Just another bus ride...

the buses seem unusually crowded these days... more than once, i've had to stand all the way home... or office.... some days ago, that was the case again... since i wouldn't bet a nickel on my strength, i decided to sit down somewhere... anywhere... 

the engine's quite a spot to sit, if you're desperate... i walked to the driver, and found some guy already requesting permission

"Can i sit there?", he pleaded, pointing to the engine...

"NO!, you can sit on those bars", the driver replied in compromise...
i went next... 
"Can i sit there?" i piped...
"No!", he replied, appalled at the intelligence of the IT community...(for asking the same question...)
"why not??", i was trying to save face here...
"you'll dent the engine cover..." he said, pointing at the hard alloy that looked strong enough to stand a nuclear explosion...
"seriously???", i said, pointing to myself... "i weigh all of 40 kilos..." 
"okay, okay", he gave in...


sometimes, it's not that war-like... the drivers are more 'accomodating'...
there was the recent friendly Mani (as in mani, mani, mani, mani, manigondu daara... as he himself explained..) 
he was full of advice and questions...
"you should leave your tensions at work madam... go home and do full maja..." 
"you should hire a maid and cook madam"
"how much is your pay madam?" 

and sometimes exchange information...
like what i'd had for breakfast...
"one vada", i lied... (i'd had no breakfast...and didn't want him telling me about the +ve effects of a heavy breakfast) 
"oh, i had 4 idlies and one vada" he let me know... (that constitutes my nutrition for an entire day!)

and there was advice to get married... to hire a cook and a maid... to go to big restaurants to eat... somewhere, along the way he told me i needed to get fat too...

it was one of my most memorable 40mins to infy... the traffic jams didnt bother me that much that day... and the unsolicited advice that didnt cease despite my pretending to concentrate on the confusing 'hundred years of solitude', wasn't too bad either... i might even resort to implementing one or two...

what amazed me was the brazen behavior of the driver.. he'd obviously never been to seminars imparting ASHI(Anti Sexual Harassment Initiative) knowledge... and certainly not been to one of those 'sensitivity' seminars eithers... all those questions about pay, health, food, marriage... doesnt he know they're taboo...! 

surprisingly though, i wasn't offended... and in the days that followed, as i sat near someone with the latest ipod plugged into his/her ears, or read a book/newspaper, or just quietly dozed with eyes close and mouth open, i missed the Mani's chatter ....

slice of life - 1

i've found my way back to my blog... thanks to google that syncs your life better than you ever can... the last blog i wrote was 19 months ago... so here goes..

once upon a time in npa, we had some teaching faculty who insisted that we list out three of our biggest fears and give it confidentially to her... i'm sure she'd picked it up from some management guru guy.. surprisingly, or maybe not so, a lot of us couldn't fill up the tiny list... to make things up, i think i wrote about cockroaches and lizards... now, that's a lie, if you've ever had the fortune/misfortune of crossing my path... i once braved a water snake in a well/pit, waded in knee deep water, to get some brown murky water, which was later used to make maggi and chai... now, don't you dare go eewww!

anyway, for a while i thought my secret fear was to live alone... i've been in hostels and residential schools and PGs (paying guests) and other similar places for too long to be considered healthy... and the first couple of months in agartala freaked the bejesus out of me! i realized it when my only batchmate moved to the neighbouring district and i missed him terribly, though i hadn't exchanged more than twenty words with him in my year at the academy... but now, like all new things, i've gotten used to it... we all have coping mechanisms...

i have realised that your driver is a very good psychiatrist... why? he's too busy driving to pay any attention to any details you might inadvertently blurt out... when i rant in my chequered bangla/hindi/english, the poor guy has no clue what the context is, or who's the latest moron to have me all worked up... like recently, it was a senior who had me convinced that in the govt, if you put in enough years of service, a dunce could get the top post if he hangs on long enough... anyway, coming back to the indispensibility of drivers, they remember where you ought to be going... since all roads look straight and black to me, i can never remember where i'm coming from or where i ought to be going... though things get horribly mixed up sometimes... i today told him i wanted to go to the 'flex printing' place... i needed a huge map done.. he hears me selectively...so, he decided that i wanted to check on 'posts' and showed me around town for an hour before i realized that the town is not big enough to take me an hour to go to any place... i rechecked with him!

"where's the flex place?"
"madam, aaj saturday hai, to traffic kam hai... aur dukan bhi band hai..." he replied in some strange context i didn't fathom..
"to mera flex printing shop bhi band hai??"
"oh, accha aapko wahan jana hai, madam... mujhe laga apko traffic post dekhna hai!" he exclaimed

then, after that eureka moment, he drove for half an hour and brought me to a car/bike jazzing up/altering showroom and parked confidently in a No Parking zone... he almost meant 'voila!!'

"yeh kya hai???" i wondered aloud... coz i didn't think the govt would sponsor any graphic prints of flames and fires for my pristing white govt gypsy...
"aapna toh bataya!" he seemed frustrated that i kept changing my mind from "posts" to "flags" to "flex" to

i had no idea what he thought i'd said, but at this point, i figured we'd reached one of our impasse... where each is no condition to understand the other...his mother tongue is 'Kokborok', a tribal tongue, and mine, kannada... we reach across borders and have compromised... i speak hindi... he sticks to bangla... so, at the best of times, we get 30% of what the other is saying...

 anyway, it's all in a day's life, like in RD... so, i forgot the whole issue, got some vehicles towed, some challaned and just came back... after all, you cannot have everything in life!!!

NPA - Rock Week

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though i've been 'quick-updating' about our Rock-Week, it was such an awesome experience it needs to be penned down a bit more concretely somewhere... meaning here...

our initial reaction to the Rock Week was quite good... we were elated about the seeming absence of so many activities - no PT, no Drill, and nothing in the Yellow Time Tables about our evenings... and of course there was some kind of Rock Climbing... it couldn't be all that bad!

the first day started off with a drizzle... the rains, which had never even peeked a look at NPA until now, decided to make an appearance on the first day we had to climb 80-90 degree rocks... not surprising at all!! I'm sure the AD(OD) had something to do with it!! Anyway, the poor ITBP(Indo-Tibetan Border Police) guy had such trouble climbing up the Rhino(all the rocks are named, mostly based on their places in the extinction list) for the demo, we prayed ardently that the whole thing be called off till the sun was shining, the rocks were dry and maybe we could do this the next month...! No such luck! we were slowly introduced to the rocks, doing the smallest 20-30 feet ones on the first day...
we scraped knees on the Balanced Rock Climbing... chimney was a mysterious affair where we slipped helplessly, unable to get a grip on the rocks already worn smooth by the hundreds of amateur IPS feet having slipped there in the previous years... rappelling down was much smoother, only a few bruises...falling is always faster and easier than the climb up... i'm only talking about rock climbing... ;-)   though HST put up a good show by spending a few minutes upside down, maybe preparing for a next question/doubt/ observation/comment... sadly, we missed the photo opportunity but it was a great lesson for all of us and after the initial mistake, we always had our handycams and cameras trained on him at full zoom for every climb and fall.... :-P

the next day was dedicated to bigger rocks... Tiger Hill, my favorite was conquered... it involves climbing up through a chimney, then climbing another rock using the knotted rope... two jumps over steep, narrow but deep chimneys in quick succession (when i'm sure i've seen it in my nightmares a million times) and finally you're on the highest point in the whole of NPA! you get to sit huddled up with the other 'waiters' for your turn... i've realized that the worst part is not the climb, nor the jump... it's the moments of wait when you watch your predecessor go down... usually it follows a similar pattern... ITBP guy telling him it's gonna be ok... there's the belay for safety... the bow-line is almost correctly done... the ropes are strong, the carabiner is going to hold... finally frustrated he yells, "even if you jump without anything, you're barely going to break a few bones!! that  is, unless you land precisely on your neck!" and pushes you down without much ado!
ok, i got a bit dramatic there... actually, most of the time they were extremely encouraging and polite, except when i came back for the 7th time on Tiger Hill to jump and they were really sick of bow-lining me!!
what else? there was the stomach rappelling where you go facing down, the worst of them all!! i'm skipping the description coz it still gives me the queasies to even think of it, even now! there was the piggy-back... a practice to rescue people if need be... i was in great demand as the 'casualty' but thankfully my turn never came, and i am not complaining!! :-P

third day, we had building climbing... harder than it looked... we had to climb windows, pipes and walls and ledges to get to the top of a two-storey building... again, the walls were too slippery coz of all of us polishing it to shiny smoothness and a lot of colorful bruises and contusions were shown off in the dressing rooms yesterday as proof of that... there was the wall-rock climbing, where i still can't climb the overhang... but the jumping off of 50 feet ledge screaming commandooooooo is such fun, i decided to go back for a second helping...!

fourth day, we were taken out to Mt. Opera for some new, hard rocks! it was tougher than our petite rock-garden but i guess we've finally toughened up and conquered our fears, or just resigned ourselves to our fates which requires us to needlessly climb and jump off of things... like i was frustratedly whining to one squad mate who was pretending to sleep, i never even climbed the stairs at Infy, but waited for 10 mins for the lift to take me to the third floor office! and now, i use knotted ropes, windows and pipes to do the same!!! Irony must be god's favorite sense of humor...

fifth day was dedicated to learn 'anchoring' and demo practice... my squad had volunteered me for the sacrifice/Demo... though they claimed i have the minimum bruises, i have a nagging doubt they might have ulterior motives! i got to do the Demo on Tiger Hill (just to get to position requires me to do chimney, knotted climbing and jumping over valleys...) and by the time i realized what a short straw i'd drawn, nobody was willing to swap!! I practiced 5 times... each time getting worse... the last time i jumped i slammed against the rock in the first jump, turned around 360 degree, before finally descending for the second and third jumps... Vicky sir (ITBP) warned me I'd have to jump without the safety or the harness if I came back a next time! So, thus confidently prepared, i waited my turn... we had the Demo at 7:30pm... i am unsure if i am allowed to swear as fluently as i'd like to at the person who decided that! he apparently couldn't have ever foreseen that it would be pitch dark at that time...! though there were lights towards the stage side, climbing on to the position was horrid! but as four of us (seat rappellers and side-rappellers) waiting our turn, it was a good moment... we watched the Hyderabad city lit up in yellow lights... Sobah educated us about the Orion and how they found their West, to pray, from it... Dorji offered to jump down and get a camera to capture the whole thing and had to be dissuaded... what do you scare a person with when he himself offers to jump down without the safety ropes! Imported Troubles!!! the music from down below, the stars above and not too bad a company... that was a good moment... :-)

and then, the demo started... people were climbing, chimneying, rappelling... finally it was my turn... i wore my gloves, checked my seat harness, the thumb knot on the bow line seemed  a little loose... i walked backwards, got into position, and jumped!... 'crunch'... i knew i'd landed wrong... the left ankle had taken too much weight... anyway, the second jump is easy... and third jump... i was on the ground, someone was untying my bow line... i raised my hands that i'd successfully landed... and it was over!!!

Another exciting, memorable week at NPA...!!

Good times at NPA - a month later

have you noticed that when you have the time to write blogs, you run out of material (if you have any in the first place) and when you have tons of things to write about, you are so out of time! pretty darned philosophical, huh???

it's saturday evening, my most favoritest part of the week... the pains and aches from the killer Cycle Cross Country(just a measly 25km) are over and there is the full sunday ahead waiting to be unpacked!!! (not that i do much more than a bit of sleeping, a little tanning(side effect of swimming), a movie in our Audi, drinking lots of tea (there's a trophy at the end of the Course for the max cups of tea drunk), etc...


it's been a long time since my previous blog, and even people who didn't know i had a blog were wondering about why i wasn't writing... so, i've decided to oblige all my readers... (you better leave a comment this time, you bloody free-riders!!! you know how much i thrive on attention!!)

stuff has definitely happened since the last time... i wrote mostly about the pains & aches in the first few ones and though they haven't entirely gone away, i've finally made my peace with them and learnt to live along with them... it's like getting used to a nagging wife... did i mention about the hair-cut i had... my tresses have finally been chopped off... the reactions were quite varied... some said i finally looked like a cop... some compared me to a 14-year old boy... but I'm happy to be light-headed... it was just too much maintenance, making a bun a million times a day, unable to wash it coz of again, TIME... and one day after swimming, when i thought the coconut fibre felt smoother than my hair, i walked in to a saloon (we were looking for a restaurant, got lost...) and gave a free-hand to the hair-dresser... and the rest is history! actually no...though the DIs, ADIs were initially happy to finally stop complaining about my hair sticking out in all directions, now they're insisting i get a trimming with the guys every week...! talk of greediness!!

we've interesting indoor subjects... though we're hard put to stay awake in them... one of my favorite's the Forensic Medicine... taught by Dr. C and his skeleton (who we suspect is a remnant of 60RR)... then there's the Forensic Sciences which is also quite interesting... fingerprinting, footprints, photographs, sketches and all that... IPC is an interactive class I am awake most of the time though remembering the sections is still beyond my limited cerebral capacities... Indian Evidence is something most of us (70% on a good day) sleep through... 'Police in Modern India' is another awakening class... though sir digresses a lot, it's those anecdotes that i find more enlightening and entertaining... there's the computer classes in which most of the OTs practice Word, Excel and Access in Facebook, gmail and chatting... but Rajiv nearly got us all into trouble when he messaged a 'Good afternoon Sir!' to our Drill Instructor from the class!!

my streak of punishments continues... out of the largesse of my heart(a very rare occasion) i gave a lift to Dheeraj on my museum-piece of a cycle... our neighbouring DI came after me and made sure i ran a few extra rounds to make up for the over-abundance of mercy!
"No doubles here!", he roared as if i'd nearly broken the cycle with my over-weight!!

the Republic Day was the other big thing... we had a grand parade... dressed in ceremonially crisp starched new khakhis and peak caps and cross-belts, we put on a spectacular show in celebration of an event we'd last celebrated in our schools... I was even the platoon commander and strutted properly and commanded loudly... finally my walk is now considered 'good drill' and not 'arrogant overbearing'!!

that's long enough... to sustain any curiosities about my existence... for a few weeks at least!

Squad, Line Tod!!

;-)

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Life’s getting more hectic… as if that were possible… the PT rounds have been increased to 10… but as if running 4km in the chilling darkness of winter weren't bad enough, we have an over-enthusiastic instructor who’s added a sprinting round after the END of 10 rounds… and then, with us wheezing for breath, we do a few stretches… ‘only 20 push-ups!!!’ he warns us… as if we’d exceed the limit and do a 50 if we went unchecked… and then 20 sit-ups… and then the whole regimen again…


I hadn’t been corporeally punished for a long, long time… the nightmares from the boarding school are being relived here… and somehow, I manage to get into more trouble than the whole squad put together… like the time my t-shirt was poking out of my drill dress and I had to jump down for a few good push-ups in the dusty PT ground, drill dress, boot ankle and all… other excuses are equally trivial… I ran through the parade ground instead of around it… carried tissue instead of kerchiefs… 2 minutes late… borrowed a pen without asking permission… joined the squad without asking… the list is growing…and by the end of 10 months there'll be an inclusive list of all the things that can be punished… I could probably write the NPA Penal Code… just so the juniors are aware of the punishments when they’re walking unaware into the stealthy traps laid by the crafty team of ADIs, DIs, CDI, ADs, ODs, CDs, BDs, etc…

Indoor classes offer the only respite… for most of us it's the most peaceful sleep, though we're sometimes unlucky to be called out by some overly keen-sighted faculty… some are better at the art than others…they manage to sleep before the faculty opens his mouth, wake up for the break for the munchies and coke and tea and promptly continue the sleep as if uninterrupted... Location matters in the practice of the art... the last benches are definitely helpful but even the class-rooms matter...and after studying practically the various sleeping habits, I have come to the following conclusion…

1. Kerala Audi is better than the DJC. Though brightly lit and scantily filled, it offers better, reclining chairs and ample leg space. This is like Kingfisher First as compared to the cattle budget class of DJC...The tables in front provide support to the head while also providing cover from the opponents(faculty).

2. The Mic in front of each one of us provides adequate entertainment by interested people singing, menacingly whispering and snoring into it while making it hard for anybody to recognizing even the direction of the source.

3. The faculty is blinded by the glaring lights all over the place.

But the biggest hurdle these days is neither the Marathon runs in the morning nor the Comatose Classes… Everybody hates the Arms Drill, the girls especially… it involves a lot of juggling with the very heavy SLRs… if one had to throw dangerous, explosive weapons around, why couldn’t we use the revolvers or the pistols???? My right arms feels like it’s gonna split like seam-split at the elbows… and there are bruises from the muzzle, the foresight-guard, from hitting the magazine( we have to hit the magazine hard enough for it to break... i'm not sure if my magazine is gonna break, but my palm certainly is bruised beyond recognition)

Another unique observation: Nowhere else, maybe except in the middle of World War II, did bandages, crutches and limping people, with arms, legs and heads missing (okay I got carried away a little… the missing limbs are purely out of my fancy though i'm not taking back the missing heads)…. The point is, they don’t attract attention! Everybody has them…!! or is gonna have them!! limping is a way of life!

Since the last blog, the big things missed:
there was a cultural function... i was dragged into swaying unrhythmatically in a group dance while our Boss sang a kannada song... i'm not sure i wouldn't have preferred the loaded SLRs instead of facing the audience... the function was followed up with a dancing frenzy! till 1:30... to usher in the New Year... we were told that we were exempt from PT! and soon after we whooped and hopped to show our pleasure, our Boss informed us that it would only be postponed... so the first thing we did on new year was to go on a 5km run at 6am!!! If that's any indication of the year to come, it's gonna be one-looooong-year!!

then, there was the 12km route march… us decked in Jungle gear, with SLRs on our shoulders, and backpacks… marching through the heat of Hyderabad… for no reason at all… people stared at us out of doorways, in their cars, in the middle of games… I wonder what they were thinking…

That’s about it, I suppose… until the next blue moon when I get some time to blog…

Signing off!!!