, the hubbies don’t have such hibernation options.

But then over the years, I have realized that these are the same cartoons who have provided me with loads of entertainment and made some of the inhabitable places ‘horrible yet habitable’!  I mean, if not for such amusement, how can one put up with isolated towns on borders, harsh environs like hot-deserts and inhospitable mountains. Also, since such cartoons are thankfully less in number they become bearable. (But I find one wherever I go, my bad!)

You might wonder then why do we put up with such caricatures? Well, let me stick with the phrase ‘part of the job’ as of now. Als,o this is a small price we pay to be part of this wonderful organization. If not for such specimens, how will one end up reading self-help books to ‘Stay Positive’ or enrol in ‘Art of (Leaving)’ courses?!

Just think this over- what does one do with people, who can’t take a ‘No’ for a ‘No’ or can’t understand when you openly indulge in lampooning them? You end up ‘empathizing and sympathizing’ with them for their mental imbalance and also pity the person putting up with such distorted versions of homo sapiens.

So feel free to pity, empathize and sympathize with me with your comments!

P.S: Now don’t consider me a betrayer and this blog a ‘Travesty’, my dear ‘Family Members’ 🙂

To be continued………….