Down Memory Lane

Fahmida Khan playfully socks Arun Patil while narrating her Kashmir story

A text message early morning from the N.E. group on reaching Guwahati (ref yesterday’s post) triggered a barrage of hilarious anecdotes in the Garden on earlier outstation trips the Club had taken out.
So far our members have traversed almost all the extremities of the country -- from Kashmir to Kerala and Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Rajasthan -- and of late, to Bangkok as well. Few clubs in India can claim such an impressive track record in five years.
But more than the joy of running about footloose, what has stayed back is the fund of memories the many trips have us with. And from what we gathered this morning, the first trip to Kashmir (August-September 2012) should stand

Zarina Khan

out as the most memorable of them all.
Clearly, as amateurs then, the trip was fraught with countless howlers and gaffes, starting with Fahmida Khan going missing the moment the group arrived in Jammu. Many stories have since been in circulation – ranging from she decamping with a local Kashmiri youth to getting a blissful beauty treatment in a parlour while everyone else tore their hair in exasperation. The fear at that time was she had been abducted by terrorists!
The truth, as Fahmida was to reveal today, lay somewhere else. But that is not so important (let some mysteries remain part of Big Laaf lore) as Zarina Khan’s historic encounter with an obstinate mule which refused to put up with her constitution twice its size. Even its owner had warned her not to take chances with that puny animal.
But Zarina was more obstinate than the mule. Worse, sitting on the mule, she insisted that it move faster and while the owner whipped the animal, the lashes kept falling squarely on Zarina’s lap. And then the inevitable happened. Negotiating an incline, Zarina and mule fell in a heap, both struggling helplessly on the ground… Luckily neither sustained any major injury.
Coming from Fahmida, the incident got us all doubling up with laughter rather than anybody feeling sorry for Zarina – or her mule.

Lt Col Angad Singh (retd):
North-east India is full of nature's gift. It has many beautiful places. Shillong is one of them. The buildings around lakes add fascination to their charming beauty. I hope that our contingent stops near the lake which is on the way to Shillong from Guwahati. It is worth a visit.