'Aki'lles

The Crew: The brave men of the FYI squadron whose names shall be engraved forever in the annals of history. These include -
Colonel Blade Mama, Major Uncle Sid, Major MVP Das, Lt. Consultant Nande, Lt. Seminar Chetan, Lt. Marriage Manja, Lt. Chandrappa Sudeep, Lt. Solectron Sudhir and Lt. Prez (without any difference)

Part I: The Hunt for “The Nest”

On a busy Friday evening, the FYI units stormed the area of J.P Nagar from all directions. Their mission: To locate the “Shravanthi Nest” and convey personally, best wishes and congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Siddharth for successfully establishing an operational base at this location. Apart from this honorable primary objective, there was an unspoken secondary objective to the mission too, that of devouring the free wholesome food served to the famished squadron once the base was reached.

Landing with all your units in one thing, getting the job done is another task altogether. It didn’t take much time for the FYI units to wake up to this reality. Akin to the attitude exhibited by the U.S army units in Iraq (in the early days of the conflict), the FYI units landed in the unknown terrain of J.P Nagar with an absolute confidence(overconfidence ??) that the primary objective could be accomplished in no time at all. Some like Lt. Sudhir exhibited what can termed as sheer ‘arrogance’ by not even bothering to carry along the address and route map required to reach the base.

The FYI units that took part in this operation could be classified on the following lines:
a) Two foot soldier units: One unit was a lone force comprising of Lt. Sudhir while the other foot unit constituted of myself and my guide Tank a.k.a. Ananth (close friend and fellow colleague) who had a fairly good idea about the layout and other details of this unfamiliar terrain.
b) Mobile Armored Division: Another solo unit comprising of Lt. Sudeep in his maruthi.
c) The squadron of 4: Comprising of Lt. Manja, Lt. Cheta, Lt. Nande and Major Das. Lt. Manja was the only contact point and spokesperson for this group.
d) The one man army of Colonel Mama ( Note: 1 Mama = 100 soldiers)

With the help of my guide I had nearly zeroed in the on the base when the first cry of distress came from Sudhir who was well err…basically lost. Tank brought him back on track and arranged for a rendezvous point where I could meet him and proceed to base. Unfortunately at this critical juncture a major lapse occurred. The location that we had ascertained as base was “Shravanthi Pride – I” and not “Shravanthi Nest”, which was the desired location. Without realizing this I hastily dispatched of the services of my guide and backtracked to the rendezvous point to meet Sudhir. Well after the meeting, it was now a situation of two lost soldiers instead of one. By this time cries of distress emanated from the “Squadron of 4” too. We were soon floundering in the landscape as clueless as the US Marines at Fallujah.
We had nearly lost all hope and that’s when we saw Sudeep’s armored division. Our joy knew no bounds. We were surely going to be rescued now. This surge of hope stemmed from the assumption that Sudeep would surely know a thing or two about this area (BSK is closer to JP Nagar than Rajajinagar or Malleswaram, this crucial fact formed the basis of our assumption that Sudeep would know more than us) Well our assumption was proved completely baseless as we realized that the armored division itself was floating around aimlessly in the streets terrorizing the inhabitants of this quiet neighborhood by driving in high beam.

By sheer chance of fortune combined with the acumen of Sudhir (more of the former in this case) we stumbled upon the base. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen we finally made it. Sudhir subsequently guided the “Squadron of 4” to the base.


Part II: At the Base & The arrival of Mama

Uncle Sid initiated a guided tour of the base. Once could notice that he was beaming with pride and rightly so as this was no ordinary feat. Surely a difficult task for the other FYI members to emulate but an inspiration nonetheless. Kudos to uncle !!

What followed was a long session of catching up on stories and recounting of the old heroic tales e.g. playing unreal in training days. Apart from this there was some socializing to be done too the most notable ones being with the WWF star of our training batch “Tatanka” and the other was with Mukund Kamath. Sudeep wishing Mukund “heartily” without having a clue about the context was sight worth watching. Offcourse, the later responded immediately with a bigger blooper, complaining loudly that he never got to see Sudeep and myself in office for quite sometime (??).

We were all set to head for dinner and that’s when Colonel Mama arrived. After completing his conference calls, filling out all excel sheets and approving a whole lot of DART’s, the great man landed up just in time to grace the occasion. Though work was sited as the “official” reason for his late entry there were a number of theories, rumors etc floating around, disputing this. The most popular ones were – “Colonel doesn’t like to been seen in the company of ordinary ‘bloody Indian soldiers’” and “Mama is ‘site’-seeing i.e. looking for a plot to buy on return from his next onsite assignment”. In any case if Mama is planning to construct a house our sincere advice to him would be to buy a plot in the vicinity of “Devanahalli” – would drastically reduce his “land travel time” in India.


Part III: Dinner

BURP !!!!! Well that says it all doesn’t it. :-)
Successfully completely Agenda 2 of the mission the troops happily marched home to enjoy their weekend.


Note from the author:

The following members of the FYI units were missed during the get together –
General GG, Lt. What ra Kalkoti, Lt. I.E Venky and Lt. Mao Tse PP. Hope to catch up with them sometime.

# posted by Akshai @ 7:06 AM