Ahh, what pleasure to just recall those
wild wild days! One was young, energetic, full of life, with not a care in the
world, play, play and play all the time; father’s pet and mother’s anxiety,
brother’s play-mate, what pure joy!
To confess, I was a tomboy while I
was young. I used to roam the country side, much to the consternation of my
mother, along with my elder brother and his friends, flying kites, in Avadi where we lived, a
suburb of the then Madras. It was my elder brother, Kumar, who taught me to ride a bicycle. It was pure exhilaration! My mother
had difficult time holding me in her hand to plait my unruly hair, as I would
be jumping up to go, and run along.
Then we shifted to Saidapet in
Chennai. I had a gang of girls with whom I used to cycle the streets of West
CIT Nagar, where we stayed. I played cricket and gilli-danda[1]
with the boys of the neighborhood. Ah, those were the days.
But then an end came to all these – I
was forced to sit in one corner and was made to behave like a girl, at the age
of 12, having come of age! There went my freedom for a toss and all the fun involved in
that freedom.
After a long time, only when I went
to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA),
Mussoorie in 1974 as an IAS (Indian Administrative Service) Probationer, at the
age of 24, the world opened wide once again. There was a whole new world that opened
before me beckoning my inborn wild and adventurous nature.
Crossing the Rothong Pass
I went crazy. I joined Judo, yoga, Transcendental
Meditation,[2]
horse-riding, trekking in the Himalayas, to Gangotri and Rothong Pass, Rock
climbing in Uttarkashi, and so on. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I
excelled in all these outdoor activities. Would it be the DNA catching up or
the inborn nature showing up or both?
Judo demo in the Academy - me in action (pl. note the audience enjoying it all - a novelty at that time)
The saga continued when in Bangalore
I joined Nature Admire and started to go on tracking with them. Remember fondly,
sleeping under the sky on Tippu’s Fort, Srirangapatnam, near Mysore, after a
day of tiring but exhilarating trek. Went on for rock-climbing near Ramanagaram,
near Bangalore and many treks including Anekal and Tumkur areas.
With co-participants at the Basic course in Mountaineering
It almost culminated in going to
Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling, in 1985 to do the Basic course
in Mountaineering. I ended up getting an ‘A’ grading there. We climbed in the Kangchenjunga
range of mountains up to 18,000 feet.
with Bachendri Pal
At the Mountaineering Institute met the famous Tenzing Norgay, who was
still alive and the first woman to conquer Mount Everest, Bachendri Pal. Was I thrilled? Oh yes, as if I had climbed Mt. Everest myself!
Leading the Dasara procession along with the Police Commissioner and the Mayor, Mysore
In my Mysore posting as the
Divisional Commissioner in 1992, the bonus came in the form of Police Academy, which
had a Horse Riding School. My son Shawn was quite young then, may be 11 years
old. We both were regulars early in the mornings for horse riding. That was great
fun, catching up with Mussoorie days.
By 1983, I had started with Jane Fonda's workout and had a whale of a time. I had become conscious of the right food to eat and the right time to eat and the benefit in building up muscles, which are like power houses, burning the food you eat even when you are asleep.
My son started on body
building in a local gym near BTM where we stay when he was around 17 years old. This time I followed
him and went on to do Resistant training with weights in the gym. Ever since it
is I who am following him, literally, either in week-end phone calls or trips
to visit him in US!
The day I retired, I bid goodbye to
weight lifting. May be a wrong move, I don’t know. But the club in my colony had just started a swimming pool and the first to jump in was me! Oh, how I loved swimming!
I would spend hours perfecting my strokes by watching videos of Michael Phelps and
his every move. Hmm, those were the days.
As I turned 67 this year, I pulled my
sciatic nerve and had to slacken my pace. Still recovering from that pain and
muscle degeneration. It is nice to recall the yester-years that have gone by full of activities. It sort of boosts you up! I really need to pull myself by the boot-straps, as they say,
and recover and be on my way to higher grounds. Nothing exhilarating like a
good physical exercise to energize the body, relieve the mind of any tension and boost up one’s energy
levels.
How can I not thank God for all the
opportunities He keeps throwing in front of me and for the guts and interest He has given me to grab and engage in all these activities as and when I came across them.
God be praised and all glory to Him alone.
[1] A
game with two sticks, one small and one big. The small stick has pointed ends
and with the big stick, one strikes the edge of the small stick so that it
flips in the air. Then the player strikes the airborne small stick with the big
stick, to send it flying, just as a cricket ball would.
[2]
Both Yoga and Transcendental Meditation I gave up once I became a serious
Christian, in 1993, as these are not biblical.
3. Unfortunately I lost my elder brother in an accident in 1972 when he was very young
.
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