The Changing face of Indian Jawan

Being the son of a Paramilitary officer, I used to interact a lot with the Force jawans from early childhood.Some of them even hailing from as far as Nagaland ,J & K and Manipur.

A few who remain embedded in memory are Murmu,Rathnam,Bimal Baba & Dora.
Rathnam was a personal favorite cos he used to tell me lots of tales about his early school days growing up in a non descript Andhra village near Rajamundhry.
Bimal Baba was from Bihar if I am not wrong and he was so depressed with me coming second in my class 2 exams that I had to come up with a first rank in class 3 . :)
He did buy me a fabulous T shirt for that though.

Dora was a tough guy.A commando in fact.He was always ready with spine chilling tales of his training days.One day,I challenged him about the commando skills that he used to boast about.
He looked around.We saw a water pipe going from the ground to a tank way up the third floor of a building. Before I could get any ideas on what he was upto,he had started climbing up and reached the terrace within 5 mins flat.
And no ropes around the waist,mind u !

Life was fun.I could easily relate to people across the country and my language skills increased manifold.But then,in those days people who used to join the force at the lower levels were mostly people who had completed class 10 or at the max,class 12.But then all of them were awesome communicators.None of them could speak good English though.

Last week,I was just walking through our garden when the shift bus dropped in the Sentry who was scheduled to take up the night shift for that day.
A smart fellow in his early 20's. 'Ravindra Kumar' read his name plate.
As I approached the gate,he said ' Good evening Sir' . As I opened the gate ,went out to do something and was about to close it,he said 'Leave it sir.'
Nothing unusual,rt ? .Ya true,but then his language took me aback a little bit.Flawless English.Curiosity got the better of me.
Ravindra Kumar is an MA in English from Patna. Hmmm.

Another day,another Sentry.Mukesh did his graduation from Kerala.I saw a UPSC Civil Services Exam prep guide in the outpost. He was preparing for it during free lonely night hours at the post.Kudos.

The face of Indian jawan is changing.When Young Indians from urban centers may be goin for IT and management jobs looking for oppurtunities to ship abroad,India's future lies safe in the hands of youngsters from the countryside who are not too far behind.We have smart graduates like Ravindra and Mukesh who aim till the very high and can talk in any language coming up from there.English Included.

A Chance Meeting !

It was an unusual monday morning.This happened in April.I had to go to hyderabad to attend a training session.The flight was at 6 and I had managed to convince my roomie the previous night how the autowallahs would fleece me during early hours and why he should in fact drop me at the Airport if he wants to see me alive.(to pay the next month's rent of course)

And so I reached Anna International Airport and went towards the Domestic Departure.There was about an hour to go and hence decided to catch some magazines before joining the queue at check in.
Waitttttt,this girl is sooo familiar to me.Thinking.Vidya's sister?
ooh No,Thats Vineeta ! Naaaaah,she is too short for that.
But then who the hell ???

I cursed my memory cells for not waking up with my body and decided to find out who she was.She was sandwiched between her father and mother standing behind and before her like Black Cats.Wassup ? I was determined to find out though.I bet to myself that I had seen her at least a 100 times.Hold it,but why on earth is everybody else also staring at her.Whatever ,Lemme ask her straight.Here I go.
Only 2 kids were standing between me and her by now.The smaller one pointed to my girl and pinched his sis to say..'look sisie, Renuka Menon,that actress in the film .... 'Ooooops!.

I took a good look at the Bus that dropped me near the Jet Airways aircraft for boarding.Why cant they have some more seats buddy.Hmmmm.Ok,no issues.Went inside.there was a guy standing in front of my seat.I rammed my airbag into him while placing it on the rack.I screamed 'sorrieeee' cos the guy looked a bit like a big shot from behind.
He turned around now to give me the bigest shock of my life.

'It's Ok.No problem ' - Ramalinga Raju,Chairman and CEO of Satyam,the Indian IT company which beat the likes of Infosys,TCS and Wipro to take the crown of 'Fastest to a Billion Dollars'. And hey just for the heck of it,I too work for Satyam.

For about 2 minutes I just couldn't think normal and then saw his seat No: 10A. My boarding pass read- 11A.That means i get to sit just behind him.We both preferred Window seats.Hmmm,It seems all great leaders have similiar mindsets. :)
The flight was usual.Nothing special happened .Raju was reading a book titled 'Engines of Creation' which I later found out to be a seminal molecular nanotechnology book written by Eric Drexler in 1986.
The flight landed in hyderabad and he started walking out of the craft.I was still to recover from the shock of seeing Raju continuously for the past 1 hour less than a meter away from me.
Anyways,i gathered myself and decided not to miss this oppurtunity.I walked fast enough to overtake him and managed to do that towards the end of the aerobridge.

'Hi raju,How are you doing?'....
'Hey,How are you?' came the reply.
Fine,Me too a Satyamite. :)

By then,we had reached the terminal and I had to bid goodbye and walk towrds the exit.

A short but memorable experience !It's not everyday that I get to meet someone who has built a billion dollar company from scratch. I needed to pen the event somewhere,where better than my blog !