(... continued from Part 1)
(Part 2 of 3)
In fact, the most interesting observation we had was that till about 1/3 duration of the training, no major groupings were evident in the entire batch. Almost each one of us had a group of 5-10 unrelated people to share thoughts with. Moreover, with so many years of service at IOCL, each one of us had enough stories to share and enlighten others about!! The talks seemed never ending.
And we had so many different groups to converse into...
In a very unusual happening, I became 'highlighted' for convening the most variety of groups!!
Well in all my pre-preparedness to attend CE, I had taken some decisions about how to spend my 'Me' time. And I was somewhat determined not to miss the morning Yoga classes, hoping it might finally set me on a fitness journey. So that started the 'Yoga group', comprising of a couple of us who attended each and every class despite our unearthly sleeping times! In fact there were a few occasions when I felt tempted to bunk the morning routine, but I attended just to save my face in front of these 'Yoga group' members!! And well, with the chilled out CE batchmates we had, morning yoga was also fun... wherein after the class we would be laughing about how pathetic we were and how narrowly we dodged some tough aasana or the other!!
After yoga, we were supposed to return to our rooms to get ready for the classes. However, I desperately needed my morning cup of nicely brewed tea, which was not possible in the electric kettle. So for a couple of days, post yoga I used to loiter in the campus for about 15 minutes and then reach the dining hall for a fresh cup. Few days later, someone enquired about where was I heading to and there started the formation of my 'Chai Group'. Chai group became such an happening group that a friend made a pact with me to call him for chai post yoga. Yoga was secondary for him, but he would daily join us for tea!! Our hunger for conversations was such that for a day or two the tea time cut deep into our mornings and then we started putting an alarm to remind us to timely leave the Coffee Lounge and get ready for the classes!!
Post morning tea, there were non-stop class room sessions till evening, but with loads of 'bakar' in between. Most of us were seated as per our comfort zones (some of us swapped places to get the same!). In this way the classes, faculties & learnings interspersed with comfortable 'bakar' made the sessions much more bearable and somewhat entertaining. However, with so much of knowledge being imparted on a daily basis, the evenings felt really heavy. On most of the days, I did not have much mental strength to do any self studies in the evening (As I typed this last line, voice of a few college friends chanting 'pappu' is very clearly audible in my ears).
So to 'detox' ourselves and to prepare ourselves for the next day of training, we had the dinner and post dinner sessions to look forward to.
Here, let me first give some insight into the dining hall of IIPM. The staff manning the IIPM dining halls are the strictest wardens one might ever come across. The dress code to be followed, etiquettes to be observed while dining, the time to be spent at the dining table are all strictly monitored and all trainees are shamelessly reprimanded upon by the staff in case of any defaults.
Now, we being the 'Chillpill' trainees and they being the guardians of the IIPM Sanctum sanctorum, conflict was bound to arise! However, after a initial battle for supremacy, we reached an unspoken understanding. We would follow all the codes of conduct during breakfast & lunch and they would let us enjoy some liberties during the dinner time.
There were two major areas where we broke all rules at dinner time. The first one was the seating. Despite the no. of seats available on the dining table, we would accommodate people as long as possible. We expanded the seating capacity to 11-12 as per our requirement. I recall during one of the final days, a friend had come in late and was quietly going to sit on a vacant table, when I got up with my plate and told "ya to aap yahan aaiye, ya fir main vahan aati hoon" and in the meantime another friend got up, pulled a chair and the late comer was well adjusted on to our table.
Second factor to which we extended our own rules during dinner time, actually became a point of tussle between 'us' & 'them'. We would not get up from the dining table till it was time to close the dining hall (i.e 21:30 hrs). The servers would drop us all kinds of hints and we would ignore them all and instead go about picking up another mango or apple which would be cut and shared by a group of 10-12 people busy chatting about. Most of the times, some of us would feel sufficiently embarrassed by their incessant hints & stares that we would finally leave the hall.
Moreover, leaving the dining hall didn't imply retiring to our rooms! Again, somehow I became infamous for convoking the post dinner 'Walking' groups on similar lines as the morning chai groups. I didn't really feel like returning to my room immediately after dinner and the insatiable hunger for conversations that many of us had, made it a natural choice to go for 'one more round' around the campus. We would start as a group of 8-10 or more people, but usually settled in groups of 2-4 persons talking about all the stupidities and all the wisdom of the world simultaneously.
The conversations ranged from local IIPM happenings to college days, office life to personal matters, from bosses to kids, and generic talks on enlightening ourselves about being better humans. The funniest topics we engaged in included 'best practices to wash clothes', 'optimum inventory for minimizing washing of clothes' and 'various ghar ke kaam which kept us busy at IIPM'. Conversations also circled around implementing the learnings acquired in various sessions in real life, particularly in sessions relating to behavorial development.
One topic that resurfaced multiple times was that why CE batch 43 was so cool and accommodating? and somehow it could never be answered satisfactorily except that "We were really lucky".
The only rational explanation we could achieve consensus on was that the timing of this program was most apt considering our professional and personal standings in life. Almost all of us had our 'own' families (read spouse, kids etc.) which gave us stability on the personal front... That is to say that no one was looking forward to relationships with hidden agendas.. Moreover, with roughly a decade of service in IOCL (or more), all of us had experienced/observed the bell curve effects, the disparity between the deserving and the achievers, the nearly pathetic prospects of promotion into senior grades and the umpteen issues that ail any semi Govt. Agency in a country like ours.. We were mentally prepared for what to expect in future near or far... Moreover, none of us were in direct line of competition with each other... at least most of us felt that, if not all.. And since we were all part of this program, it was implicit that we had been doing okay in our careers in the recent years.. Adding all these scenarios gave us a degree of professional stability as well.. Thus we were eventually a group of people with a Zen like stability in our lives (at the moment at least!!) and perhaps that gave us a chance to be free of pretenses for some time.
In any case, whatever be the psychological or sociological reason behind the cohesion in our group. It was an amazing experience being in the esteemed company of CE 43 batchmates. The variation in personalities of the members was immense; ranging from extreme extroverts who could not endure spending even a single evening indoors to extreme introverts who just couldn't be pulled out of their shells, from really skilled and talented beings to awkward commoners like me, from extremely caring, empathetic persons who would observe it all to people who just didn't give a damn!!
We were a truly mixed bag of people who just decided to gel well together!! (Thank God!!)
(To be concluded...)
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