Friday, February 16, 2007

The Incredible Weight of Being


Being here that is the premier training institute for police officers of India amidst a hundred people, all apparently the intellectual crème de la crème of the country this year… this batch will soon be replaced by another. The circle of life has a new meaning with the UPSC selection process, yet people refuse to face the truth and hang on to notions of superiority. The real person gives way to fresh blood. Perhaps that is why the country goes nowhere!

Whoa!!! Hold on before you think that this is a subjective vent of anger disguised as an objective analysis of people around me. Where is my sense of humor? I vaguely recall a jocular answer to this query. It was something like – “look at the guy she’s with… She definitely has a sense of humor!” Ok, I’m rubbing it in, but it’s too late to mention that now.

Enough digress; I shall get to the subject related to the incredible weight of being here…in this place…with these people. I have been asked to put on 10 kilos on my frame (for the love of god, I don’t know where I’ll be able to put that). I’m one of the few here who’s on this side of the fence. Where the grass is greener, people have been asked to reduce their weight anything between 1 to 14 kilos… However there are weightier issues. For example the kind of food available and the nature and manner in which it is consumed. Often it is the fear of the body giving way that ensures that we all stuff our faces every time we see food. Hence the efforts at reduction have been met with utter failure. Wherever I see the pants have only become tighter, and they’d like to think those are muscles… Looks like most are broadening their horizons.

Over and above this, there is further burden imposed upon us in the name of attempting to maneuver this girth on the PT field, the gym, the games field, the parade ground, the aerobics class, the yoga mats and the climbing rope. The only ground (quite literally I tell you) where this comes in handy is the WT and the firing range where cushions are handy. At least it doesn’t hurt everywhere and every time the bone contacts with the hard earth. Places I’m hurt are unmentionable, unnamable and unpardonable. Sigh!!

Yet I trudge, plod, dredge and drag myself on each day. Every morning I wake up to the sound of the bugler. He blasts off at an unearthly hour, though of late methinks he has a cold or a sore throat. He begins with a clear sound, short and smart bursts in the right pitch, but within 5 seconds it peters off towards utter flaccidity leaving my mind in splits. We have been instructed not to crack up publicly, audibly or visibly.

As I giggle, chuckle, mumble in my mind, my body stands in the midday sun in this god forsaken piece of Government property, my face and forearms tanned to king‘black’dom come, my scalp dripping each and every gram of salt available in the body along with every bit of the 70% water that I’m made of. One can actually feel the strength ebbing out as the tickled-with-rivulets-of-sweat quadriceps muscles refuse to obey commands of savdhan or vishram. One more thing…I’m learning to incorporate nomenclature like glutes into my regular vocabulary… Man, let’s just call it the ass!

Though the way everything seems to be going, I’ll be lucky to leave this place with my humor intact if not the femur or the humerus. Though the incredible weight of being here may achieve exactly this, I’d rather leave with what I came in… and, maybe a few rope burns!

5 comments:

catmiester said...

woman... ure having a tuff time!
So far the sense of humour remains very much intact though... chuckle! :)

... said...

hey... it's a tough time, alright.. but i hope i'm not selling short on life...

svety said...

it seems like a different world......all we ever get to hear is the pride or the frustration of the selection process...but this is it...
u're there woman...just keep going

Agyan said...

I alwaya had a fascination for militayr life, and it seems a police one would have done. Or maybe as you put it so well, fascinations might seem a whole lot better when they stay that way..

It is quite a gud post...wonder if all the cops go thru so much rigour in formative years, what happens for them to transform themselves into their pot-bellied versions..Haha, may be its all the grease...

... said...

@svety.. i am going on...though now the fatigue has set in...

@abhigyan.. because even with this rigour many choose not to exert at all but just drag their feet.. we have one extreme example here, all of 130 kgs and still stuffing face with jalebis...did i mention not even attempting to run...