I always schedule a facial in the first week of October. Because I know the nearest Air Force Station will invite us for the Air Force Day Celebrations, even if Raju left the IAF years ago. I still get very excited and tell interminable ‘When-we-were-in-the-Air Force’ stories to the hapless person sitting next to me. “It is a parade for us,” Raju would grumble, as he climbed into his uniform for the evening. But I thought he looked dashing in his shiny medals, epaulettes and bling.
I remember my first Air Force party. The officers wore white shirts and trousers with a black cummerbund. Raju ushered me to the sofa at the far end of the room (appropriately reserved for lowly flight lieutenants’ wives) and left me among strangers. Then he merged with crowd. Squint as I might, I could not spot him after that. It was like a gathering of penguins and I spent the evening vastly entertained by the ‘yes sirs’ and ‘yes ma’ams’.
As I sat there giggling to myself, a young man who was not my husband strode up and asked me for a dance. I was horrified. I had never ever danced in public and here was a complete stranger holding out his hand to me invitingly. While Raju had helpfully given me a booklet on dining table etiquette in the armed forces, he hadn’t said anything about this. I weighed my options. If I said ‘no’, it might lead to Raju’s demotion. On the other hand, if I stomped on this guy’s toes, Raju might still get that demotion. So with nothing to lose, I heaved myself out of the chair and preceded the gallant to the dance floor. ‘Dancing’ in Air Force parlance did not only mean a tango, a waltz or a jive. It also meant flinging your arms around and stamping your feet. I could do that with remarkable ease. I have not missed an opportunity to ‘dance’ since then and, as Raju went up the seniority ladder, younger fellas were delegated to ask me for a dance. I learnt that when my dance partner solicitously asks me, “Can I get you a drink, ma’am?”, it meant he did not want to dance with me anymore. If I was generous, I might accept that offer and he would lead me to a chair and bound off gratefully to find me a drink. If I wanted to continue dancing, there was no escape for him.
Before a party, the officer in charge of music painstakingly recorded songs on the tape recorder and made back up tapes. There were some constants - one was the entirely inelegant but wonderful Birdie Song as a warm up.
After which there was some Beatles, may be Elvis, Saturday Night Fever, A Little Bit of Monical In My Life, Careless Whispers, and if the CO did not disapprove, “Disco Deewane”. At one party, we decided we would go native and Shammi Kapoor and R.D. Burman put in an appearance and there was no going back. Hearty Punjabi numbers followed, usually towards the end of the evening, when senior officers and their ladies had moved off for dinner leaving the ‘wild’ ones doing their thing on the floor. My memories of an AF Party in Leh inextricably tied up with “Chura ke Dil Mera Goriya Chali” and “Amma Dekh oh Dekh Tera Munda Bigda Jaaye”.
When some seriously bigwigs attended our parties, there was a band. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, compares dancing to live music. We always showed off that Air Force knew how to have fun, whether we had just three people or three hundred. Field Marshal Manekshaw himself once said that he never missed any Air Force Party if he could help it!
Now we don’t either. I know these parties take Raju back to the good old days. The film clip about the Air Force, the AF song and the inevitable exchange of stories and gossip and pay commission does him a world of good. As for me, I go to dance. Since I am no longer bound by any protocol or worried about damaging Raju’s reputation, I am quite happy to take the dance floor alone.
