Life, Lilies and Surf

Chapter 5

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight, 

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night.                           

                                                                            ( H. W. Longfellow:  The Ladder of St. Augustine)

The journey to Mussoorie, the hill station has to be only by road as Britishers never laid a rail track to that station like Shimla or Ooty.   As the Academy was opening for another batch of probationer officers, the taxis were quite few and the taxi drivers were eagerly inviting the coming young men and women on their way to the Academy promising comfortable journey at reasonable fare.  Along with the friends she made during her journey,  Latha took a taxi and it soon made its way up and up the hills.  The scenic beauty of the hills was marvelous and  every hair pin bend took them high above the plains.  The plains started looking as a shrinking picture and it was as if the zoom lens of a camera was being rotated back.  The houses and buildings were therefore slowly becoming  miniatures  and the clouds started gently moving over the mountain road, as it was rainy season.  It was becoming cooler and cooler as the car climbed up and gained height from the plains.  Latha enjoyed the scenery and the greenery found all around the hill side.  It was her first journey to a hill station.  Her friends being from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh were not so much engrossed in looking out of the window as they had visited the hill stations like Shimla,  Mussoorie and Nainital that were close to their place.  After many a hair pin bend, the town of Mussoorie came and the taxi driver deposited them at the nearest spot possible to enable them to get a coolie to carry their baggage to the Academy.  

The Academy was an imposing building of the British times.  The windows were all painted in green possibly to jive with the natural green all around.  She reported to the administrative office and was allotted a room in the hostel.    A room mate joined her and lady probationers, as they were called, were given separate rooms with double occupancy.  A new world in a new atmosphere and a new chapter started in her life.  

The course was called foundation course for all the Services that were manning the government of India, its departments and the state governments.  There was a strict dress code for gentleman probationers.  A navy blue woolen blazer with the Academy emblem on the breast pocket with Academy tie along with gray woolen trousers was the prescribed dress.  The lady probationers were to wear saree,  salvar kameez with duppatta or chunni.  No shorts or half pants or T- shirts were allowed for attending the classes and programmes in the Academy.  Probationary officers were prohibited from going around in the campus with T-shirts and night gowns.  Only for the  physical training in the mornings white half pants and white half sleeve shirt and white canvas shoes were allowed.  For lady officers they could also come in white salvar kameez.  

Latha being soft spoken and out going soon made friends with the other lady officers, who were not more than a dozen, while the men were about two hundred or so for various services, namely,  Indian Administrative and Police Services and a few Central Services that were directly under the federal government.  They had to attend classes in which different subjects on administration, finance, economics, law, etc were taught.  Not many took the classes seriously.  The crowning success in having made to the elite Services brought about a certain amount of euphoria with some laziness that made the officers not taking the classes seriously.   Latha having been studious and serious about studies throughout her life, attended the classes with great fervor and studied assiduously what was taught.  In the examinations that followed after four months of foundation training, she did very well and got prizes in certain subjects as the topper.  The foundation course came to an end and the probationers of the Central Services had to proceed to their own service training centers for specialisation.  They bade good bye to those of administrative and police services, who were to continue their specialised training at the Academy itself.  Bhama was also to continue in the Academy as she was in the administrative service.  Latha was keeping in touch with her for the four months they were at Mussorie.  However, Bhama was slowly getting more drawn towards her service mates.