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!!