The Beginning...

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first working day of week 1... until now it was week 0...which was more of demos and preparation for the real thing...

PT started with fall in at 5:35am... march off to PT ground... reporting... PT started at 6am... lot of running (5X400m) till my lungs were on fire... followed by "stretching" with an explicit aim to tear every tendon and ligament... push-ups, sit-ups, something where you throw up one of your leg so high up on a bar, it's definitely not coming down by itself and then proceed to touch the toe... i think they set up 5-year-commissions for this kind of thing... just to figure out the worst things they can do to us....

6:55am - 5 min break... to change into drill gear... beret( a flat cap tight enough to burst a vein in your head)... belt(tightened enough to cause you to faint in the sun during the half breaths you manage, if you can) and boot ankle( don't be a wise guy and think 'ankle boot'... and these are prepared from the hardest, most inflexible leather so that everything in contact - your shin, ankle, toes, heels and other muscles of feet i don't know names of ache painfully)...

the drill is an arduous affair which i do not absolutely understand the point of... it involves doing 'saavdhan', 'vishram', 'daine mood', 'bayen mood', 'peeche mood' for hundreds of times each... till we're turned into automatons reacting on 'muscle memory'... another of the Instructor's favorite terms...

headed off after a quick breakfast of 1/4th parantha, two slices of bread with generous helpings of jam, one full boiled egg, milk and tea (i know you're amazed at my capacity to have both the liquids one after another... actually, i intersperse the drinking of milk with tea... my stomach's a garbage bin!!!)...

off to the DJC(Diamond Jubilee Complex) for Indoor classes - three classes in alll - Police in Modern india was boring, but survived...

Leaders of Police - next class, i succumbed finally after a brave fight with my thick leather cushioned chair and rolled around in sleep as much as decency and the instructor's patience permitted...

the third class was VK sir's and i enrolled myself in the 'Volunteers needed' section ( i was stretching after a small nap and he thought i raised my hand in participation) and have now 'generously offered' to teach the computer illits some basics... i'm going to finally attempt to learn some basics myself... VK's a dynamic leader with a penchant for tricking you to do what he wants you to do and making it seem like you did it coz you wanted to do it... chandu says i have a quarter crush on him... i denied it... 50% is nearer the number... ;-)

lunch - normal rice n roti...

"fall in" for more drilling at 3pm... the instructor proclaimed my cap too big, belt too loose and said my shoes didn't look like they were hurting enough... while barking the following encouragements at my squad...

'keep your heels together'

'turn faster'

'lift your thighs till they're parallel to the ground'

'hit the ground flat and hard'

'toe pointed down'

'shouting zor se!!'

if it makes no sense, don't despair... civvies (civilians) don't need to... ;-)

picked up a few books from library... michael crichton has lost his touch after 'lost world'... am reading his 'prey'.... sucks!

picked up the sequel to 'gone with the wind'... it's called 'Scarlett'... i just realized it's written by some other lady and not Margaret Mitchell...

picked up "Nehru" with high hopes... too high... doubt if i'll finish the prologue...



long entry... gotta go now... and read 'introduction to computers'... after all i just need to stay one class ahead of the comp-illits... (Computer Illiterates)...;-)

NPA - Blog 1

life's too busy here to think about what on earth i'm doing... and to conclude if i like/enjoy/hate/love the stay here.... it's been three days... wait, four...i think... rising before the sun and sleeping at 10pm like a prissy school kid is disorienting my normal biological time-clock... which was used to the normal hours of waking up at noon and sleeping nearer sunrise than normally advised by medicos...

training takes on a new meaning in NPA... we follow more orders in a day than i've done in years... many new words have quietly made way into the vocabulary... 'fall in' means assembling in front of the mess... the 'mess' is the residence cum dining hall... POP is 'Passing Out Parade' and is akin to the Judgement Day as in everyone's preparing for it since day 0... count here starts from 0, not 1.... day 0, week 0...

and uniformity is taken to a hyper degree... it's hard enough to differentiate between the Nepalese and Bhutanese (don't even dream of differentiating between one Nepali and another).... but all guys look alike too... all of 'em wear white shirts with dark ties, but the worst part is the hair... they were accosted in the first five minutes of arrival (i swear on every god i don't believe in!!!) and shorn of all hair except a little tuft at the top... shorn as in 'shaved' not 'cut'....there go the curls... and all are also required to shave... so there go the goatees... the girls have been exempted from this embarrassment... after all, we did win the first lottery of life... and we take extra pleasure in sporting our long, dark hair...;-)

but we have our issues too... in the squads(not teams/groups) there are mostly guys and a meagre 2-3 girls... and the 'Ustad' (our ADI - Asst Drill Instructor) takes gender equality too seriously for my liking... we run, stretch, jump, march all like the guys... 'warm up' and 'stretches' are deceptively simple words for the torture that we undergo as preparation for further torture... like playing volleyball!! my wrist, after serving the ball a dozen times (successfully :-) ) is the size of my bicep... :-( i've never more wished for a slice of healthy gender discrimination....



chalo, enough for now...i sleep by 10pm... i know it's not a logical end but what the heck!! allow me to break a few rules or i'll lose my touch!! ;-)

more later!!

exams...!!

it's the exam week... added to the misery of the truth dawning upon us that the fun filled FC is going to be over in about 10 days, are the exams...

on the first day of the FC, in the Inauguration Session, we were given an expensive leather bag (sarkari to the last buckle) full of textbooks... on law, management, public administration and such... i put it in the lowest drawer in my desk and had forgotten all about it...until now...

since the exams were scheduled for monday, i ransacked my room and found the bag by sunday morning... i opened the book on public administration, put out my chair in the balcony and sat down to study... two pages later, the sun came out full blast and i realized, looking at the empty clothesline that it was a good day to wash some clothes... so i went and washed a few clothes... then i thought some of the washed clothes could do with some more washing... i also considered washing my roomie's clothes but i wasn't really sure how she'd take this generous act... anyway, by the time i was done, i was so tired, i needed a warm bath... so i had one... by then, it was lunch time and along with my 'family', i headed for the mess...

soon after, we had a few batchbook details to fill... it basically involves formally picking on one OT till he/she flies off the handle so that all such relevant information can be immortalized in our batch book... i had so many people fly off the handle that each one waited with evil glints in their eyes for my turn... they had their share of sadistic pleasure at pointing out my orange slippers, my incessant ability to say 'No!!', "this is Sooooo bad"... to give out free lessons on psychology and philosophy... "stop writing any blogs..." and more that i obviously am not sharing!!

with so much criticism i could barely study, so i curled off into a deep slumber and tried to forget the treacherous beasts i called friends...

come evening, i woke just in time for the last tea cup... came back and finally located the management book... i marked a few lines in pink(my current favorite pen) before realizing i couldn't possibly write my exam in pink!! so i convinced my good friend to go shopping for a few pens... we went all the way to the farthest market in Bhopal for pens that we could have as well bought well within 100m at the local shop... satisfied with this hectic preparation, i had a heavy meal and fell into another sound sleep...

today was the exam... the questions were tough... the answers, tougher... for eg: one question went like this...
Q) who is considered the real founder of the Mughal Empire??
Options) Shivaji, Alexander, Akbar, Megasthenes

Shreyas marked the answer "Shivaji"... why???
"If Shivaji hadn't lost the battle with Humayun on purpose(i didn't know match-fixing was an ancient practice), how would Akbar have succeeded the throne???" he explained...

i'm not sure what the correct answer is... but i'm praying to my Roomie's Gods (i don't really have one) so i scrape through with the minimum 50% required to pass on to my Parent Academy....

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it was easily the biggest day in FC, and one of those memorables ones that we'll discuss for a while... the day started with the UPSC Chairman D P Agarwal sharing his views for two full breakless hours... there were few nodding heads on account of the ardent disagreements and arguments that made up most of the lecture... transparency in marks... making graduation subject compulsory in mains... shortening the length of exams... the usual stuff...

the next hour was taken up by D S Mathur... we were quite skeptical of him since his previous lecture on 'BioTerrorism' had induced more than a dozen heads to roll...down in sleep... one of them being mine... i remember more than one nightmare... i thought the topic could be used unchanged in the Al-Qaeda Institute of Terrorism and Violent Activities... Dhruva looked at me like I'd finally lost it, when i suggested the idea to him... even nivedita, the escort duty officer to Mr. Mathur, was praying with a vengeance that her Guest would do better this time... the prayers were answered... the lecture was on Code of Conduct for Civil Cervantes... and it was pretty interesting.. he topped it off with his account of the Telecom Scandal which had us all up and awake... about how the Govt of India had lost 1.75 lakh crore rupees and all... i especially love the stories that get unrolled in the class... real events, real people... not through newspapers but in flesh n blood... there's something enchanting about the whole thing... maybe one day it'll wear off, but right now, i enjoy the awe these 'big shots' inspire...

in what was considered by most to be the Jackpot Escort of the whole FC, i got to be on Escort Duty for one of the biggest men in the country - A P J Abdul Kalam.... though all i did was shake hands with him and spend less than five minutes telling him about my fellow OTs, what we wanted him to talk about and other similar small talk... the added perks included a real cute IPS officer who was in charge of the whole VIP affair and another interesting MBA guy who shared my frustration in the Corporate sector.... it had been so long since i'd met anyone from outside the 'Sarkari Island' i'm now a part of...

there was a lot of photographing to do... all of us resplendent in our bandgalas (guys, i mean) and the fairer sex in beautiful sarees(that would be me)... it was a rare opportunity... only the second time in our FC(the first one being the Inauguration Function)... there'll be a lot of uploading going on today n tomorrow...

chalo, i gotta go now... friends had decided on a night drive, but the main one backed off, complaining of a stomach ache... too much pressure in the FC na... PT, lectures, Q&A sessions... all the butterflies apparently upset his delicate stomach...

nite nite!!

Diwali Greetings...

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it's been a while since i blogged and i'm reminded of my laggedness by VinC... it must mean something that even he's missing my 'buzz'es coz he's someone who'd rather not read anything that's not entirely avoidable... sometimes, not even the bus route names... seriously... or maybe it's just his way of avoiding the hours of conversations where i update him about every little thing- like the sour rasam, the missing of PTs, the little fights with the friends, mood swings, the new Coffee 'n' U we've discovered...

anyway, life's been on... and though i hate the thought of it, i cannot but help notice i've just one more month left of this blissful oblivion...  we had a recent village visit... mine was with a bunch of four other friends (not OTs) to Jhal Peepli... we were in our favorite place... anything but the lecture halls....;-)

the village was a 'Forest Village' with 100% tribal population... interesting sights of purdah'ed women, little brown kids with the frank stares, the old men(69years) who claimed to be older (96 years)... the wonderful lunch that came out of the dark kitchen where women under wraps, with lowered eyes turned out one poori after another... the sheer curiosity, attention and adulation we generated was intoxicating... i couldn't help but blame the fate for not letting us stay the nights in these wonderful surroundings... though there were times i was glad we had our occasional returns into our bland lives... especially during the nature calls... ;-)


what else? most of the OTs are back home celebrating Diwali... only a few are left behind - mostly coz our homes are too far... i'm not too unhappy... most of my bunch is stuck here and i'm planning a quiet getaway tomorrow with a friend who's been complaining i'm ignoring her for the past week or so... so maybe i'll have a few more adventures to regale you with when i'm back...

Malaria Madness...

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just a few lines to unload before i bury myself in the thick blankets to catch up on lost sleep... classes for the afternoon are cancelled... blood tests are going on... i donated my own 'one drop' to the testers... after a scream that echoed down the corridors and brought people hurtling to see who'd been 'Texas Chainsaw Massacred'... the tests were for the malaria scare that is doing the rounds... one fell sick 3 days ago... one is affected and in the hospital's CCU for the past two days... not good news... not good news at all...

the malaria's affecting not only those directly affected but the rest of the batch too... the trek group to which all the sick people belong, are now paranoid and developing psycho-somatic symptoms that they learnt by heart during their UPSC preparations as the actual symptoms of malaria... one of them is limping and though i'm quite sure that isn't a bullet point for the 5-mark malaria symptom question, i haven't the heart to tell him... i am quite paranoid too... despite the fact that i'm aware of my psycho-somatic powers, i can't control them... and i'll develop all the right symptoms in 24 hours after a clean search of the wikipedia... that explains my blood test though all we did was sleep in exhorbitantly luxurious AC Tents for our 'trek/trip/picnic/pilgrimage' to Amarkantak...

the whole batch has started functioning like an organism... the way only a crisis can induce it to... at midnight, there were a dozen guys watching out for the sick guy... though only one was allowed to stay in the hospital, three others kept watch, 'just in case'... some probably had never interacted with Dash, the chap in CCU, being prayed for by all, or most... (atheists duly excluded)

one of the other immediate effects of the malaria outbursts is the cancelled CGM Dinner... H is sad that all the songs he practiced in the long baths in his bathroom will have no audience but his own hazy reflection in the mirror... but all the team is also unanimously sad that we'll not get to wear the all-black outfits we'd planned to don for the D-day... well, one must learn to accept the harsh-realities that life throws at us! we will survive! yes, we can! mera bharat mahan! ok, now i've totally gotten carried away...

the other activity affected is our 'village visit'... we were to stay for 5-6 days in some little villages... cut off from the lectures, the PT, the dress-code, the HOPE meetings, the Committee sessions!! after the first malaria finding, it was decided that the 'visit' would be too hazardous a thing for the OTs and we were offered Rest Houses & Circuit Houses to rest ourselves in... but now that another has been admitted to the hospital, it's been decided that we'll stay right here and just visit the village from the safe havens that our hostel is... we'd be leaving after breakfast, which, with our sharpened sense of punctuality would be anywhere from 10-11... and be returning from the villages at 6pm... quite a hectic schedule if you consider the traveling... some worries have been voiced on the lunch table by the more vociferous ones...

"there's hardly any time to interact with the villagers!" is countered by
"there's hardly any activity after sun-down! hardly any night-life" retalitates a bangalorean night-life addict...

but other questions are less adeptly tackled... like

"though they might sleep at sundown, the village life starts with sun-up... 5:30am... when we're still in the non-malaria beds in the hostel!"

"who'd be in the village from 12noon to 6pm to interact with!... children too small to go to the school or ancient old men"

"we would never be accepted completely if we kept leaving every day..."

"if the villages are malaria-prone, won't the villagers also be affected... couldn't we try and educate them about the healthy ways..." one of those NGO/Social Service types..

"yeah, true... didn't we all claim in our UPSC interviews that we were only in the service to serve the downtrodden??" one of the righteous, change-the-world types...

"isn't this hypocrisy?? differentiating between the health of villagers and ourselves??? trying to save our own skins instead of being where we can actually put into practice whatever we learn in the class??" this from someone who nods off 10 mins into the class, every class, every day...

some are more realistic...

"the academy just wants to be wary... they don't want any more sick people than they can handle...."

"it is for our own safety"

"villagers' immunity will be higher than ours" the metro-breds...


arguments flash back and forth..... i listen... i collect... i retaliate... i write...

and just as i finish the piece, i realize the lessons spilling in the past 24 hours are more real than the months of classes in the modern-class-room...

Inertia Rules!!

all about Amarkantak

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it's nearly 1am and it's tempting to sleep... i have a choice of cleaning up all the odds and ends you accumulate on unpacking after a week long trek in the Amarkantak... stinking dirty socks, muddied tracks, water bottles, band-aids(unused), shampoos, soap, needle-and-thread combo, etc, etc... and all this without waking up my roomie... and in the half-light... so instead i choose to write this tortuous blog...

it was a week long trek... or atleast i think it was.. you lose your sense of time and day among a lot of other senses as you trek through jungles all day long... as i saw more sal trees than anyone ought to in one life time, i wondered if our forest officer wasn't taking us in circles just for fun... after all there's little in amarkantak... except the 'narmadaji' river, ashrams, temples in all stages(functional, decrepit, under construction) and a lot of cows... which with spectacular accuracy walk right to the middle of the road to have their thoughtful rests... our 'ambulatory van' which we earlier thought was a very-slow ambulance built to deliver 100 percent fatality because it never breached the 10kmph mark stopped every 100m to honk these cows out of the way...

it's hard to summarize such a long trek... but a few moments stand out... the first day at ashram... our room had a sunken bath but little lighting... and the food there did little to improve my appetite or energy... it wasn't an altogether bad place... if you're 70, retired, old, on a pilgrimage, want to wonder about your existence and all that... but for a bunch of excited 21 OTs rearing to jump onto a trak, it was the coldest water... we didn't realize how much we disliked it till the evening when waiting for the Commissioner and the IG we discovered the Holiday Homes... in the strongest bit of team building we shifted successfully into the luxurious new tents for the rest of the trak...

the trek ranged from hectic on the first day to picnic on the third day... there were some tough terrains to conquer... some serious scratches to treasure... we barely took our eyes off the path sometimes coz it was so steep, slippery with trampled green leaves and every step on those round stones threatened to throw you into the steep jungles below... there were a lot of dhara's... rudra ganga, shambu dhara, laxman dhara... but the best one was kapil dhara... visited three times and viewed from every direction possible - from the top, the bottom, the left and the right... from the front and best all, from behind... we bathed in the furious waters, sat in the pool, discussed geographies, approximated heights... and the other high point was a swim in the narmada... my swimming lessons finally paid off and i managed to freestyle a couple of laps... even as our team leader frowned at my 'unlady-like' behaviour as i kicked off my shoes and jumped into the green gushing waters along with the local brown boys... for the record, before any of the macho guys did... just avenging myself for the whole 'girls don't choose IPS thing'... ;-)

the evenings mostly consisted of sitting around the bonfire playing games... dumb charades, lateral thinking (do not smirk at 'thinking'... it was one of the funnest games... that is, if you are equipped with the equipment required...)... 'do you know - what' and 'zip-bang'...

we also had good times in the Dosa Point especially on the second day when we accidentally swindled the shop-keeper of 265 bucks... and had the hardest time as everybody explained everything to everybody about how everybody else was not understanding the whole thing... finally, we went back and re-adjusted the cash so that in the end, we were swindled off of 35 bucks... which like our saintly conscience-keeper Vikram said,  is somehow better than the other way round...

chalo, i have to attend some seriously boring lectures tomorrow... am keeping my fingers crossed that i'll be shuttled from the first bench finally...

ciao!!

preparing to 'trak'...

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It’s been such a busy time i’ve restricted my blogs to the tiny status updates in facebook then Ctrl-V’ed to Orkut... today’s the trek... the 5-day long trek, journey to and fro excluded... around Amarkantak... the place of origin of Narmada... didn’t find any good material about it on the net and hence i still have not much idea of what we’re getting into... bags are packed... mostly... half the space is occupied by the sleeping bag...

My friends C & N,  have managed to stick together and left in the morning to Pench... some national park or something of the sort... the aim of the trek is to stay uncomfortable for a week... it doesn’t really matter how or where... they left at the ungodly hour of 8am and C called me up soon after to storm about how dark and evil and obnoxious a person i was for not seeing her off... it’s just a week... and it’s a just a few hundred kms... and we still have our phones... i tried to put in... obviously over-ruled... last night we had sat up in the lounge while the musicians of our batch strummed their guitars and whistled through their flutes... until the MP(madhyam pandav) came barging in with his cell and his music and his knife stories and how he’s gonna hunt tigers and dinosaurs in the Bandhavgarh jungles while he also simultaneously grapples with the anacondas with anklets with his 3-inch knife that is one of its kind and is also imported (made in china)...!!

 N’s the sensible one... of the three of us at least... though yesterday she went to the parlour for henna’ing her hair and somehow came back with the brightest blue nail-polish... which she brings to the attention of everybody by drumming her fingers, running her fingers through her hair, waving her hands about more than usual... ;-)

So now i’m stuck with a band of 20... few of whom i know...  but most are still the smile-in-the-corridor-as-you-pass kinds whose name i’m not yet sure of... there’s jadoo, the youngest kid in the block and from an IT company... who is blamed by the batch for everything from the fibre cable disconnection, slow internet and bad lectures(where he asks too many questions) to the bad weather, the frustrated PT guy and mess food...   

32!!!!

 

there’s sandy, the captain, who has ordered everybody to do the special salute every time we run across each other, anywhere... has an incorrigible, congenital problem with telling the truth... it has to be that! Or who’d ever say i looked 32!!... and has absolutely no sense for shopping and got horribly sleazed all over the markets all over Bhopal yesterday... more of my mates when i know them better...

Let me now go and buy myself a pack of glucon-d (orange flavour)... i really can’t understand why people roll their eyes and go ‘spoilt brat’ on me when i mention it that i don’t really care for the white glucose powder... it looks and tastes like something someone sick with no sense of taste, and hopefully unconscious would have...for a last drink!!

Anyway, until later!!

Ciao!!

first sunday

the first sunday of our stay here... absolutely nothing to do!!... i wonder if sundays really have 24 hours like other days, coz this one went zoooooooooooop, while the other days just stretch on so long that you wonder if morning didn't happen yesterday....

tried fixing up the TV to play from the USB... didn't happen... we're trying to find a way to play movies on the LCD Samsung 5 series... though it has a USB2 sticker on it, it wouldn't recognize anything except photos...
a few friends and I explored the Vitthan Market aka Bitton aka Vitthal... an hour later, a few bucks lighter, and a plate of golgappas each, we reached the Academy... the Autos here are a 'fixed price' deal... they charge you 30 bucks from anywhere to any-other-where... i now don't think the golgappas were such a good idea... ;-)

we finally have access to the sports complex and try our hands at TT... though i'm the "better" bad player in the beginning, CC catches on quickly...
"good genes", she explains... and we fight a bitter battle to see who's family line's stronger...
next, we hit the gym... though the idea of running nowhere(the treadmill) holds no fascination for me, my friend's more interested... she's even more thrilled to find the twister... you know, the thing where you stand on a plate and go turn-turn to twist your stomach and belch out the insides in quick, little installments... maybe that wasn't the description, but that's what happened anyway...

getting late for PT!!
off now!!

FC at Bhopal : Bhopal Darshan

the schedule said "Bhopal Darshan"... we had no clue it was gonna hit us so hard... the day started with two buses full of OTs venturing into VanVihar... a 4.5km stretch through a National Park... it is a green, peaceful, beautiful stretch in the middle of Bhopal City with 'wild' animals... we even sighted a few through the wired compounds... a white tiger steadily looking the other way and maddening not one photographer... a lioness loitering far away in the bamboos... a black bear playing with its foot long tongue... long coiled things that looked like snakes... a few tortoises bobbing just a second for breath before silently sliding back in into the murky green water adorned with a few plastic bottles...

the crowd of OTs behaved as any crowd of expectant, 'highly educated' tourists who'd had a full afternoon session on "Ecotourism" not 24 hours ago would... they screamed, bellowed, whistled, cat-called and laughed to, at, with themselves creating a situation apparently familiar to the inhabitants of the National Park... who were totally at ease and not in the least bit bothered as they went about their ways...

then there was a tour through the Manav Museum... a collection of huts, pots n pans, clothing, etc of tribals... i also found a few things i grew up with and felt quite archaic and important...
"we have all these at home" i commented to my new found friend from Delhi's elite institution, pointing to the hearth, the pots, the chukki, etc...

there was a quick stop at the Boat Club where based on their nerves people chose paddle boats, pedal boats and water scooters... i went nowhere near the water... instead catching the few precious minutes of rest by plonking down on the steps and studying the ducks that incessantly quacked, waded into the water, preened, quacked, headed towards the water again... and so on...

but the hardest was saved for the last... we were to watch a movie with the Big Bosses of the institution and it was decided we'd watch "We are Family" - a bad remake of the English 'Stepmom'... i could go on and on about it but i've vowed to cap my complaints henceforth to a 100/day like the SMS packs, you know...

it's just past midnight... i decide against any exercise in the morning... after all even the Gods rest on Sundays... at least some of them take off, anyway...

that's all for this week...!!

Day 4?? Hindi Test

there's an egg on my bed... a full, egg-shaped, chicken-egg in the middle of the bed... now, of all the places i'm used to seeing eggs, this is not a good one...
"who left it there??" i ask...
there's no one to answer as i am accidentally, incidentally and temporarily enjoying single-occupancy... though that doesn't include any peace and quiet any more...

apart from the egg, i've managed to acquaint myself with a lot of people here... i quite like the idea of just talking to people... though i'm overdoing it to an unhandleable degree... i meet people on the stairs, in the corridor, in the mess, on the badminton court who smile widely and i am not really sure of their name still... or even if i've talked to them yet... this in itself would've been innocuous enough but in the elections yesterday, they've marked my name as a member of the Mess Committee... while i slept off the remnants of the "Political Science Concepts: Part I"... not that i have to do much but if you know me, you'll know my fatal allergy to any kind of "Responsibility" however distant or indirect...

anyway, life's tough and has to go on... the classes are the toughest... we had one lecture today by an ex-IAS officer... totally fully of integrity and honesty... but man the topic he was talking on... i can't remember it right now but it sure was boring... i only woke up when he talked of his experiences in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy...

today's high point was the Hindi Test... i'm not really sure why learning that is so important... if you know and want to quote the relevant Articles of Constitution, please refrain... anyway it had some translation things, spelling corrections and stuff... corrections??? like i know the original to recognize the slight mistakes... translation were real tough... University, Clerk, Manager, Director... to the last one, i wrote "Prashant Mehta"... i hope it works...

coming back to the story of the egg, i go closer, pick it up... it's hard boiled... hmm... who would lay a hard boiled egg in the middle of a locked room... and then it all comes back to me... i was late for the class at breakfast... and the egg was too hot... so i got it to my room and before i could consume it, CC was hammering at my door...

mystery solved... dinner time!!
ciao!!

Day 3 : FC at Bhopal : The classes finally begin...

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it's 3:20am when i'm starting the blog... and i've skipped a day...

"he days haven't turned hectic yet", our BOSS warns us... our PT has been postponed until monday... went to the badminton court today... didn't even remember the rules... rather, never knew them... but with the help of my unusually sporty geriatric partner, managed to play till i was pink!! and sweated for the first time in years... felt awesome!!

bigger deal was the election to the Mess Committee... to be held tomorrow... got quite dirty... gender, race, cast, color, all thoroughly abused... on all sides... a last minute candidature, twisted sides... so like the K-serials i've begun to miss... :(

we had our classes today... the first ones... first one was by an IPS officer... involved ice-breaking... you know, like the first days at IBM/Infy when you get to do the most meaningless things like building freely standing, tall structures out of paper, balloons and straws... one guy stood with a balloon in hand and their team got cadbury chocolates...!! and i bagged an eclairs for answering the 3-lights, 3-switches problem...!!

the next class was 'Etiquette'... i got to know that i sit wrong, stand wrong, wear the wrong stuff, talk wrongly, eat wrongly... you get the idea... i'm not really sure i'm breathing right, right now...

there was a totally inspiring class by an IAS officer who's MD of MP Tourism... remember that Incredible India ad which goes "Hindustan ka Dil Dekho"... he made it happen... looks like a guy who's forgotten it's bureaucracy he's a part of... looks, acts and behaves as if in some Corporate... hiring O&M for marketing for that expensive ad!! what blasphemy!!! :-P

the last lecture was so boring, i had to be coaxed out of coma at the end of it...

tomorrow's Janmashtami... a welcome break!! explains my late night sojourn into the cybercafe...

ciao people!!!

day 1: Introductions

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Day 1:

don't panic! i won't really be able to keep the log up everyday... not if the calendar they've provided is to be believed...

the day started with a hard knock on the door... and a steaming thermos of elaichi tea... at 6am!! when i was just falling asleep... had a visitor at 8, a neighbor dropped in for some usual girl-talk... 9:30 the breakfast of corn-flakes/sandwiches/boiled egg... i'm so going the weighty way...

they want us to get used to the sarkari life shtyle as soon as possible... so, we were all filled into the auditorium and requested to fill in a bunch of forms... there were two copies of them required, so four copies of forms were provided... let's not get into the national waste debate coz we'll probably not be siding together anymore... and as a prize for good behaviour we were all given a black leather bag that reeks of 'bureaucrat' ... with pens, pencils, you know the kind that would send a pre-schooler into ecstasy!!! i was measured for height, weight and photo... i was pronounced impeccable at 45/165/slightly drowsy...

what else?? another friend needed a phone sim and i took her out for it... and the guy just handed over a previously activated sim in 5mins...
"any documents required??" she ventured.
"dena hai to de do" he obliged...
so much for national security and they're after the poor Blackberry holding elite!!

not much else has happened... there was a tiny introductory function when we were convinced what a great day it was for us poor sods... how we'd remember it for the rest of eternity and all that... the faculty introduced themselves and the police guy who's going to 'handle' us for PT from tomorrow morning at 6am glowered quietly and said something i didn't really catch...

oh, and there's lots of tea-drinking involved... the bed tea, the breakfast tea, the high tea, the evening tea... i just had one... maybe i'm getting high on so many teas... if that's possible... let me check!!
ciao for now!

day 0 at the academy

it's amazing how many things you can worry about on a journey... none of those will go wrong but others will...
my biggest worry was my big bags... 25kilo each, they weighed more than i do... i was afraid of how i'd transport them and myself to the academy... turned out not such a hassle after all... a newly acquired friend, two of her brothers and one 2-minute taxi ride later, i was deposited at the academy... it is a sprawling place... sort of living in the middle of lalbagh, i described to my folks back home... or back in a denser, jungler, kharagpur... i was hoping to have the FC at Mussorie and landing instead at Bhopal was kinda disappointing... but since a lot of my memorable journeys have started with disappointing outlooks, i am hoping i'll have a grand time here!!

i have a shared room, newly painted(the paint is so fresh i have some on my fingers as i touched the doors!!)... the room mate is missing still since we have till 5pm tomorrow to arrive... there's the bare minimum furniture of two beds, a pair of tables and chairs and two cupboards... a full fledged AC!! (i've still to get over it!! coming from Blore where one rarely needs it!!) but the best part is the dinner!! lip-smacking, finger-licking good!!

though the LAN in my room doesn't work, there's a barely occupied computer lab to fulfil the basic needs of orkut, facebook, gmail and blogging...
more updates later!!
ciao!!

the beginning of another journey...

it's 2am and i have a pickup scheduled for 7... am... i don't feel sleepy... it's not the first time and it won't be the last... my journey into territories i barely know... this time it's bhopal... i still know nothing except the 'gas tragedy' of the yester years... i hope to find out more... firsthand... maybe a bit less tragic...
after landing in the IP&TAFS provisionally*, i've resigned myself to my fate and am heading to bhopal... the next 15weeks are calendared there, even if the months after that are still nebulous... i pack my bags with my new wardrobe... crammed finally into two heavy bags... one weighs 22 kilos... the other's still lying open so i can cram my lappy after the last minute blog...
i have barely any idea of the curriculum... maybe some studies... pub ad kind... maybe something physical... though i've heard we're not into any exciting stuff like horse riding... even swimming seems to have gotten the miss...
i'm still sitting on the IPS fence looking and wondering where i want to be... not that anybody's asking...
i sound unusually pessimistic... maybe coz i'm a little bit anxious, apprehensive, scared...
but there's also the hope, the looking forward to... the scent of adventure that's so intoxicating...

an awessome weekend!!!

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life's the same old usual... but weekend was a tad more eventful...

went in sangee's car all the way to tumkur... in the longest 70km of my life, she nearly killed me a million times... she has an incessant way of chattering... and fiddling about the car... if i ever have to ride with her ever again, i think it's going to be in a car devoid of the radio, the music player, the AC, the power windows, or any windows for that matter that open/close and no back seats to contain anybody that might talk and distract her either... yeah! only then might i just have enough courage to sit in the passenger seat with her... with my extra-strong seatbelt on... i seriously considered wearing my helmet but in the last minute decided it would distract her to my death...

anyway, reached home, introduced her to my parents... she got along famously with them... my mother's one of those candid persons who sometimes has asked my friends in all innocuousness as to why on earth they hang out with the likes of me!!! so she hardly needs to be convinced of my friends' worth... despite all that, sangee was a total kiss-ass praising my ma for her rice, sambhar, appalam, beans, sprouts, garden, well, cats, chairs, sofas... god! it was embarrassing!!!




we visited a few places... like the siddaganga matha where sangee took a fancy to a frog... yeah, a frog and went after him with her DSLR until the poor guy just lost it and lunged right into her face... i took her to my cousin's farm where she shot the dogs, the hens, the goats, sheep, cows, buffaloes... her requests at capturing a few hens for closer photography were ill-received and i was almost glad when after a bout of the stinky rabbit-house she finally gave up clicking for a while to take a fresh breath...

we travelled along to my village where she clicked the fly-ridden kid, the acutely bent grandma and everyone in between... next target was our farm where i had a bit of quiet as her camera finally gave out(ran out of battery)... i proudly shared with her one of my favoritest places on earth... as we sat under the huge banyan tree... there were more places to see and click and shoot... so much, so long...



she had been flattering me for a week to convince my brother to give her a ride on his pulsar... and in the end, she claimed she was literally blown away as she gushed in agreement to my claim that he is indeed the best driver for a long way around...


finally exhausted, we reached blore... were met with the terrible traffic jams... rolled up the windows, put on the AC and the radio... with good music and bad jokes, we crawled through an hour of jam... and finally reached my place... had a cup of mocha and hot chocolate...  i scalded my tongue with a bite of the blueberry muffin... swore at the establishment... but it was seriously good when my tongue regained its  senses, so it was hard to be mad at the muffin for long... there was a beautiful white cat roaming the tables... exactly the breed Snowbells of 'Stuart Little' is...

finally went home and crashed... glad to be out of sangee's car on terra firma finally!!! but her words still rang from the promise she made as she pulled out of my house,
" i'll come back soon appaji... "

just another day...

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another normal day at the company... i look up from my laptop and find everyone else looking down into theirs... most have excel sheets open... red, blue and green color-coded charts flashing with such aesthetic appeal that you wish you were color blind... or atleast blind... :)

anyway, my girl friend's not in today...called in sick... and i'm quite missing her incessant chatter... the same that blocks my brain for 30minutes after she's finally gone... i try to make small talk with the others... most give me a cold shoulder... one of them's still miffed for losing grandiosely to me in the TT match yesterday... and the day before that, and the one before that...

i was a little off yesterday... did some wild calculations based on the alignment of stars and planets... and came to the conclusion that i might not end up after all in the IPS!! and maybe not even Mussorie!!! ah!! cruel life!!
i then convinced myself i needed a cigarette... i found two actually... nearly broken but still alive...from long times ago... somebody claimed they had expiry dates... really??? i then remembered that you'd need matches... can you believe i had none!! and not even a gas stove... !! finally, tried it out on the electric gas stove... after puffing crazily, i was able to light it... though i came dangerously close to electrocuting myself in the process... smoked the cigarette till i felt sick... and wondered why i'd started in the first place... then remembered my room-mate.. ran around opening every window in the house... i seriously think i'm more scared of her finding out i'm a lowly smoker than dying horribly of lung cancer... 

anyway, i have precious little to do, now that i'm on my notice period... except sit around pretending to be doing something i'm not and also managing to pretend to be not doing something i actually am... make sense?? it will, only if you're as full of time on your hands as i am...

i have had three tea breaks in 1.5 hours... with three different sets of peoples... i'm looking for more prospects... not even any meetings scheduled for the day... for my creativity to blow up...anyway, meetings aren't much fun since everybody's discovered i'm writing sinister blogs while attending them and won't let me carry my laptop to the meeting hall... there's only so much day-dreaming one can accomplish in a brightly lit room with half a dozen people looking at you...and nowhere to hide...

okay... my timer just rang... i need to urgently stare at an excel sheet with three blinding charts for 10minutes straight...
see ya later!!

another meeting...

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an occasional yawn punctuates the meeting... there's a frequent flipping of wrists to check the time...  once in a while i catch words i understand, or let's stick to 'recognize'... DWF, OATS, dashboard, scorecard... there's some new word... blue harmony, being bandied about... must be the 'in' thing...once in a while, i manage a smile when there's obviously something funny being said and i'm expected to chortle... though i have no clue what the heck they're going on about...

the temperature of the meeting is definitely lower... the chill can be attributed to the manager, a quiet, formal fellow... likes procedures and formalities way more than the rest of the team thinks necessary...

while trying to look very seriously present and concentrating, i make a mental checklist of things that need to be done...urgently... my toe-nails need a fresh coat of the black paint... there are a dozen or so photos i need to collect from sangee... need to send that mail to upsc for the authenticated mark sheet... varun's shoes look like the new pair i bought for vin... i hope he likes them... will promptly kill him if he complains... have to convince the dentist to finish the job and take out the braces... i don't plan to start my new career looking like a 12-year-old...

sagar says something about fool-proof... i nod understandingly...i know something that for sure, isn't fool-proof... the hdfc atm sitting on the ground floor reception... i put in my card yesterday in the gap under the slot and then shoved it in...not in the card-slot but an inch below it... don't ask me why... and don't you dare roll your eyes...i have no excuse for the sheer stupidity... except i was hungry, caffeine withdrawn and there was a high frequency siren blasting continuously(for the past few days) that apparently switched off the 'intelligent' part of my brain... until only the 'spectacularly stupid' was the only functional part... that's another card added to the long list of lost cards... :(

now the meeting's over... and we're back to our cubicles... facing away from each other, pretending to inhabit the world alone, with our laptops of course... okay, that's way off into randomnes... so, let me just go back and check on something i need to get done on the job front...

ciao!!

i don't really like driving... i believe it's one of those mindless things like cricket or videogames or beer that can be 'loved' and even worshipped only by guys... so, i was almost glad of my chauffeur chauffeuring me to and from my office when i had my big accident with the bus... i for my part, sat pillion and kept up a steady stream of gyan about how to drive and general life, food, animals, roads, shopping, etc etc though i suspect he heard little, especially when he sometime he looked a little my way and slammed the visor decidedly shut...

but now that the chauffeur has found other distractions, his exams, i am left to fend for myself... i've watched too many 'final destinations' and taken them way too seriously for a healthy life... do you realise how many near fatal accidents could happen on your 'harmless' trip to the office... the lorry infront of you carrying all those washing machines might decide to empty them all on you... that creaking tree in the wet rain might at any time crack open and fall on you... that luggage-auto in front of you with stuff sticking out of everywhere might just nick your jugular and you might die bleeding on the sidewalk... ah!! ghastly things...

ok, on a less crazy note, monsoons are a pain... i know, i know, it's the fad to gush about how pleasant they are, but trust me, i haven't come across any... the potholes, the slippery roads... and going swimming everyday has become a total ordeal... imagine cold, various degrees of it, and changing every few seconds, attacking you from 360 degrees and three dimensions... the water's freezing, the air above it is freezing and to top it all, there is a sadistic wind doing rounds... oh, i almost forgot, and it begins to drizzle... every single day!!!

ok, that's about it... a discontinuous, length of cribby rambling... actually, i'm horribly hungry and waiting for sangee to join me at my breakfast... and thought i'd just scribble a little...

the aftermath....

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thought a month or more has passed, people still manage to embarrass me as they gush about how proud they are of me, how wonderful an achievement it has been for the community/district/gender/state/galli...
"how studious you must be!!"
"how proud your parents are!!"
"how big an achievement it is!!
"you just cleared the mother of all exams!!"

don't get me wrong, i enjoy all the attention... have always done...:) :) but it's hard to answer all those rhetorical questions without seeming immodest... it's an entirely trivial matter that i am a thoroughly immodest person who only likes to pass for a modest one... and do, occasionally... ;) ;)

seriously, i just chucked my job without much thought, as though for a new year resolution in dec 2007 (not 2008, as 'The Hindu' got it wrong), sat down for more studying than i ever managed in my entire life... took up subjects i had never had an inkling or interest about... ruined my body with stress-ulcers... they still haunt me... was stuck in my teeny-weeny home town with no social contact except the occasional milk-man, mail-man or the newspaper-man...

the worst was the taste of luxury i had for the 19 months i worked at Infy... not flush with money ever in my life, the deluge of it for those 19 months spoilt my taste... and as i gave up the job, i had to give up many more things... it was hard... not to have that occasional pizza/burger... no shopping for two years... you get used to it though... like i was used to the Rs.120 bottle of Pantene shampoo but had to resort to the Rs.1.50 sachet... maybe that was why watching 'Pursuit of Happyness' hit so close... too close for comfort...

but now that i'm across, it just seems like a dark, stormy night i had to endure for the first light of morning... which was as certain as... as mornings are... (forgive my flowery language... i just read Thomas Hardy...)

and now that all's happy and gay, i get really, obnoxiously, *$#*@ed if someone suggests anything on the lines of modesty... like some do...
"419??? wow!! that's 418 people better than you are!!"
I am tracking down the man in my spare time from generating reports at the Big Blue...

new wardrobe...

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I am comfortable in my skin and casuals... but with my new-found new job, I will be required to spend most of the time in Sarees and Salwars... I cannot think which is the lesser evil... But I have decided to take the plunge bravely... I decided to go about it my usual way... do a lot of research on the internet, analyse the hell out of it and come to conclusions which i would then duly ignore...

I decided i wanted a role-model to help me with the initiation rights into salwar/saree... the decision still stands unmade... so i watch a lot of television, ransack photos on the internet for indian women celebrities... these

are many... yay! to feminism i don't believe in coz i don't get it... 90% of the famous women wear 10% of the clothes and i duly ignore them... in saree are a bare minimum of the celebrities... 1%??? my knowledge of statistics and numbers has at best been abysmal... i come to the conclusion that the women-politicos are my best bet... i start from the north... mayawati... i quickly strike her off... i just don't have her figure to carry off the salwars...same issue with jayalalithaa... uma bharti??? saffron doesn't go with my brown skin... mamata banerjee's saree is too complex and too white... i finally zero in on the three gandhis - priyanka, indira and sonia... for guidance... i decide priyanka's more contemporary and collect 24 photos of her in various sarees... most look like cotton to my untrained eye... high maintenance and high risk material...

in the evening after i completed a complete report on my ideas for my future attire, i drive past a Garden Vareli Sale... I have driven past that one a million times in the past few months and never batted an eye-lid... but this time, the 'paradigm has shifted'... i just wanted to use that phrase from the old days... nostalgia...  mba days... corporate meeetings... how i'm gonna miss it all...

ok, noses blown, kerchiefs away, i enter the den... women, in all sizes and shapes... knowingly eyeing the array of white, black, colored, shiny, sober, and some downright blinding sarees... i walk along in trepidation, not even daring to touch... shopping's old, familiar territory, but for sarees??? life has been kinder in the past... i finally see an off-white with a brownish border that reminds me of my priyanka-gandhi-collection... i am not sure if the material's right... i venture to ask an old woman who has to be one of the top-5 world experts on all things related to sarees...
"is this material ok???"
she looks at me suspiciously... glares at me coz she thinks i'm making so light of such a sombre activity as saree-shopping... i'm afraid i didn't ease her feelings towards me either... i was in khakhi capris with a white t-shirt and a backpack slung across my shoulders...  not someone you could easily imagine in the eleven yards of an immaculate saree...

but then, all suspense skipped, she takes me under her wing, helps me choose material and color... then her daughter takes over... vetoes everything and starts over again... and i leave proudly with two brand new sarees!!!

last evening, i checked them out... i was hoping for a tall, elegant and graceful look... even one of those traits would've done... instead i look gangly, gawky, uncomfortable, uncoordinated...
that's it... i would've liked to end things on a happier note... maybe sometime else... i gotta go and practise...