Continued from Fauji and his Baggage
In addition to all that contraptions and devices to see one through any latitude from 10 degree N to 35 degree N, one has to plan for the transportation of all the flora and fauna that an army man’s family falls in love with.
Then you have a an archaic rule that a govt servant cannot have two quarters on his name, at the same time, for a period of more than 10 days If the move is say, from Coimbatore to Pithoragarh, that makes it a little like a photographer trying to cover both the start and finish of a 100M dash.
In any case , most of the time you don’t have to worry about such situation , as it takes at least six months before you get a large enough accommodation to open all the packages.Yet some remained in packed condition for years. May be for this reason everything is packed in heavy Steel and wooden boxes.
One often hears , “..a two bed room house is more than enough for us, but what about our baggage and the empty boxes ?” I have seen a family of four huddled in a drawing room and one bed room while rest of the space including the second bed room and verandas on either side were stacked with boxes.
There is a popular formula for the number of boxes required; 2n +2 where n is the number of years of service. So, you start with two and add two boxes a year and end up with between 65-70 at the time of retirement.This is a very conservative estimate and people do reach three figures.
I myself stopped adding on to my tally , when it was around 25, somewhere in the mid-way through my long service.
I was moving from the North East to Chennai and I had decided to take a truck with part load. With plywood loaded it had weight but not volume. The truck driver was also carrying some new refrigerators from the show room. As my 5 year old fridge was being loaded packed in a heavy wooden box made of pine wood and being placed next to the brand new refrigerators in their original card board packages, it was a eureka moment for me.
It suddenly dawned on me that all goods, however fragile, however new, however costly, are transported across the length and breadth of the country in cardboard boxes and gunny bags, till the time they become proud possessions of an army man.
Yet, it took two more transfers before I relieved the fridge of its body armour, though I stopped buying any more new boxes. Since then I have kept my faith in the original card board packing and that trust has never been betrayed. If cardboard was good enough for white goods, then why not for clothes , books, kitchenware etc ? Now, having disposed off the few steel boxes I had, I feel a lot lighter and better.
