FC 89 - A Space Odyssey

Those of us in the know will know that the Karmshila building is a space cruise ship which slammed in to a middling hill in the Mussoorie range nose down. It arrived after a short haul from Prashaasanik constellation, from the 3rd Attempt star system. Owing to a loss of control over Interview Mark II (the thrusters required for calibrated landing), the ship crashed head first in to the hill. One can see even now the exhaust vents on 'top' of the building, the conical glass structures that one assumes are for ventilation, for letting in the inadequate November sun light.

The flight deck was the current toilet of the Officers' Lounge, comprising of both men's and women's washrooms. From this cockpit the ship had been captained by Captain Chip Spik, ably assisted by his first officer Madam Loud Squeak, the navigator Mr. Long John, gunner Ms. Rattle Tattle, medical officer Mr. Palaver Salve, a vague but validated comic creature called Miss Higg's Bosom and other crew members. The pilot sat on the toilet seat, pulled on the toilet roll to release the throttle and flushed the toilet to break hard. It was an easy and intuitive control system. And there was the auto-pilot, Found Attention Cores, the artificially intelligent automaton.

Why did the space cruise ship chart its way to the planet Earth? Was there a mistake in file noting? Were they supposed to have reached File Cabinet planetary system but got sucked up by the In-Tray 101 black hole and ended up in the Red Tape galaxy? One may never know. The sentient beings of the space cruise ship adapted to life on earth. The aliens learnt early on that commerce is the dominant activity of humans. Therefore they mutated in to Mr. Ganges Dabas, Mr. Milky Rum, Miss Lovely Professional Universe Omelette Centre, Mr. Tevern and so on. They brought their strange rituals like morning PT which involved bending otherwise inflexible human bodies into awkward angles early in the winter morning cold, weird alien clothes like formal wear, funny practices like sleeping in the class etc.

The aliens sought to replicate their social structure called the Bureaucratic Hierarchy through a well graded Administrative System, on earth. It was easier said than done. To this end, the aliens formed a special committee called the Universal Potentially Silly Choice committee whose sole mandate was to screen a large number of humans and select from among them creatures with pliable minds, massive egos and a sense of entitlement. The committee received an overwhelming number of applications, all eligible. Therefore, they added more criteria and kept them all secret so that the humans can never decipher the alien thinking. However, few qualifying conditions that leaked out were that the applicants need to be insufferable, intolerant, elitist in nature etc. Even so, the swell of eligible candidates overwhelmed the committee. Therefore, they chose to add further stringent criteria, like a stay in a village for a week, a trek in the Himalayas for a week, cultural programmes every fortnight and so on. The cultural programmes did the trick, may be, they got the required quantity and quality of specimens whom they called the T-O.Ts (Toughened Operational Turnips).

The aliens designed a maze, an obstacle course in which these T-OTs run and must hurry ever forward to achieve an elusive goal. The aliens graded the T-OTs in to PKTP (Potential Keen Type Potato), LKTP (Latent Keen Type Potato), OKTP (Over Keen Type Potato) and various other grades. The T-OTs had all of 100 days to accomplish various tasks like scoring Walnut Brownie points with the instructors and T-OTs of the opposite gender, gather enough gold coins so that they rank higher in the Inter se Potato Seniority etc., while dodging injuries (which can be glossed over by acquiring Med Packs hidden near the Reception Counter) as well as red hot Memos, supposed radio-active pieces of paper that had to be avoided at any cost.

This was the set up of the doomed space cruise ship, its time-space travellers, their experimental subjects the T-OTs, their exercises, their existence whence all of a sudden and out of the blue, like the Chelyabinsk meteor but much more devastating, on this peaceful pale blue dot of a planet earth dropped the Cadre Comet!!!

Cheylabinsk meteor, for illustration purposes.

What happened next? Did the T-OT race survive the comet strike unlike the dinosaurs? Why not find out tomorrow or the day after or any day in the distant future when I am in a mood to write more?

Sweet 16 today but wont last forever, these number of days of the Foundation Course.

On A Cat on Cold Tin Roof

I came across a cat in the academy today. In itself it is nothing to write about. However, it is the first time I have noticed a cat. Dogs, monkeys and langurs make up the fauna of the academy. Stray cows too. A stray cat is a strange sight and hence it merited a mention. It jumped in the cold air from the Happy Valley Hostel, sauntered across the 135 degree wide stairs and leaped on to the Unhappy Plateau Hostel roof. 

Cat on a cold tin roof.

The cat then proceeded to the Gandhi Smriti Library and pawed at books yellowed from the Hippie days, the pages brittle as the bones of the rainbow generation. The curious cat browsed through the books kept at the shelves at the end of the book racks, the books that the batch of OTs had gotten issued, read and returned. There were books on law, public administration, warfare, economics, poverty. The cat's curiosity was aroused, however, by the books at the English fiction section. Camus and Wodehouse were being read. Good for the batch, the voyeuristic cat thought, good for the batch for reading more than PowerPoint presentations of subjects, good of them for consuming more than mere slide handouts. But what is this? 'Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul'?!

The thought of chicken soup made the cat hungry. The cat went to the A.N. Jha Plaza cafe for a cup of coffee with a dash of strawberry syrup and pretty lady OTs for company.

The cat walked in to the Sampoornanand auditorium and listened in on few lectures. Insincere sounding media men and earnest senior civil servants lectured on topics dear to their hearts. The OTs nodded in agreement or in sleep. Few OTs  spoke among themselves. Their thoughts were bubbles rising from vats of boiling tar, the thoughts were tar bubbles, ink black demons and they rose from the mouths of these OTs, floated up a little and then burst, staining the shirts and sticking to hair of fellow OTs, irritating them. The cat decided to shred the demons of distraction to shreds and scratch the presumptuous OTs, scratching away the thick blanket of arrogance with which they cloak themselves. These narcissistic fish think nothing of talking aloud in the class. They love to hear their voice and think everyone does too. 

'Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.' (T.S. Eliot)

Our cat makes short work of these blow fishes, leaps across the valleys, ridge to ridge, peak to peak, in to the distant sun set, in to reluctant night, in to chalked out horizons.

The cat then woke up and found itself in the Happy Valley Ground, it appeared from a winter of discontent. It performed slick moves as an aerobics practitioner, all the while imagining the feline female forms in unitards, actresses escaped from Cats.

Good Cadre, Bad Cadre, ICBMs

The big news of the day was that the cadres have been allocated. The allocations were as per calculations/estimations and were more or less a confirmation of the expected cadre. Are the OTs happy? Are they disappointed?

What is a good cadre or a bad cadre? Do they even exist? One of the Phase 5 seniors with whom we interacted was of the opinion that a 'good' cadre and a not so 'good' service is preferable to a 'good service' and a 'bad' cadre. Another senior officer was of the opinion that AGMUT is a 'good' cadre in that if one falls afoul of the political dispensation at power, one can always move to another state within AGMUT and bide one's time whereas in any other cadre one is stuck with that dispensation.

Then there is the whole aura of the home cadre. One supposedly gains 12 inches in height if one is allotted the home cadre. Or not. The most advantageous thing that I see of being allocated the home cadre is that one could be close to home (duh!), dig one's roots deeper in to the soil.

Good or bad is relative, of course. There are OTs disappointed even though they got 'good' cadres and vice versa.

Truth be told, no one except a privileged few have a clue as to what lay in store for us in any of the cadres. We only hope that we do what we are supposed to do and do it with devotion.

It is time for the ICBMs to be launched. Long range, solid fueled, mobile or submarine launched missiles will be the talk of the day. Inter Cadre Based Marriages (ICBMs), however, do not come in the MIRV (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles). The game would change beyond comprehension if the MIRV were allowed.

Another term to describe the feeding frenzy that will be unleashed is that of CBMs (Cadre Based Marriages or Confidence Building Measures in diplomatese.) One wonders as to what confidences are being shared or built for a change of cadre. There must exist a law to prevent speculation on cadre based marriages.

As for me, I am going back to the state of my youth, a state where my world view evolved, where I fell in and out of love, with it and without it. All good.

On Athletics Meet

Athletics Meet for the 89th Foundation Course, Mussoorie, was an unqualified success. Kudos to the organizing team, a fresh set of faces, and the athletes for a grand show. The event was stretched over two days so as to cover events such as 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800 m, 1500 m, 3000 m, 5000 m races, 4X100 m relay, 4X400 m relay, javelin, discus, shot put, high jump, long jump, tug of war, spoon race, three legged race, wife carrying race, horse race and rat race. At least few of these events are fictitious.

The athletics meet showcased the athletic talent of the batch. There was enthusiastic participation in most events. Some of it was necessitated by the word 'compulsory,' an admonitory, authoritative term that is applied to most rules made by bureaucrats, as I am coming to realize now. However, the participation was also driven by peer pressure or inspiration. The sight of a fellow OT manhandling a shot put or a javelin aroused the competitive instincts in onlooker OTs and compelled them to try their hand at sports, often in many cases for the very first time in their lives. Never mind the 10,000 hours of practise that Malcolm Gladwell talks of, never mind the quarter that needs to be given to one's age. One was content getting coached by videos from Youtube. Another factor was at play too, related to competitive spirit of the OTs. Many of them were competing against themselves more than with others. They wanted to see how far they can throw or how fast they can run, an assessment of their bodies and to satisfy the doubt if their ships would hold fast till the journey completes.

The OTs would never forget the singular sight of a gentleman OT flying towards the finish line, only puffs of dust at intervals of 2 metres on the track to hint that he was in fact running, not flying. If there is any one event that defined the athletics meet, an event that shall be remembered for a long time to come, it was the 100 m race. The performance of a gentleman OT in that race, to be particular. It was a joy to watch the record set by the previous batch being broken by a good margin, it was a joy to watch the athlete, the gentleman OT demonstrate the beauty of the human body. We are all grateful to him for making the athletics meet the most memorable event of the FC. There were few other shining stars, athletes who participated in most other events and bagged medals, including the flying Jharkhandi. Congratulations and thanks are in order to these athletes, sportsmen of first order.

The athletics meet has proven that the civil servants are sound in both mind and body. It is a good sign for the country when its administrators can set new records or at the least challenge themselves and push themselves harder.

The athletics meet is scheduled for this weekend. I look forward to it as it holds a promise of being an entertaining event.

Shri Yogendra Yadav of AAP, Shri U K Sinha Chairman, SEBI, Shri Avinash Chander, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, Director General of DRDO and Smt. Anita Jain, Joint Secretary, NDMA were the guest speakers today. With such star studded guest faculty list, sleep should be the last thing on one's mind.

May be it was the last thing on one's mind. The next thing one knows, one was in the Happy Valley ground, pulling a rope with all one's might. Strange vicissitudes of life I tell you.

So the OTs tugged at ropes, clung to the ground on their shoes with tentative grips, pulled as one might pull a fellow out of a quagmire.

Such physical exertions need to be sufficiently rewarded with good food and we had an unexpectedly good dinner thanks to the reception of the newly wed OTs. A gala dinner in deed. The lady OTs dazzled in their best traditional attire. The gentlement OTs tried their best too. But obviously there was a difference.

On Idiocy of Rules, Lovelorn OTs

22 days for the batteries to run out. What will the Duracell bunny do then?

Autocratic is not a word to be bandied about lightly but few instructions and few strictures now seem to warrant such an action. They walk the thin line between idiocy and absurdity. Long after all the love has vanished, O KS! one only finds faults in one's beloved. The multiplicity of rules which at first appeared charming and idiosyncratic now seem dreadful and suffocating. C'est la vie.

Ours is not to ask why, our is to do PT and die. Though in all honesty, one feels one enjoys PT too much to safely conform to any group norms.

The Honourable Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju addressed a session this forenoon. The session was informative, interactive and interesting. Of all the valuable advice the Honourable Minister had given, only one point seeped in to my sleep addled brain, i.e., his advice to the OTs to marry for the sake of love and not for cadre and that cadre do not matter in these premiere civil services. Sound advice no doubt but who will heed this advice? The gear wheels in the brains of the bright OTs are shifting and turning as we speak, making mental calculations on cadre probability and caste compatibility, arriving at a list of probables on whom love can be bestowed.

Today was a dead line for submission of village reports and book review. If this sounds school-like then you are not far off the mark. Throw in a strict head master type figure, demanding PT master types, eccentric science teacher types AND throw in sexually repressed adolescent OTs, you have it spot on, school all over again.

I have been receiving many suggestions and topics for the blog posts. The Sunny Leone Shrimati Sunny Leone part was inspired by a suggestion catered to by a gentleman OT. It is always a good sign for the blog when the readers are livelier than Google spider bots.

A gentleman OT, mad and sick in love, requested that I convey his feelings on this blog to his lady love, in case she too reads this blog. I had played Cupid earlier, successfully I must add, for the couple in question are celebrating their 4th wedding anniversary today, let me see if I can reach in to my thinking hat and pull out few love bunnies.

The closest approximation to the gentleman OT's situation can be found in the lyrics of the song 'Hello!' by Lionel Richie. The relevant lines are as follows:

I sometimes see you
Pass outside my door
...

...

...

Hello!
Is it me you're looking for?
'cause I wonder where you are
And I wonder what you do
Are you somewhere feeling lonely?
Or is someone loving you?
Tell me how to win your heart
For I haven't got a clue
But let me start by saying I love you.

The video of the song, for your viewing pleasure.

There are benefits of being at the academy. One can run in to a certain illustrious gentleman who pioneered the use of zeros in audits and accounts, a veritable re-inventor of zero in the Indian political math. A series of selfies of OTs with the illustrious gentleman civil servant may follow in time. Watch your Facebook feeds.

The Athletics Meet is to be held over two days, both of them happen to be on the weekend. Why, oh why?!

Look forward to the Rainbow Batch making a mark, breaking few records by the way.

On Matches Made in Heaven and Marriages in the FC

23 days to the finish line.

Suave speakers score in the academy. They score brownie points. They score unbeatable adulation among adolescent OTs. They impress the wizened older OTs with their clever use of idioms. Slick speakers, city slickers, skilled orators.

The 89th Foundation Course is witnessing a unique event, namely the wedding of two fellow Officer Trainees, a handsome gentleman OT and a beautiful lady OT. A happy culmination after a long period of courtship. This heartening event, the marriage of OTs during the Foundation Course, is scheduled for a day in this week. We are all thrilled, excited and happy for the couple. As a part of the Great Indian (Administrative Service) Wedding, the preliminary event Sangeet was celebrated this evening. The event was the exclusive domain of the womenfolk and so I have no information as of now to share.

We all are thankful to the couple for giving us an opportunity to be a part of their extended family, as it were, involving us in inarguably the most pivotal and significant moment of their lives. Thus one sees several OTs standing in for the family in distributing invitation cards to the faculty and to the staff. Such simple sights as these brighten the dreary days with which the FC now seems filled. There is a general air of despair and ennui with the activities of the FC. Extended PT sessions aimed at turning OTs and potato sacks in to lean, mean and clean fighting and marching machine contingents in 3 days flat are the cause for a great degree of irritation. Ek do ek goes the Pied Piper's tune and the OTs march one and all off the cliff of the Polo Grounds and tumble down, down and down in to the valleys of the Dalai Hills.

Talking of the dreary days, special mention needs to be made of the generous lady OTs for celebrating the 'Men's Day' with a well made presentation, eminently lightening up our day. They charmed the socks (stinking, mismatched, torn socks) off the gentlemen OTs with the presentation and the celebration. Thank you lady OTs, your gracious gesture is well appreciated.

Schrodinger's Cat was a Cow and other Absurdities

24 days for the circus to leave the town. Would you shed some tears for the dearly departed?

It is always a good idea to write off when in anger and then trash it. Or put the post up in the probables list. Or dip the post in such caustic humour that it turns in to a pulp of vague references.

Anyway, it was a dreamy day. The sun light was sweet, straight and bright. It fell on the delicate shoulders and intelligent heads of the pretty lady OTs, giving an unintentional brilliant golden highlight to their hair, illuminating them as Madonnas on stained glass panels of medieval cathedrals. Just another day in the academy. The class rooms are neither cosy nor cold, they are just so. However, a filling breakfast of proteins, carbohydrates (hydrocarbons?) and fruit juices puts a generic gentleman OT in to a genial mood for sleep. Lectures on rights based legislation by explorers and pioneers or on macro economic policies by advisers to very important people of India get taught, while a head somewhere drops abrupt, a fresh entrant in to the world of the sitting sleepers.

Sometimes the 89th FC OTs get surprising guest lecturers. Shrimati Karenjit Kaur Vohra, a.k.a Shrimati Sunny Leone, an actress of some talent and an accomplished business person, visited the academy to deliver a lecture on the Ancient Art Forms Of India. A particular art form was referred to more than others. A clairvoyant's image of the artist captured the essence of the art and the artist's engagement with the audience. The guest lecturer asserted that the Ancient India was a place of high refinement in tastes. Cultural norms of the society of Ancient India were of a standard unsurpassed. The guest lecturer derided the current crop of civil servants for their pusillanimity in their imagination. She insisted that glorious, golden, halcyon days of the past can be regained once gain when the civil servants shed their inhibitions and take grand decisions, adopt bold positions on issues and come out on top, in general. The degradation in standards (of what was not specified) were a cause of concern to her. The guest lecturer concluded by exhorting the OTs to exert themselves (on what was not specified).

Shrimati Karenjit Kaur Vohra extolling the glorious days of Ancient India.

A gentle tap on the shoulder usually wakes a day dreaming OT before they embarrass themselves by exerting  in snoring during the classes. 

Apart from the exciting guest lecturers, the batch also receives unsolicited emails from well meaning citizens and/or civil servants. The emails are summaries of news, general impressions and opinions. Fearless fellow OTs however are not very amused by the voluminous mail as it only adds to the increasing sense of an impending showdown, a denouement of the FC, adds to the stress of unresolved issues, unread mails amidst a deluge of emails dreaming of achieving coordination via electronic media.

In other unrelated news, conclusive evidence emerged that the Schrodinger's cat was in fact a cow. Not any other average Joe cow but the very sacred one, a cash cow. The cow was supposed to answer the question 'when does the actual quantum state stop being a linear combination of states, each of which resembles different classical states, and instead begin to have a unique classical description?'

Disclaimer: None of the points stated in this post are true except this disclaimer. There was no such guest lecturer nor was Schrodinger's cat a cow.

The FC exposes the OTs to a range of ideas. One was (re)acquainted with the right to information through lectures by its pioneers, like Smt. Aruna Roy, Shri Nikhil Dey.

[Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation's biography of Smt. Aruna Roy. Accessed on 18th Nov 2014]

An article in the Outlook on Smt. Aruna Roy. 'Daughter of the Dust' by Urvashi Butolia, 16th October 2006. Accessed on 18th Nov 2014.

An article in The Guardian on Shri. Nikhil Dey. 'Transparency in India' by Paige McClanahan, 13th June 2013. Accessed on 18th Nov 2014.]  

India Day, etc.

25 days for the FC to wind up.

A sign of poor writing is the accumulating draft posts. They sit in the literary equivalent of purgatory, the draft box, and await the Judgment Day when I, in my wisdom and learning, shall decide which post shall see the eternal bliss of being published and which shall be consigned to the bin. Except, a lazier sentient being you would not have come across in 4 or even 5 dimensions of this universe. More about the dimensions in a bit.

The India Day celebrations were a blast. Given the severe time constraints, the OTs exceeded expectations by putting up a spectacle of a show. The day started with a parade by the 4 zonal teams from the main gate to the Kalindi lawns. The gentlemen and lady OTs dressed up in regional attires, making a deep impression on the onlooker. At least I was deeply impressed by few OTs. The South zone team stood out for the sheer energy and 'exotic' attires. No wonder then that the award for the best dressed male and female OTs went to the OTs from Karnataka and Kerala teams respectively.

After a hearty breakfast (some overdosed on food, sampling the best of victuals from all 4 zones), the open air auditorium near the Kalindi lawns played the venue for an hour and half of outstanding cultural performances from all 4 zones. A handicrafts exhibition near the parking lot saw textiles and handicrafts from various northern states being displayed for sale. Lady OTs had a field time shopping for fine silk sarees as well as acting as consultants to clueless gentlemen OTs on picking up sarees for the women in their families.

After a breather, the evening cultural events took off, again of fairly good standard despite the time constraints. The cultural performances were followed by a sumptuous dinner, to use but one cliche among many that I feel brimming over in me.

The food was overwhelming, for, one felt compelled to sample all the major cuisines of our country, which, incidentally, is far more varied than the typical 'North Indian, South Indian and Chinese' types you find in almost all restaurants. The bits and pieces add up, tossing the carefully built illusion of weight loss out of the mess windows.

I shall skip the details of the cultural programmes. Instead, please peruse these two albums of photographs of the cultural events held at noon (open air auditorium, Kalindi lawns) and in the evening (Sampoornanand auditorium).

The day after India Day, cultural performance by a team from Uttarakhand and a fashion parade by the OTs rounded off the longish weekend.

I got an opportunity to watch Interstellar (2014), the latest by Christopher Nolan. The movie has made at least a few OTs revisit Physics concepts and it is a good thing. I loved the OST by Hans Zimmer. The story deals with a practicing farmer who also happens to be a former fighter aircraft pilot and an engineer, and his efforts to save earth. Agreed, this is a severely summarized story and does not spoil anything, but it is the closest approximation of the movie's narrative. A strong family ethos is portrayed all through the movie. A robot, TARS, provides the comic (and heroic) relief. 'Interstellar' lingers in one's mind long after one has stepped out of the theater via fire escapes, the regular exit route of most theaters in India. One tries teasing out a meaning from the ambiguous ending, a trademark now of Nolan's storytelling. Our mind is comfortable dealing with a lower number of dimensions and seem not able to wrap itself around more than 3 dimensions. Nolan exploits this fact, which when combined with the linear passage of time, can disorient the movie goer for a while. One can watch Interstellar for the sheer visual, aural and psychological pleasure.

28 days left.

India Day preparations are in full swing. One hopes that the ultimate aim of the India Day, namely cultural sensitization and integration, will be achieved.

The weather has gotten fine of late. The skies are blue, the Gangotri range, 114 km as a very energetic crow flies from Mussoorie, and the Kedarnath peak and the Chaukambha peaks all appear so close that one is tempted to stretch a hand out and scoop up the ice may be, for an ice gola of Himalayan proportions.

29 days to go, get out

29 days for curtains down.

If one gets a sense of a listless busy-ness, one may not be far off the mark. The classes drag on from 9.30 am to 5.00 pm. Did I tell you that the time table was shifted by half an hour to account for the increasing chill and the shortening day light? May be I did. 'The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again.' [Slaughter House-Five (1969), Kurt Vonnegut]

The busy-ness is on account of the fast approaching 'India Day.' The sacrifices that the OTs are making by giving up on PT and academic sessions would in all probability be reflected in the commendable performances on the big day. I too would have liked to sacrifice PT attendance at Culture's altar. Alas! I have two cultural left feet! The strenuous efforts in preparation are already showing in sprained ankles, hoarse throats, various aches at miscellaneous places. The OTs would be kept busy over the remaining weekends too. There is the athletics meet the next weekend. The athletic OTs are hard at practise for displaying their athleticism. There would also be a march past by all the OTs durin gthe inaugural ceremony. Few OTs would be doing the march past on horseback. There is something to say about being on the horseback. For one you are five feet above ground. Then there are all the commanding heights that one occupies.It is a sight to behold.

The mid-sem exam marks were announced last evening. Congratulations to all those who fared well. You deserve objective appreciation. 

30 days for the FC to come to a close.

Once in a while one feels like a rolling stone. Today was one such day. It was stasis. 

Have had an opportunity to interact with very senior IAS officers currently on campus for the 5th phase of their training. Us in the FC have not even entered the phase 1, for comparison. The perspective of the officers after 27-30 years in the service is illustrative of their experience with the administration, the system, their personal aspirations and how it all ties up at almost the end of their careers. 5th Phase. Must be a good place to be in. Wonder what we will be after 30 years.

For no reason except to make people senti, I am starting a countdown to the end of FC. There are only 31 days left for the show to wind down.

Back from Village Visit

We are back from the village visit. For a week we forgot all about Mussoorie, Officer's Mess, the rigmarole of dressing in smart casuals (at least) for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the pain of PT early in the morning, the dread of horse-riding every once or twice a week et cetera. We got a taste of what it means to be a civil servant in India. With the benefit of hindsight one can say it was a bitter sweet taste. As a representative of the government, even if a junior most officer of the senior civil services (All India, Group 'A' etc) one has signed away their privacy. It was akin to being on a display in a zoo. One knew in a muddled sort of way that a career in the civil services involved certain trade-offs. However, did not expect that one's privacy would be the first casualty, followed very closely by one's sense of right/wrong/correct/incorrect/good/bad.

Enough of these harangues already. Sunday mornings are best spent in the quiet of a library, fighting post-breakfast slumber, watching the scant traffic on the Kalindi lawns from a vantage perch. However, retired bureaucrats eat the morning silence for breakfast by a two hour long phone conversation in the reading room, organizing meetings, moving and shaking things over phone. I wonder if civic sense departs once one is out of the civil service.

 

One looks away from fiction to notice pretty girls taking selfies in the pleasant sunny lawns of Kalindi, a middle aged woman dressed in an egg yolk yellow chudidar and a white sweater, for all appearances a cross section of a boiled egg on two legs-a lady Humpty Dumpty, OTs taking relatives, family friends and prospective in-laws on a guided tour of the campus and so on and so forth. Matcmaking, soul-mate finding and cadre marriages are an integral part of the FC. They are traditions coming down from ages and one respects traditions. To the curious outsider or the clueless insider who queried Google in a charming naivete, "Are couples formed at LBSNAA?" (and landed on this mine blog), yes, couples are formed at LBSNAA everyday. It is a chain reaction really. Once the couple formation process starts, no coolants or control rods can stop it. We only watch from miles away, safe in our radioactive shelters, through darkened glasses the flash and the shock waves and the fire storms. Couple formation is assisted in most instances by catalysts in the form of helpful family members, relatives and well-wishers packed in to an Innova/Xylo and disgorged at the Academy or the Ganga Hostel gates. Out pops the nani, dadi, dada, nana, foofa, foofi, bhatija, bhanja, bhanji, sala, sali, chacha, chachi, chechi, cheta, mummy, daddy, uncle and aunty from next door, dad's colleagues from office, his boss' in-laws, the all important match fixing aunty from somewhere in the extended family etc. It is a charming sight.

Persistent queries on the quality of food and non-veg being served at the Academy also land on my blog. I can only say with the utmost conviction that the food served here is A-1, top class, number one quality. Non-veg is generic Chicken preparations (the butter chickens, mughlais and tikka masalas of the world-boring fare) or mutton or fish once in a while. Pork and beef are not served, to my utter disappointment. Fish is a poor stand in for the amazing variety of sea-food one can eat. This high in the mountains, one is satisfied with chicken. For everything else, there is Momo's on Mall Road (Kulri Bazaar).

A host of dignitaries are scheduled for guest lectures this week, staring with a luminary from the Foreign Services. Also, the PT and class hours are shifted by half an hour. So we trudge and trundle to the Polo Grounds at 6 instead of at 5.30 am.

The Man-Eating Rumour

We were resting after a heavy lunch. There were no participatory learning activities scheduled. The Panchayat secretary and two lekhpals entered the room with somber expressions. They requested our permission to provide us with some news. The assembled IAS officers granted permission to impart the news. The panchayat secretary told us that the man-eating tigress terrorizing the area had struck again and close by. It had killed a fakir/baba who lives in a kutir at the edge of the forest. The said killing happened as late as last night. We were aghast. The shocking news sent chills up my spine. I was jesting online only a day ago that the tigress may develop a taste for fat and juicy OTs. What if the tigress did get a whiff of my scent-the scent of a bureaucrat? What if the tigress was active on online social networking platforms? What if it decided to wreak vengeance on me for rejecting her friend request sent from a profile with Katrina’s face as display picture? The conjectures were many.

We decided to visit the site of the killing. For good measure we asked the two UP wala police bhaiyyas to come along with their .303s. The convoy consisted of two motorbikes, a Gypsy and a Scorpio. We could have as well been a travelling circus. The road was a kachha road. It could not have been kachha-er than it was. There were deep ruts from the bullock carts and pot holes 3 feet deep. A two inch layer of fine dust topped the road which was raked up by the tyres and rendered the air a post-apocalyptic yellow/ochre tinge. The silent convoy was an eerie sight. Sugar-cane rose 10 ft on either side, eucalyptus and poplar trees blocked sight of the fields afar. After what seemed like a venture deep in to the uncharted forests, we arrived at a clearing, the said kutir. There were two banyan trees 50 ft tall, a thatched hut open on two sides and a makeshift mandir. There was a farmer, his wife, kids and sugarcane on a bullock cart nearby the kutir. The whole platoon of police, revenue officials and prashikshu adhikaari disposed him to a chatty mood. He informed the gathered government machinery that the baba was safe in a village close by and that there was no tigress attack. The villagers assumed the worst when they saw the contents of the kutir turned upside down and a trail of blood on the floor. Blood on the kutir floor. That there were 15 odd killings by a man-eating tigress in the area only bolstered the villagers' doubts. A drunken brawl and a possible bloody nose led to the wild (but probable) news of an attack by the tigress. Lessons learnt: One needs to verify the information fed by the lower administrative machinery and not take it at face value.

On Man-Eating Tigress, Mindless Bollywood

The village visit was a short bus ride (4 hours) to a place in West UP. The academy did not skimp on academic resources for the village visit. However, even the moderately thick village visit manual was no match to the verbiage awaiting us at the district headquarters. The thick tome of documents was in Hindi, making it doubly dense for me. I had to bring to my mind all the prashaasanik Hindi picked up during Hindi language classes to get through the first two paragraphs of the first page. Around 1000 more pages await.

A curious incident happened at the state border between Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Since we were to visit villages in a district in western UP, we were met at the border by a sub-divisional level officer along with a pilot vehicle. I was flattered and flustered at the same time. Flustery outweighed flattery. We found no reason for the show of strength, however nominal. We were just a bunch of well meaning OTs-  I am sure we meant no harm to anyone and vice-versa. So, all those gun toting batch of half a dozen UP wala police bhaiyyas, in my opinion, were unnecessary.

There was an unobtrusive news crew with a video camera at a way-side stop near the UP-UK border filming what may have been an out of the world sight for them- couple of dozen out of shape OTs alighting from a bus and making haste to find a tree behind which to relieve themselves. Fortunately, to the relief of the OTs, the media and even the dignity of the senior civil services, bathrooms were close by and were duly used.

The police escort was not the only 'culture' shock I have had today. There were the garlands and about 30 odd staff of the district administration gawking at the OTs at the place we were put up. It was all thoroughly embarrassing. I scooted from the garlanding silliness but am not sure if I will have cover for my disappearing acts in the future. I have come to love my anonymity more and more.

The most significant piece of advice given to us by a senior functionary of the district administration was to stick to the premises allotted to us and under no circumstances to stray, particularly at night. There was a man-eating tigress at large. The most recent kill was that of a 10-year old boy.

One should never underestimate the power of the Fates. Only yesterday I was making fun of Shah Rukh Khan running around in make-believe rural settings, mustard fields, berating Bollywood for lack of authenticity, among other things. Today, I was caught unawares and ended up watching half of 'Happy New Year.' The movie was so egregious that I had to leave the theatre at the intermission stage. Looks like Shah Rukh Khan has had the last laugh. I shall watch out for such twists of Fate as best as I can. Lessons learnt. Still, one wonders as to what got in to the heads of the movie makers and the movie watchers. How can a sane person ever conceive, leave alone watch, such a movie? The movie makers need to be tried for human rights violations. The movie 'Happy New Year' is a clear violation of a right to dignity of life.

And so we were given a taste of the things to come. Man-eating tigresses. Mind violating Bollywood stupidity.

On preparation for a village visit

How much law can a human mind take in one day?

The batch is primed for the week long village visit. We will see how it goes. Like trek, the village visit is the defining feature for the Foundation Course. The expectation is that the visit will sensitise the OTs to the lifestyle of Bharat, the face of India that is strangely sanitized in our media and cultural references. Therefore one sees the brilliant blue skies and the mustard fields and Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol or Kareena Kapoor running after each other looking for some good old hay to roll around in, frisky as they were, living out a yuppie's idea of rural life. You will not find a single villager doing any work in the fields in the movies when the hero and the heroine are around on the screen. More power to the Bollywood.

Few OTs are rather pleased with the location of the village they are visiting. Thanks to Google Maps, they learnt the location of the nearest MNC burger chain. The village is not so much a village, according to them, as it is a dispersed mall. You have the synthesized food store chains, you have the branded textile outlets elsewhere, you have the latest smartphone selling outlet as well as a dish TV connection. A collection of hutments blooming on the summer slopes of the wide ranging consciences.

On Wardrobe Malfunctions, High Table Dinners and Science Day Celebrations

It is late in the day. And it was a long day. There will be times in the FC when a day just does not seem to end. The day starts with the PT. Even the most optimistic, rationalizing human being would find it hard to wake up early in the morning and trudge down to Polo grounds in the increasingly biting cold, day after day after day. What may be an unequal compensation for the disruption in sleep, comfort and warmth? A glimpse of the sky shy of dawn and full of stars.

Then there are guest lectures. Thanks to small and very rare mercies like documentaries/short films/clippings being shown in auditoria. If the support staff supports by dimming the ambient lights one can catch up on few much needed winks. Even if one tries sincerely not to sleep in the class, taking such extreme measures as skipping breakfast etc, one can be assured of a visit by the Nidra Devi. 

This day was celebrated as Science Day, commemorating the 105th birth anniversary of Homi J Bhabha. There were couple of lectures on implementation of innovative technologies by government agencies. Contrary to the commonly held belief that the abundant number of government run labs and scientific organizations do negligible work, there are few such government run organizations headed by passionate, knowledgeable, courageous civil servants doing commendable work. However, they may be more an exception than the rule. We still have a large number of autonomous, semi-autonomous, deemed autonomous, wannabe autonomous and other manner of organizations purportedly researching weighty matters in science and technology, guzzling public funds like many fat caterpillars and nothing to show for their years of existence. Instead of a bias for action, the bureaucrats and technocrats of these organizations have a bias for status quo.

 As a part of the Science Day celebrations, a declamation contest was held on whether science can be an equilibrium between development and sustainable existence.

The 3rd Cultural Programme was a qualified success. I must clarify, the qualification is of the highest order. Why do I put everything in bureaucratese? The highlight of the show, in my juvenile opinion, is that of the image of an affable gentleman officer trainee holding the dhoti up by both hands, protecting his modesty with admirable ease. We need more near wardrobe malfunctions to spice up the staid proceedings of the FC once in a while. There were glitches in the programme but considering that the OTs were quite hard pressed for time, even the effort of putting up the show was admirable. I always believe that trying one's best despite adverse conditions shows one's character. 

The evening does not end here though. The highlight of the evening was the lecture by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. He has had a distinguished career as an economist and academician. It was interesting to listen to his experiences in navigating the political and bureaucratic maze in India. The lecture was followed by a formal dinner with the chief guest. It was an awkward sight, the chief guest and others at the high table and couple of hundred OTs gawking at the admittedly handsome alum of IIT D and IIM A. One needs to get used to more such awkward sights I suppose.

On Paucity of News

The paucity of material to write about pinches me oftener than in the past. Has the academy become non-happening at once or am I too steeped in my stupor to not notice the colourful goings on? 

History will judge me kindly. :)

The thing about corruption is that any amount of talk on tackling corruption runs the danger of sounding platitudinous. Nevertheless when very senior functionaries with vast experience in policing, speak, they speak from their distilled experience as anti-corruption crusaders.

The Officer Trainees' lounge in the Karmshila building is a cosy place for the OTs to hang out at in their leisure. The lounge has plush carpeting and comfortable cushions seated in which the OTs can make meetings happen till the cows have all come home, had their dinner, bedded down and started chewing their cud. A snooker table finds frequent players who avoid the comfort of the sofas and have taken one too many cues.

There are pigeon hole lockers, sans locks I believe, close to the snooker table and the music room. The lockers yield surprising amounts of photocopied study material, week schedules, forms to be filled for claiming TA, DA, sizes of winter clothing, etc. They are the very magic hats out of which myriad unlovely hares emerge. I recall the 'Water of India' trick of the magician P.C. Sorcar watched many decades ago. The trick involved a 'lota' being filled with water (miracle worth pooja in its own right) from time to time even after being emptied at the same frequency by the magician. I would not be surprised if one day even a genie were to emerge.

Preparations are on in full swing for the 3rd Cultural Programme. We also have scheduled for tomorrow, a speech by a key functionary in the banking system. 

This bulletin ends here.

On Shattered Hubris

Most of the batch went rafting on the Sunday. Yours truly skipped the adventure sport. How many times can a man bop up and down in a raft over the same rapids?

From second hand reports of rafting, one gathers that the said event was the highlight of the FC so far. I salute the spirit of eternal curiosity and enthusiasm among my fellow OTs who had it in them to raft in the infernal cold waters immediately a day after pounding the tarmac on a 10km run.

Over the past couple of days, one was in an artificial psyched mood over an essay that needed to be written. An important lesson this exercise taught me was to curb my hubris. It was a good lesson. I assumed that I would write not one but three essays of 5k words each. In final analysis, I was lucky I could complete at least one and that with a vast deficit of words required. Thus eating the humble pie, which despite the bitter taste was filling, I slipped the offending inferior literary work under the hypothetical online door with barely minutes left. The adrenaline rush was nice. That however does not explain the binge eating and insane caffeine injection. Or the compulsive movie watching and fiction reading (not fictional!). The movie 'Paprika' (2006) by Satoshi Kon was a revelation. I had watched 'Perfect Blue' (1997) and 'Millennium Actress' (2001) by the same director, earlier. 'Paprika' seemed a distillation of a decade of the finest Manga that Nippon has ever produced as interpreted by a very gifted director. I am a poor reviewer, for, even three days after watching the movie, one is in awe of the movie. This movie review in the grand old lady of news papers, is a good read.

All this gallivanting instead of sincere application of one's mind to an essay was not without its fruits. One learnt two new words-fernweh and sehnsucht. Both are German and each has a profound meaning. For example, fernweh means literally "farsickness" or "longing for far-off places." It may reflect an intense urge for self-development by experiencing the unknown, confronting unforeseen challenges, getting to know unfamiliar cultures, ways of life and behaviours. (Wikipedia).  Sehnsuch means yearning, longing (wistful or melancholy desire). It has been referred to as “life’s longings” or an individual’s search for happiness while coping with the reality of unattainable wishes. (Wikipedia).

On Cross Country Run

A lady officer from the Royal Bhutan Civil Service and a gentleman officer from the Royal Bhutan Forest Service topped the charts in the respective categories for the 10km cross country run. In a testimony to the fitness of the batch, the top 5 positions had very little gap between them.  The run was done and everyone is fitter for the effort. One can burn many calories in a 10km run. One can gain manifold calories too after stuffing one's face with freshly made jalebis, rabri, pakodas, assorted breakfast items. That is precisely what many OTs proceeded to do after the exhausting run.

Who would have thought that the OTs of varied physical fitness would complete running a 10km race at a decent clip?! The best feature of the  Foundation Course is its location, methinks. The hills do force the OTs to challenge themselves with surprising results.

Nimbu paani and glucose water was kept available at regular intervals but were not really needed as the weather was cool and was invigorating instead of the enervating conditions found in the plains. The hills they have eyes and they have hearts too.

On Facebook Likes

Narcissism is a must have attribute for writer pretenders. Compulsive checking of number of 'likes' on Facebook and the page view count on blogger are examples of narcissism. Is narcissism harmless?

The 'likes' on Facebook are value neutral. Say, for example, a morally unscrupulous fellow may 'like' many posts and signify virtual acquiescence or enthusiastic endorsement of the content. How would anyone know if the fellow was 'liking' the post in a mocking manner? Likes dripping with sarcasm, perhaps? None would be wiser. Why does not Facebook give a colour code to the 'like' icon? Like, green if the object of FB like is of barf inducing quality or a jealousy triggering post. Yellow for Coldplay's song. Blue for the warmest colour. Metallic pink for iron willed women with a penchant for girly things. Acid red for all things wrong with social network narcissism. Et cetera.

One tries and tries to increase the 'like' count. Most efforts would be quite futile.

 

On the other hand, there are posts by certain others which garner millions of 'likes' and gain one's eternal enmity.

 

However, one knows that the likes are like turds out in the open. They smell only for a short duration and they disintegrate soon enough. Probably the reason why open defecation is still the most preferred and popular method among OTs on long treks, villagers and other country men.

The inbound traffic for this blog is Facebook in preponderance. However, few innocuous Google queries too land an unsuspecting visitor on this blog. A curious cat wanted to know 'chicken being served in lbsnaa,' another finicky citizen queried as to how lbsnaa is pronounced. The chicken being served in lbsnaa is delicious to say the least. We are also served mutton, fish, paneer, fruits according to season, eggs to order, fresh fruit juices, coffee and tea (the milky varieties), delicious brownies, dosas, idlis, uthappams, indeterminate 'Chinese food' and other edible items. Is the chicken being served halal or jhatka? Is it from a certified, free range, organic, natural farm and sustainably marketed? I am not sure. As for pronunciation of lbsnaa, it is pronounced 'labaasna.' If you can do it with an accent and finesse, you can even pass it off as French.

Enough of navel gazing. There is an act for Prevention of Corruption. There are institutions for tackling corruption. There are punishments for the corrupt public servants. Yet we have not moved an inch towards a corruption free country. 

Civil servants are expected to be acquainted with quantitative methods among other desirable skill sets. And so I meet my two old enemies- stairs and statistics. Hopefully they will no longer be my enemies by the end of this FC.

The cross country run race is scheduled for tomorrow. All the best for the long distance runners.

On Diwali at the academy

Diwali/Deepawali at the academy was a semi-festive occasion. The lunch brought the batch together. There were activities by the Fine Arts Club which kept the artistically inclined occupied for the day. Like rangoli and painting. The participants must be appreciated for their efforts. Here are few examples of their works.

To abstraction

Wishing well

Rangoli prepared by the OTs

A sample of the fireworks show

Cross current of fireworks

The artistically challenged like me spent the day lazing, recovering from the hectic non-reading for the mid term exam.

There were attempts made to decorate parts of the common areas with diyas. They were valiant efforts by few people. However, without almost anal retentive level planning, illumination of wide open spaces is a tough proposition. As a KGPian and that too from RK Hall I can say this with certain level of confidence. One only needs to see illumination from KGP to know what they are missing when trying to do anything with diyas. Yes, Diwali is a legitimate reason to get senti about KGP.

The fireworks show was good while it lasted, which, like most crushes, was for a woefully short duration. However, efforts to procure fireworks and plan on having a resemblance of a fireworks show in itself is reason enough to applaud the efforts.

Lady OTs turned out in dazzling, colourful ethnic wear and were by all accounts brighter than a million diyas put together. Gentlemen OTs, those who made the effort to dress up in ethnic wear, were still not a patch on the ladies. 

What was missing? Sweets! Tonnes of them. I miss the wide assortment of sweets that are de rigueur on Diwali in northern India and the gratuitous stuffing of oneself with as many sweetmeats as possible.

One's family is missed on these festive occasions. For those who could not join their families on account of distances and time and archaic no leave rules of the FC were seen trying their best to be present in the academy mentally too. Their hearts and their minds were with their families, their loved ones.

I found a rather curious happening as regards the ITBP guards posted at various points of the campus. Yesterday, few guards were overheard speculating on their chances of getting a day off on Diwali. One was unpleasantly surprised to find guards of a particular community having been posted for the sentry duties today. The motive may have been pious, but the intention can be misconstrued a thousand ways. Such practices are likely to reinforce expectations and behaviours that are contrary to the ethos of the uniformed forces. This is a dangerous path to go down.

How would you as a civil servant deal with such situations? Would you opt for convenience over hard choices? How would you handle the demands for leave from all quarters on such hot holidays?

On an Omelette Centre

In the end so much ado about a five minute struggle with the papers. Anyway what is done is done. However, one realizes that studying has not only to be done but also manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done. To this end a large number of groups of OTs had hurried conferences on legal, managerial, economic, administrative and political aspects of things they thought were important, on stairs, on lawns, near ramps and other open places. The exam halls and the surrounding areas felt like the premises of a school during annual exams time. Esprit de corps was exhibited in good measure. Everyone passed through the needle's eye, so to speak.

Lovely Omelette Centre is a place for grossly over priced good omelettes. The omelette comes as a fluffy, cheesy confection swaddling two slices of bread. The cheese omelette is the priciest and the clever proprietor places this item after an unhealthy sounding, cheaper alternative, the 'oil omelette.' The 'centre' is a hole in the wall off the main road of the Kulri Bazaar. The omelette was good, over all, but one pays through the nose for what is essentially an omelette. A very good omelette.

We will be celebrating our first Diwali as civil servants. Burst some crackers (safely and within reason) on behalf of us..

On Transect Walk and Edible Rural Research

The transect walk practice was to give us a practical experience of few primary research tools in rural studies in preparation for our village visit scheduled in November. It involves walking along a path and observing and noting various aspects of the surroundings such as the gradient, the soil profile, vegetation, land usage etc. We did a short transect walk from the parking lot to the Director's lawn. Other groups did various other exercises like 'chapati' diagram, aloo parantha comparison, egg bonda bar chart, chicken mughlai analysis etc. I suppose it went well for the other groups.

That is all for today.

On monkeys and on mid terms

A distinguished, decorated and senior ex-police officer visited the academy to deliver a lecture on leadership. The part of the message that resonated with me the most was when the visiting dignitary exhorted the OTs to be anti establishment to an extent possible. Here is a civil servant who even after 37 years working inside the 'system' did not become jaded or turn a cynic. Contrast with the outlooks of civil servants of some vintage (say 10 years) as expressed during the literary festival.

An exam chill has descended on the batch. Conversations among the OTs begin and end with the customary query of how far down the preapration lane one has gone. There are hushed whispers of answers of the extent of one's preparation. There are remedial classes by few kindred souls specializing in hard to understand subjects. The KTPs may be sharpening their knives (pens, same thing) to go in for the kill. Then there are the clueless and the give-up (gibbups) types who for some reason feel they have transcended the levels of exams and other methods fo testing one's intellect/memory power. These gibbups may have the added disadvantage of an unfavourable age on their side. A civil servant, the calculative, manipulative, oily character that he is, would have figured out what needs to be done to survive in this OT eat OT world. Or he may genuinely be clueless.

The OTs take a tumble from time to time when not studying like it is the end of the world. They may drop off a horse while riding or be attacked by a troop of monkeys while minding one's business. These are occupational hazards for civil servants. Especially the monkeys. The langurs when they dash across cobble stone paved open spaces make a thundering noise as if they are arboreal equines, sans the horse shoes. They are powerful creatures that need to be given a wide berth. The monkeys, on the other hand, while only a little lesser disagreeable than the langurs, are nevertheless dangerous if the troop has infant monkeys. All said and done, our simian relatives and neighbours tend to be uncivil towards the civil servants. One finds the incline and the steps up to the academic area from the hostels often strewn with monkey faeces, a singularly unpleasant sight when one is proceeding for breakfast.

If a monkey hits random keys on a laptop keyboard for an infinite amount of time, then it will most surely type up all the rules governing the conduct of civil servants or, better still, a blog chronicling the lives and times of civil servants of the 89th Foundation Course batch. Alas! I do not have an infinite amount of time. A second rehearsal 10k run is scheduled in place of tomorrow's PT. A monkey off one's back with this PT substitution.

On FC midway point, movies and on absolute anonymity

Exams may come and exams may go, but I can not shake off the habit of watching movies and reading fiction and eating more than twice the daily calorie requirement during exam time. I watched an anime, 'Perfect Blue' (1997) by Satoshi Kan (who also directed 'Millennium Actress' (2001)) and the ever green big daddy of cool movies, 'Big Lebowski' (1998) (The Dude abides!) by the Coen brothers. 'Perfect Blue' is the source/inspiration movie for 'Black Swan' (2010). In fact, many think (including me, after I have watched the movie today) that 'Black Swan' draws heavily from 'Perfect Blue.' Among the many critiques and analyses available on the net, I found this to be the best that compares and contrasts both the movies.The caffeine driven binge movie watching then dovetailed with listening to the OSTs from both the movies and then reading reviews from various fora.

Do my batchmates realize that the 89th Foundation course is half done already? The 'mid term' exams cleave the course duration in to two neat halves. How do you feel now that the course is half empty (or half full, as you wish). The defining event of the Foundation Course, the Great Himalayan Trek is over. Other high points that the OTs may look forward to are the village visit and the India Day. I am guessing the cultural programmes due every fortnight will have been a matter of routine by the end of the course and not many may be enthused by the cross country run and the athletic meets. So what do the OTs look forward to, now? Many deadlines for submission of essays on various topics and reviews of books etc loom on the horizon, like the snow peaks of the Gangotri group, Chaukambha, Kedarnath groups visible from the campus. We move ever closer to scaling new heights.

There are two places in the campus from where one can get unhindered views of the snow clad Himalayas- the library reception area and the mess hand wash area. The Gandhi Smriti Library reception area has the added benefit of having an almost panoramic photograph of the Himalayas on the horizon, labelled with the peak names pasted on the wall above the window making for easy identification. The bronze plate with the peaks marked on it, on the Kalindi Guest House lawns is of no use. The peaks do not correspond to the direction in which they are present and trees in front of the viewing area spoil the views. Other areas in Mussoorie from which an unhindered view of the peaks can be had is the Lal Tibba. Even the Nandadevi peak is said to be visible from there. A visit to the Lal Tibba on a clear sky day is due. The Chaukambha peak group is the most impressive among all the peaks visible from the campus.

Half way through. I am guessing the academy will be a much duller place once the OTs from services other than the IAS leave after the Foundation Course comes to a close. We will think about it when the time comes. As of now, I am yet to know most of my batch mates and vice-versa. The situation can get a bit comical at times, like how in a class of just 7 OTs (a language class), a lady OT wanted to know if I were in the same class as her. After about 50 days in the academy and after as many as 10-15 language classes, I suppose it was a rather tragi-comic statement on many things. Namely, that mere physical presence does not get registered. That people are likely to mistake me for a wall paper. If it were the first time that this has happened, I would be wallowing in self-pity. Alas! This is the umpteenth time that people wake up one day to find that I have had been their group/team mate/coworker etc for quite some time. My colleagues from my stint at a private MNC would identify this incident with that of the 'kind stranger' moniker. I only hope this sort of presence whitewash does not happen with my wife to be. Imagine the awkwardness and the embarrassment if the future wifey wakes up one day and wonders aloud and in alarm as to what I am doing in her house. 

This level of anonymity has its advantages, too. I am seeing a bright future for myself in the world of espionage where the ability to pass off as a wall paper is a great talent to possess. A fly on the wall type is just the kind that a wannabe spy has to be proficient being.

I sincerely hope that by the end of the Foundation Course there may not be many fellow OTs who mistake me for a wall paper.

On Fete

The Fete (none found a snappy Hindi noun to clothe the event with) was conducted today. In its simplest form, a fete in the academy is a public function in the Happy Valley ground with around 15 stalls for food and 15 for games. The fete was visited by the faculty and their family members, staff and their family members, select school students (think Waverly etc) and of course the OTs. The proceeds from the sale of coupons were earmarked for a noble cause. The OTs man the stalls and with the help (considerable help) of the competent mess staff, they prepare eatables which are sold to the visitors. The visitors are also enticed to play at the game stalls. The groups of students manning the stalls have various coordinators and assorted characters and roles. However, civil servants being civil servants, the fete was preceded by many rounds of meetings and cluelessness (at least on the part of few groups) of OTs as to what it all meant. All is well that ends well, and so we can declare the fete and the efforts that went behind it commendable and an unqualified success.  On offer at the food stalls were biryanis of different regions, vegetarian options galore, beverages and sweet dishes while at the game stalls one had the option to choose from archery, games of fortune, fun activities like 'jail,' where anyone could be recommended for a stint at the corrective facility or a bail amount of sufficient quantity if posted coud get you exempted from confinement. Overall, the visitor headcount was good and I can speak for my groups that our books are in the black after a day long exertion. The games were engaging, one hopes, to the schoool kids as well as the child like OTs. 

What was the objective of the fete? Was it to raise funds? Was it to give a first hand experience of public interaction and service in a controlled environment of a fete, to the civil servants under training? Was it to give a chance for the public at large to interact with the civil servants in an informal manner? It was amusing and illustrative to observe shy school girls from the Happy Valley area approach one's food counter for a helping of a delicious brownie with ice cream and chocolate sauce and when served less chocolate sauce than what they felt was deserved for the price they paid, demand more in unequivocal terms. And on the other hand, one wonders if the profit motive should be the sole motive for civil servants. If a not snot nosed kid comes up to you and hands over a ticket of a small value and insists that he be servedice cream, what should the civil servants do? We just hand over the ice cream with chocolate sauce without a murmur. I appreciate my group mates for displaying compassion and empathy.

The Officer Trainees take up responsibilities from time to time, like in the library and the mess, for example. It is a compulsorily voluntary job and an OT performs these jobs with similar enthusiasm, I guess.

Today was a weird day. Weather had a major role in the weirdness I believe. The sunset was quite beautiful after a rather sodden day. It has gotten a lot colder too. It is as if the cold has descended from the higher hills and settled at 6000 ft altitude.

The trek had unsettled a lot of schedules. We were accustomed to, however reluctantly, to events such as the PT, sleeping in the class only during the class hours, stuffing oneself to the gills with breakfast etc. Now, one is hard pressed to sleep during the class hours. Gasp! One actually looks forward to trodding the Polo Grounds. Gasp! Gone are the days when if the breakfast weighed less than few kilos one felt one was doing an injustice to the mess. Now one only feels lightweight and finds the temerity to skip meals. Things seem to have changed.

The work load has been steadily increasing. There are papers to write, mid term exams to contend with, Fete to participate and cultural programmes to watch, PT to huff and puff from etc and only limited time.

On Sex in the Snow

The Himalayas 'encourage men to search for something as exalted as the summits he can see.' For some, the ultimate exalted summit is love. Love that can not be found in the plains, at training academies etc is sought to be found at high altitude. From my observations I can only say that love is as elusive at 4000 m as it is at sea level. Then there are searchers like me, content with sights of the craggy peaks, forested hill sides, moon lit valleys and a million stars in the sky. I am a plainsman who grew up in the flat lands of the Godavari river delta. The highest point I had climbed in my childhood was a guava tree. Therefore, it is with wide eyed wonder that I view these glimpses of the Himalayas. I can identify with the Lama from 'Kim' by Rudyard Kipling who when he steps in to the mountain region in his quest for the River of the Arrow says of the mountains, "These are the hills of my delight! Shadows blessed above all other shadows! Here are my eyes opened on this world...out of the hills I came- the high hills and the strong winds. Oh just is the Wheel."

The mountains can evoke many passions in men. And women too. A common theme I used to find odd was the constant recourse to mountain backdrops for picturization of 'love' songs (duets, group songs etc) in Bollywood and Tollywood movies. Many melodious songs have been picturized in the mid-Himalayan region and this phenomenon has been explained to my satisfaction in this scholarly article, "Sex in the Snow: The Himalayas as Erotic Topos in Popular Hindi Cinema" by Philip Lutgendorf of University of Iowa. The plains man hero- hill woman heroine romance has been examined and explained in this article, building up on the mythological and cultural depictions of the hills as areas of liberal (liberated?) sexual atmosphere. Since I am constrained with regard to time, allow me to copy paste the synopsis of the article here.

"Fantasies about life beyond the front range of the Great Himalaya have been a trope in lndian literature since at least the period of the Sanskrit epics. The demi-divine beings believed to inhabit the high country were famously sexually active, and even the human "northern Kurus" (as residents of the region have sometimes been called) were rumored to have long, happy lives unburdened by inhibitions, especially in sexual matters: their women were allegedly free to enjoy multiple extra-marital liasons and polyandrous marriages. Such legends appear to persist in popular 20th century narrative through a much-used trope in Bombay cinema: the depiction of the Himalayas as a realm of uninhibited romantic fantasy. Although this trope is often confined to virtually extra-narrative song sequences that whisk the hero and heroine to Himalayan (or lately European or even New Zealand alpine) locales, a number of highly successful films have given it much more extended treatment by romantically pairing a plains-dwelling hero with a Himalayan heroine. This article briefly traces the history of this scenario and then considers the contextual and cultural implications of its use in two notable films: Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1984) and Mani Ratnam's Dil Se (1998)."

Source: Lutgendorf, Philip (2005) "Sex in the Snow: The Himalayas as Erotic Topos in Popular Hindi Cinema," Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: Vol. 25: No. 1, Article 7.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol25/iss1/7

This article makes for an entertaining read, please do go through it. Apologize for using a classic bait and switch tactic with the use of a titillating title and then sticking a research paper to you. Though one did hear of PDAs in the hills, that is about all I can write here without venturing into tabloid type speculation and outright lies. Let them who search for love find it where they will and those of us unrequited with the mere sight of the exalted peaks may yet summit them someday.

On (in)Human Demands in the Himalayas and Few Photographs

The Gandhi Smriti Library at the academy is a delightful place. There are three fat volumes of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, an absolute must read (or reread in my case) for the weary and tired souls. Or even Mills & Boon series of titles. The variety of subjects on which books are available continues to amaze me. One can find books on topics as esoteric and seemingly far removed from civil service as gardening to thick tomes on a dozen and more varieties of law.

The mountains bring out the best and the worst in man. A common ailment that most people suffer from when they go to the hills is what Bill Aitken in 'Seven Sacred Rivers' describes as the 'altitude's debilitating desire to demand things by right.' Thus, one finds normal, reasonable people turn irrational and demanding, oblivious to the obvious limitations in the higher altitudes. For example, hot water for bathing at remote huts and barely there dhabas. Or, food of sufficient variety to satiate the palate where the best option for nutrition is grass. Or accommodation of a standard not possible in places where the nearest roadhead is 20 km and/or a day's trek away. Of course, it could be that the 'normal, rational' people may not be normal and rational to begin with. Then, they are the worst thing that could have walked the mountains. Loud, boorish, insensitive to local customs and rude, they are anything but civil in trying circumstances. Perhaps I am harsh in my words. My peevishness can be explained by the fact that the endless antyaksharis and the catcalls and whistles and loud conversations scared away the Himalayan birds and animals that I was eager to see and capture on my camera. I was lucky to have heard, even over the man made din, the songs of many birds and spot a few. The guide, a local birdwatcher trained by the Bombay Natural History Society was knowledgeable and readily shared his knowledge of the fauna and flora. Thus one learned of interesting facts like how Ban Oak when yet a plant sports spiny edged leaves so as to discourage animals from feeding on it and as it grows the leaves change shape at the higher reaches while the leaves on the lower branches retain the spines. Like how the 'kutki' plant whose rather bitter roots are supposed to have a diabetes regulating effect besides being useful in treating digestive problems.

Kukti- Used in Ayurvedic medicine for treating digestive problems. Image source: http://www.kraeuter-und-duftpflanzen.de/media/image/c94946e555298340c63123700077d590.jpg

Or the pleasant fragrant leaves of the 'atrasu' plant which when brewed as a herbal tea is supposed to warm the body. There were a variety of edible 'bers' and 'jamuns' which the guide was kind enough to point out to us. We had our fill of these berries. Lesson being, a good guide can negate the ill effects of even the worst kind of antyaksharis. There is a wealth of knowledge among the locals. Traditional knowledge systems have to be tapped in order that they benefit the wider community. There is a scope for resource extraction without killing the mountains and cheating the locals. The current practice is of exploitative and extortionary resource extraction where valuable medicinal herbs and forest produce is being pilfered by unscrupulous elements, often being smuggled across the porous border between Uttarakhand and Nepal and then further in to the end market, China. The guide recounted examples of how 'dalaals' (brokers or middlemen) come visiting their villages to offer monopolistic prices for few herbs which they then sell to their customers in China at inflated prices. The guide suggested that the government can and needs to step in to curb the smuggling as well as regulate the trade in the herbs.

Below are few photos of the birds and animals and plants I came across during the trek. Help in identifying would be most appreciated.

Pika- Cute guy was munching on leaves near a place where we were filling our water bottles from a stream.

Pika- Posed patiently for few minutes before withdrawing shyly.

Indian Tortoise shell

Queen of Spain

What crested bird is this?

Berries

Again getting confused- is it a blue throated warbler or oriental magpie?

My camera was good

Sun lovers.

Size does not matter, attitude does.