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!!

;-)

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)...;-)