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...!!