Train Of Thoughts in a Plane.
Recently while flying down from Lucknow to Bangalore I had this bizarre sequence of recollections. I was sipping an apple juice and cursorily glanced at the pack, the place of manufacture intrigued me. It was Rangreth in Kashmir. It set me off to the period 1987-89, when my Dad was posted in Srinagar, we were in a place called the Old Airfield, it was about 10 km from the town. On the way to my school which was in the BadamiBagh cantonment, on the other side of the city; my school bus rather truck used to pass this same village Rangreth which was about 3-4 km from our house, though I don’t remember any other landmark but surprisingly Rangreth is still fresh. It was situated on a hillock, had lot of Sikh families living. Our bus used to drop off a few kids there, one was a classmate of my sister, she had a strange name “Sunil Kaur Love”. In addition to Ms Love there was another Sikh boy don’t remember the name, but I just recollect one conversation that I had with him, it was regarding Bhindranwale. He was a big fan of him, and told me about his bravery and the lavish life that Bhindranwale used to have, he slept on a golden bed apparently. This boy was also convinced that he was still alive and that Khalistan will be a reality, surpisingly he was even younger than me; I was 11. The irony of this conversation was that we used to discuss this inside an army truck.
From this guy my attention switched to another Sikh friend of mine Rajbir Singh, he was my classmate. A very efficient and well-mannered boy, also he was taller and stronger than me, I used to admire him a lot. I sometimes used to go over to his house to play. One day at his house when he was putting on his shoes, I saw that he put in an arch shaped pad inside first, when I asked him, he said that he was flat-footed and it was to get his feet into shape, also flatfoots can’t be recruited in the Army, which was our dream at that time. At that moment I felt good about myself I thought I am better off than him, my inferiority complex was reduced suddenly by this trivial flat-foot incident.
After this my thoughts drifted over to football and hockey that we used to play in the army colony in Srinagar. That was the only time I played hockey in my life, it is a difficult game. We used to have matches against the Air-force colony and used to defeat them without fail.

What is strange about these incidents was that just from the name on the pack of the fruit juice I recollected so many memories of my childhood which I thought I had surely forgotten.