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

-

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!!

;-)

-

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!!!

The Beginning...

-

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....

-

-

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...

-

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...

-

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

-

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'...

-

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!!