Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Though, in the West, Rum is generally associated with sailors, In India, it is the soldier and an infantryman at that, who is more attached to this incarnation of Soma Ras.

It is not just the contents, even the container serves the infantryman so well. There are some unusual applications of this container and here we are talking only about a bottle having a  uniformly cylindrical body and  narrow neck and is made of glass;  fancy shaped ones or PET bottles will not do.

In the field areas, generally in mountains, bunkers are made using available natural resources, ie Rocks, timber and mud. A CGI (Corrugated Galvanized Iron) Sheet is generally fabricated to form the door(fabrication involves putting a few holes in the iron sheet and using some wires to anchor it to a pole on one side or to use as a door handle or a door fastener !) What do we do for windows ? Getting glass panes is out of question. This is where the empty rum bottle comes into picture. Just make a rectangular hole in the wall and fill it up with a neat row of bottles. Sheer simplicity does it; your skylight is ready to brighten up your living space . Should you favour tinted glasses, well, you can try using beer bottles. I wish I had a photograph, but had to do with a simple illustration.

    While on a Long Range patrol, the bottle is used just about everywhere. Though there is a whole range of equipment issued by the Ordnance Depot, like Mess tins, 4 men cooking set, 45 men cooking set and so on, what really works is a simple kerosene stove, a tawa (hot plate ?) and patila (a handle less pan) locally purchased. All solid (I wouldn't say dry , as in army, opposite of dry is fresh and cooking oil comes under dry rations !) rations are carried in bag-packs and liquid or semi solid rations are carried in , you guessed it right, rum bottles. So you have milk, Curd, Cooking Oil, kerosene, and of course rum, all carried in rum bottles.

    When you halt for the night, the patrol gets cracking to prepare a meal. You knead some dough , find a flat surface or use steel plate, and start rolling out the chapattis using the good old rum bottle as belan or the rolling pin. For a housewife a rolling pin might become a weapon, but for a soldier, his rum bottle becomes a rolling pin.

    After the meal, which is generally cooked before it gets dark, you need a lamp. Fill up a bottle with kerosene, stick a piece of chindi (cloth for cleaning weapons) and you have a nice lamp; not so nice really , but so what ? I have actually read though nights using these lamps.

    If that's  the story in a Field area, what happens in the peace station ?  Well, you can see manifestations of a soldier's sense of Good Life, in a Peace station. It is not uncommon to find money plants growing in rum bottles on window sills. And during the company bara khana , some hibiscus flowers or even a bunch bougainvillea flowers placed in rum bottles pass for flower arrangement.

    Even in Officers messes, a rum bottle had its use. In the earlier days, cash strapped as we generally were, the mess secretary took pains to ensure that the empty bottles were sold at a good price to augment the income for the officers mess.

    God knows how a soldier could have lived and fought without the Gift of Rum bottles with or without the original contents.