Bamori (Field Firing Ranges), Dhana (MP)

just when i was wondering "what next?" in the series of futile attempts to make my life a little less comfortable, came this - the TD to Dhana....

one morning, i was sitting in the office of the trusted one (an office i used to hold off and on, but of late - am barred from holding : to the point when it is left vacant when i am the only one around who can hold it - rather than letting me !!) hehe :-) i have begun enjoying this now ... initially, yes, it used to "disturb" me (if that's the right word) - but now i enjoy people rolling around in futility trying to "get after benji" but failing miserably, and worse, running out of time to get after him!!! hahahhaha... so anyways, the point here is the latest attempt in the string - i was sitting there, i the guy informs me that "benji, you are to take the team to the firing ranges over there and make them practice for a competition which is almost 20 days away". at first, that sounded like a tactic to keep me away from my wife of 3 months - but then i realised (actually was made to realise) that that's not going to work; coz there really isn't a reason to enable anyone desirous of doing that to be able to do it... so it was basically going to be 20 days in a place which is kind of, lets say, cut off from civilization. the second part was, that yes, militarily and professionally, it was a sort-of "testing ground" - where the odds were against me. we had really old equipment and ill-trained men. so that made the odds of us losing the game pretty high - and therefore the odds of "benjamin being proved a bad leader" equally high. so that had to be dealt with!

4 nov 07 - at around 2220h : we were sitting at the MCO's office at the railway stn, hoping against hope (diwali season) that our W/L 1,2 tickets get confirmed - which, they didn't... and as luck (naah not luck) would have it, the TTE didn't oblige us with 2 seats (diwali season seats go expesive, and fauji's don't pay well)... so we came back with plans of leaving with manjeet and his fauji gun-toting guys the next day...

5 nov 07 - manjeet and the gun-toters with us, we got on board the 3-hour delayed train, which was to pull into saugor (british for sagar) at around 2000h. so we did wat we, as good, well trained faujis do best - we slept-off !! lucky for me, niki was there - so she did the honours of waking us all up, just in the nick of time.... friend manjeet, in true young captain style took charge of the situation (after the charge had already got off the train and was waiting for him on the platorm) an got things going.

late that night, the two of us reached the unit guest room (no names please) and were surprised to see the lovely 2 room set with a TV (so the TV my boys brought along could stay with them in the barrack) - and tiled bathroom (thats really not a good thing if you're a pig).... cable TV was real poor - natGeo in hindi (the translation ensures that you keep translating back to english and don't really watch anything on the screen). anyways, we had our dinner (ration rice) and pushed off to sleep.

got up early next morning, set up the DishTV (aaahhh) and got going to the ranges at around 8. kept firing till about 11, when i got a call from the room saying i have to get back to gwalior for 3 days !! wow !! that has to be the most innovative plan in the "screw benji" routine (henceforth referred to as SBR)... i called the now-trusted-guy and confirmed. yes, benji you have to fall back and meet the GE for the pricing of the blah blah project (of which, incidentally, even mr ratan tata would feel weak in the knees if he were to see the price appendix!!).. that really got me angry. after some advice and introspection, i realised the SBR was pretty fool-proof and i'd have to go.. so i booked the tickets and asked bagchi (very important charater - readers, please remember this guys name) to move into the adjoining room and be the big-burly-guy-whos-our-friend-in-the-next-room for 3 days... he obliged.

i reached the promised land on 11th - to find that the project was waiting for me - and the GE was to be met. i called the GE and learnt that the bloke is on leave !! wow the SBR had failed (sort of) - so i called the Oi/c SBR (OS for short(er)) and he ammended the work-plan, basically enabling me to fall back to my status quo in a day's time.. which i did.

the next 10 days were spent doing exactly this - wake up early, drink 2 litres of water, bath, change, move to range, fire, come back, lunch, sleep, get up, go to the shopping complex, drink tea, see which movie is playing, don't watch it, come back, sit around and chat, dinner, chat some more, TV, sleep.. with the exception on 2 days when we did watch the movie in the open air theatre...

the final competition days were the 20th and 21st. well on the 20th nothing much except some piddly smart acts on the part of the conducting people. we were 2nd, after the NE guys (which, for some reason, made me happy - coz i knew that at least 50% of them had God on their side; as opposed to us, where only 0.5% did)... the real action was to be seen on the 21st.. this deserves a change of paragraph...

21st nov 07 - final competition day. we reached the place at 0700h (bagchi and i, together; as almost always)... we saw the conducting guys upto their usual smartacts (the main conductor - who we renamed "bath-fitting" (BF), coz he was a jaguar (jaquar) was running around yelling, as usual - covering up one of his smart ones)... their boss had arrived and was generally overseeing things. so the 2 of us bagchi and me, had our tea and rice; and went over to the stands. we noticed a couple of surdi guys in combats on the range after the umpires had come back. so we protested and re-checked the targets. i got "publicly humiliated" by the BF. says "don't cast aspertions (is that spelled right?) on us" hehe :) wait and watch... whatever!!

then the guys didn't allow the assam boys to fire !! now that was BAD - those poor chaps didn't deserve that - and to top it all - the boss of them was a weakling who was scared of dont-know-what.. anyways their real boss (surdy guy) came and protested, saying that he wished to stage a complete walk out. anyways, that worked.. the firing ended. and we were declared 4th. bagchi's guys came in a respectable 3rd - he got his cheap trill, called his CO and got 1000 bux for his team !! wow !!

little later, my 2ic (of the team, mooch for short) comes in and gets us the scandoulously good news that we're actually 2nd... wow !! then i walk up to BF and sort it out. the aspersions were right !! they gave us the medals.... we came back happy..

that done, next day, bagchi hesistantly left for gwalior and we packed up and returned at night. end of story... good time we had... and the SBR failed miserably !!! ya ya !!!