The ‘Declared’ Emergency

            My second official visit was to Australian military establishments in Brisbane and its neighbourhood. It is more than two hours flying time from Melbourne.

            An infantry brigade Officers’ Mess was my home in the Brisbane Army Base for about four days. I would go to a few units in the neighbourhood during day and return well in time for dinner and rest in my room on the third floor. The rooms were laid out somewhat akin to what we had in each squadron in NDA – rooms astride a corridor with common wash rooms in the wings.

            On my last evening in the Base, I made a few calls to concerned authorities to check that my transport to the airport was detailed and would report at the Mess in time to take me to the airport – the flight back to Melbourne was at 0600 next morning. Since the driving time to the airport was 45 minutes to an hour, I had planned to leave the Mess at 0400 so as to have enough cushion time up my sleeve. This implied that I would need to wake up at 0300 – a rather odd hour even for a seasoned pongo like me. So, I decided to retire after an early dinner. (In any case, dinner is culturally taken early there.) Now I had to solve the problem of waking up at that unearthly hour. So I walked to the Bar where a Sergeant was polishing the glasses as the final act of his evening routine and asked him if the Mess had a system of serving bed tea to a guest at an inconvenient hour of the night. (In India, the mess waiter or your ‘sahayak’ would serve you a hot cup of tea at any time of the night.) The Mess Sergeant smiled at me and replied, “Sir, you are welcome to walk down the stairs to the pantry where the fridge is well stocked with sandwiches, milk, juices etc. There is tea/coffee stand too with an electric kettle for boiling the water and helping yourself with the beverage of your choice any time of the night.”

            I was overwhelmed with his hospitality but didn’t know how to wake up in time to enjoy it. So I asked, “Thanks, but don’t you have some system to wake a guest up at the given time?”

            He smiled again and replied, “Sir there is a thing called alarm clock which rings a bell at the time of your choosing.”

            To this revelation, I said, “Yeah thanks for the tip but I am travelling and so don’t have one.”

            He continued with his discourse, “Sir, there are tiny portable models also in the market.”

            Since I couldn’t think of another question to satisfy my quest for more knowledge at that time, I thanked him and went up to my (third) floor. There I found a group of youngsters practicing roller skating in the corridor – exactly the same way as some of us did back in NDA. So I asked one of them if I could borrow an alarm clock form him. One of them volunteered to lend his alarm clock to me for the night but on the condition that he would explain its mechanism to me first. I agreed and we went to his room a couple of doors away. He then held an antique brass piece in front of me and explained that it was a birthday gift from his grand father. He then set its alarm and showed me how it worked – it would first sound a single gong at the desired hour, followed by two after one minute and three after two minutes. If the subject was still not awake, it will go whole hog after three minutes in a manner that everyone in the neighbourhood would wake up.

            I thanked him for his educative discourse, came to my room, set the alarm for 0300 hrs and couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night as the thought of the alarm going whole hog kept me awake. I got ready by 0345, returned the clock to its proud owner and descended the stairs to the ground floor to help myself with a cup of tea in the pantry – as advised by the Sergeant the previous evening. The transport detailed for me did not show up till 0405 (five minutes was long enough for me to set the panic button) so I dialed the Base Duty Officer’s number and apprised him of my situation. The Duty Officer, after learning from me that my flight was at 0600, asked me to wait for some more time which I did till 0420. On my second call to him, the Duty Officer still did not show much concern and asked me to continue my wait till 0445 when he will be within his rights to declare a state of emergency on the Base and dispatch the duty car to me. Since I had no other option, I waited and gave him the third call at 0445. He responded immediately and told me, “Sir, I hereby perceive and declare your situation to be of emergency demanding immediate dispatch of the duty car at my disposal to you. Sir, where are you?”

            With some difficulty, I was able to tell him where I was and hung up. After about 15 minutes, a Ford Falcon staff car drove outside the Mess and I took my seat next to a uniformed Army corporal who was at the wheels. He asked me again as to what time was my flight and on realizing that it was less than 45 minutes away, he put his hooter on and asked me to hold tight. With his siren blazing and at an average speed of 100 kmph, (40 kmph over the permitted speed limit inside a built up area) and the centrifugal forces resultant from the sharp twists and turns playing havoc on my body, he pulled over outside the Brisbane airport at 0600 sharp. On seeing the staff car braking with a screech, a female employee of the airline, half ran to the car and asked me, “Are you Maijor Kooshwaha?” On my acknowledging, she opened the boot of the car and asked me to run to the tarmac as the stairs were about to be removed from the aircraft and that she would take care of my bag.

             I ran for my life through the terminal building on to the tarmac and just managed to step on the stairway before it could be pushed away. On my entering the cabin through the rear hatch, I found the stewardess heaving a sigh of relief and announcing that the missing pax was safely on board and the flight would take off shortly well in time. An applause followed from the seated passengers as I took my seat.