Sunday, February 3, 2013
“Mussoorie - sweet & sour" by K.J. Chatrath
I cleared the Central Services 1966 examination and was allotted the Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax). I joined the Academy at Mussoorie for the Foundational Course in the first week of July and left in early November. Next year I made it to the I.A.S. and, after four months of district training in Orissa, joined the Academy for the professional IAS training. What is narrated below is from those two stints in the Academy.
Those days there used to be a direct early morning Delhi-Mussoorie bus starting from Delhi. I, along with my classmate in the Delhi Law Faculty and friend V.N.Singh from the IPS (who later on rose to become the Police Commissioner Delhi), were at the bus stand on time. In the bus we met another would be Probationer - Bhupinder Singh Pawar - who was going to join the IPS. So this motley crowd of three reached the Library Point bus stand in Mussoorie around the evening. Tired, yet excited and with a black trunk and a holdall, each being carried by the porters in tow, we started our march towards the Academy and a new life.
Suddenly we saw a very distinguished looking gentleman in riding gear smartly trotting towards us (I learnt the difference between a trot, a canter and a gallop a few days later from Nawal Singh Saab) on a horse back coming towards us. “Hello” said the rider, “Are you going to the Academy?”. “Yes” one of us said rather curtly. “Welcome to Mussoorie and welcome to the Academy” wished the rider. Out of the three of us, Pawar was the most confident one, so he took it upon himself to speak for the group and said “Thanks” and put a counter question. “Are you from the Academy”? This time it was the rider’s turn to say “Yes”. “Do you teach there”, was the next question from Pawar, which was too met with a “Yes” and one could notice a smile on the rider’s face. Pawar, a soon-to-be Police Officer, was still not satisfied that he had extracted all the information out of the rider. “What do you teach there?” was the next question. And the response was an unforgettable gem, “Well, I teach everything there. You know, I happen to be the Director of the Academy”. The three of us had no place to hide. Seeing our embarrassment, the Director said, “See you in the Academy gentlemen and once again welcome to Mussoorie”, and rode away.
On reaching the Academy a little later, I was allotted room 67 in the Happy Valley Block to be shared with an I.A.S. Probationer. But more about him later. I felt that I had “arrived” and wanted a long, long sleep and rest. Oh I am a late riser, I told my room mate, I will get up very late tomorrow since I am very tired, I added. Just then their was a gentle knock on the door and the room-bearer allotted to our room came and introduced himself and politely wished us. “I will come with the bed tea at 5.10 in the morning” he said. No, that is too early, I told him, come after 7.30, I suggested. But Sir, the P.T. starts at 5.30 a.m. he informed. O.K. we will see, I said, and he left. He thinks I am going for the P.T at 5.30. am?, I laughed derisively. That night, in spite of the tiredness and a good meal, I could not sleep and kept tossing in the bed. It was around 3.30 a.m. by the time the sleep came. And soon there was a knock on the door, which I ignored. With each passing second the knocking seemed to grow in volume. I looked at my watch and found that it was already 5 am. Must be that chap with the tea, I mumbled to myself. Let me ignore him and he will go away. How wrong I was. After persistent and loud knocking I finally gave in and opened the door and found the room bearer smiling with a “Good Morning, Sir” on his lips and the tea tray in his hand. After taking the tea, I changed and starting climbing down for PT asking myself, ‘is this what I had slogged for?’
Half way through the downhill walk I met the Director crisply walking up, clad in white shorts and sports shirt and greeted him. On reaching the P.T. ground and talking to the PT Instructor, Mr. Gaikwad, I realised that the Director was the first person to come down to the ground do his P.T. After finishing the P.T., I climbed up to my room, changed to the riding gear and started going down towards the riding ground. I again met the Director half way through, in breeches and riding hat, climbing up after having finished his daily dose of riding. All my resistence to P.T. and riding broke down once and for ever. For me this was the best training in leadership - doing first what one asks others to do! And I became a Pimputkar fan and he my role model. After 5 p.m. Mr. Pimputkar would be different and a more relaxed person. He regularly played bridge with the Probationers and would stop and talk to you if you happened to come across him. But during the office hours he was a tough no-nonsense officer.
After the Foundation Course was over I joined the next part of the training at the Income Tax Officers Training College at Nagpur. Months later the Civil Services results of 1967 were out and I, along with 6 others, including C. S. Rao, who later became the Finance Secretary Government of India, in that batch of the Income Tax Service made it to the I.A.S. The seven of us instantly became a Group. The formal communication received from the U.P.S.C. required each selected candidate to confirm that he accepted the offer and that he would be joining the service for which he was selected. I remember with great amusement that the seven of us decided to save money and we sent a joint telegram of acceptance to the U.P.S.C. mentioning all the seven names as senders. The U.P.S.C did not find fault with our corner cutting and confirmed our acceptance individually.
A few more words here about the morning P.T. For P.T., we were initiated into the 5BX Exercises. The 5BX programme was developed for the Royal Canadian Air Force by Bill Orban and was very popular those days. 5BX meant the Five Basic Exercises. One was required to finish these set of exercises in 11 minutes but almost all of us took a considerably longer time. Incidentally the Royal Canadian Air Force discontinued these exercise as a part of their training almost 25 years back. Riding classes were as ‘unpopular’, to borrow a word from Aldous Huxley’s title “The Unpopular Essays”, as the P.T. Anyway we soon got into the rhythm of the riding classes and the loud and clear commands of Nawal Singh Saab. Every Probationer who has gone through riding training in the Academy would remember his lament, “Ghora nahi sambhalta, district kaisay sambhalogey”. The second Riding Instructor, Ajaib Singh Saab, was low key and perhaps a better rider.
I planned my own strategy to survive the riding classes and pass without dishonour. I chose the most docile horse named ‘Laila’ and would make it a point to ride the same horse daily. And I thought our chemistry started working and that fear and awe of riding gradually vanished. Unfortunately my ‘Laila’ ditched me on the day of the test day. It was reported that she was sick that day. Crestfallen, I had to befriend and woo another horse in just half an hour. The bottom line was that I managed to pass the Riding Test in the first go.
As the story went, before joining as the Director of the Academy, Mr. Pimputkar was the Establishment Officer in Government of India and became known for his honesty, discipline, insistence on observance of rules and procedures and a no-nonsense approach. On being suddenly transferred to the Academy, he is reported to have remarked, “These people think that they are getting rid of Pimputkar. They don’t realize that where I am going I will produce 300 Pimputkars every year!”
Punctuality was the flavour of the Course. The Lecture halls would be closed as soon as the Professor/Speaker entered and God help those who got left out! Mess doors would close after five minutes….One of the beneficiaries was Hari’s Canteen. The two Deputy Directors - Mr. R. P. Khosla and Mr. C. S. Sastry - ably assisted the Director in imparting his style of training. Both of them were very firm yet very polite. I recall that on noticing a Probationer chewing ‘saunf’ in the class, Mr. Khosla ticked him off very elegantly. He said, “I suggest that in future you finish off your breakfast before coming to the class”. On another occasion, I was myself witness to Mr. Khosla standing near the Billiards Room stopping a Probationer with a little stubble on his face and sending him back to his room with an advice to go and shave first! At the same time if a Probationer went to see Mr. Khosla or Mr. Sastry, he was treated with courtesy and great civility like a fellow officer and not made to stand like an errant student before a Principal.
During my Foundation Course stay in the Academy, N. N. Khanna, known as “Nippy Khanna”, from the 1966 batch of the I.A.S., was my room mate. He was a brilliantly sharp officer with impeccable manners. During the very first week of my stay, I decided to start preparing for the IAS in the right earnest. However, I encountered a problem. In the evenings, about 4-5 friends of Nippy Khanna - from the IAS and the IFS - would gather in our room for the evening session. They would continue discussing various things till past midnight. One of these Probationers was Ronen Sen from the I.F.S., who was till recently India’s Ambassador to the USA. I found it impossible to sit and do my cramming with so much noise in the room. ‘They have made it to the IAS/IFS and they have a right to their evenings’, I argued with myself. So I decided on a simple solution. I got some cotton-wool from the dispensary and stuffed my ears with it before starting my evening studies. A little later Nippy and his friends came and soon got into serious animated discussions. I found that I could hear hardly anything and my solution worked as I was able to concentrate on my study. None of them noticed my ear plugs. However the next evening Nippy noticed it and asked if I was having any problem with the ears. Not wanting to embarrass him and his friends, I explained that it was an old habit of mine and it helped me in concentrating. But they were very smart people and saw through my explanation. They did not say anything but from the next day onwards they started meeting in different rooms in the evenings and the turn of our room would come only once a week.
Amongst us was a young officer from Bhutan named Dorjee, who was said to be related the Royal family. He was very athletic and took part in every available sport but he genuinely loved riding and ultimately topped in the riding test. He had brought a jeep from Bhutan as his local transport. It looked like the snowmobile that we see these days in snowbound areas. He was very friendly to all and seeing my interest in his jeep, gave me long rides once in a while. I tried my hand at different games too in the Academy. The Billiards Room was not far from my room and I decided to learn the aristocratic looking game. I went there one evening and waited for the ongoing game to finish. My colleagues, who were playing, and who all looked to be very good players, agreed to give me a few lessons on how to hold the striking cue, how to hit the ball etc. However, my first shot itself was a disaster. I somehow half closed my eyes and hit the red ball with the ‘danda’ in a typically Panjabi fashion. There was an uproar in the room as I almost tore off the green cover of the table. My colleagues politely showed me the door and good humouredly banned my entry in the Billiards Room for the rest of my stay. I was luckier with table tennis and badminton. I managed to become the Table Tennis singles champion that year and also won two prizes in badminton.
One of the Probationers belonging to Orissa, who was allotted the West Bengal Cadre, was given the responsibility of teaching Oriya to the Non-Oriya Probationers allotted to Orissa Cadre. While my colleague, M. K. Purkait had the advantage of knowing Bengali, my other Cadre mate, D. C. Gupta, who retired as the Finance Secretary in Government of India, was serious about mastering Oriya and was very studious too. In earnestness I too subscribed to the Oriya newspaper “Samaj”, which would arrive in the pigeon-hole everyday. Of course, I hardly got to see the paper as all the Oriya Probationers, and this includes my teacher, were more interested in reading it than me. The Oriya teacher was such a thorough gentleman that I got to learn very little Oriya. Later on in the service career he was awarded the Padma Shri for his distinguished work and I was mocked at all through, for my poor knowledge of Oriya! Later on in life I could mange the conversation in Oriya quite competently but in retrospect, I deeply regret having missed a good chance to learn writing in Oriya.
Though never expressly or even indirectly mentioned, the impression that I got from the training at Mussoorie was that the politician was someone to be careful of as he was there to get things done in his favour in contravention of the law and the rules. It took me almost twenty years of service to shake off this skewed notion that I had developed about the politicians from my Mussoorie training. I gradually saw my mistake and realised that the M.P.s and the M.L.A.’s represented the people of India and that they are entitled to all the courtesies and consideration. One has to listen to them and give due consideration to their suggestions though one might not always agree with them.
Something which I would have loved to be trained in at the Academy was the basic file handling. After all we are not called ‘Babus’ for nothing! Years later, on my first stint in the Central Secretariat, I found myself diffident in the art of file handling. A brief introduction to arranging papers in a file noting, drafting, writing an Formal/Demi-Official letter and preparing a Report are some of the things, which can be usefully introduced to the Probationers in Mussoorie Training. Another important input which I missed was some training in public speaking. As an officer, one has to address a variety of gatherings and confidence in public speaking helps. Decades later when I became, after repeated written requests to the State Government, the Director General of Orissa’s A.T.I., I introduced these elements in the training of the State administrative service officers and the feed back was very positive.
No reminiscence of the Academy is complete without talking about the Mess. Mr. Furtado was the Mess Manager. Formal Dinner meant western meals of cutlets filled with half cooked minced meat, the usual soup, salad and bread. And what did one do to survive? Obviously miss that meal and eat outside at “The Whispering Windows”, the “BDS” (Bhai Dhian Singh) or the inescapable but lovable “Hari’s”! On a more serious note, I have had the privilege of visiting the Academy a number of times since 1967, but I have noticed that one thing that has not changed in the Mess is the quality of ‘chappatis’. They remain as under/over cooked now as they were 40 years ago!
And continuing on the negative note, the physical environment of the Academy has been badly battered over the years. The hostel buildings constructed after the fire accident do not merge with the environment and remind one of the Soviet era buildings in Eastern Europe. And if that were not bad enough, the small piece of central lawn is gradually getting smaller and smaller because of various constructions creeping in and cluttering it.
A word about the medical facilities in the Academy at that time. During my stay in the Academy there used to be one Medical Doctor assisted by a para-medic staff to look after the health of the Probationers, the Faculty, staff and their families. The more serious cases were referred to the local hospital. And the system seemed to be working well at that time even though the on going joke then was that the medical set-up was meant for the horses of Nawal Singh and, for the Probationers, only if time permitted.
Now one finds that a building has come up for the medical services with various facilities. I have no quarrel with these. But what one can’t digest is that this building has totally blocked the view from that side. One only hopes that the authorities would put a stop to further constructions in that area and make any further construction elsewhere in the premises.
But having said that, one must compliment the construction of the Type V Quraters near the Kalindi Guest House. These are well conceptualised, fully respecting and retaining the view of the mountains. These are some of the sweet and sour notes of my stay in the Academy. Looking back at life, my stay in the Academy was the best time of my life. I wish the LBSNNA all the best in the decades to come.
K.J.S.Chatrath IAS (Retd),1967 batch,Orissa Cadre. (This article is from the book "From Metcalfe House to Charleville- Memoirs" published by the Lal Bahadur National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie on the occassion of its Golden Jubilee in 2010)
Those days there used to be a direct early morning Delhi-Mussoorie bus starting from Delhi. I, along with my classmate in the Delhi Law Faculty and friend V.N.Singh from the IPS (who later on rose to become the Police Commissioner Delhi), were at the bus stand on time. In the bus we met another would be Probationer - Bhupinder Singh Pawar - who was going to join the IPS. So this motley crowd of three reached the Library Point bus stand in Mussoorie around the evening. Tired, yet excited and with a black trunk and a holdall, each being carried by the porters in tow, we started our march towards the Academy and a new life.
Suddenly we saw a very distinguished looking gentleman in riding gear smartly trotting towards us (I learnt the difference between a trot, a canter and a gallop a few days later from Nawal Singh Saab) on a horse back coming towards us. “Hello” said the rider, “Are you going to the Academy?”. “Yes” one of us said rather curtly. “Welcome to Mussoorie and welcome to the Academy” wished the rider. Out of the three of us, Pawar was the most confident one, so he took it upon himself to speak for the group and said “Thanks” and put a counter question. “Are you from the Academy”? This time it was the rider’s turn to say “Yes”. “Do you teach there”, was the next question from Pawar, which was too met with a “Yes” and one could notice a smile on the rider’s face. Pawar, a soon-to-be Police Officer, was still not satisfied that he had extracted all the information out of the rider. “What do you teach there?” was the next question. And the response was an unforgettable gem, “Well, I teach everything there. You know, I happen to be the Director of the Academy”. The three of us had no place to hide. Seeing our embarrassment, the Director said, “See you in the Academy gentlemen and once again welcome to Mussoorie”, and rode away.
On reaching the Academy a little later, I was allotted room 67 in the Happy Valley Block to be shared with an I.A.S. Probationer. But more about him later. I felt that I had “arrived” and wanted a long, long sleep and rest. Oh I am a late riser, I told my room mate, I will get up very late tomorrow since I am very tired, I added. Just then their was a gentle knock on the door and the room-bearer allotted to our room came and introduced himself and politely wished us. “I will come with the bed tea at 5.10 in the morning” he said. No, that is too early, I told him, come after 7.30, I suggested. But Sir, the P.T. starts at 5.30 a.m. he informed. O.K. we will see, I said, and he left. He thinks I am going for the P.T at 5.30. am?, I laughed derisively. That night, in spite of the tiredness and a good meal, I could not sleep and kept tossing in the bed. It was around 3.30 a.m. by the time the sleep came. And soon there was a knock on the door, which I ignored. With each passing second the knocking seemed to grow in volume. I looked at my watch and found that it was already 5 am. Must be that chap with the tea, I mumbled to myself. Let me ignore him and he will go away. How wrong I was. After persistent and loud knocking I finally gave in and opened the door and found the room bearer smiling with a “Good Morning, Sir” on his lips and the tea tray in his hand. After taking the tea, I changed and starting climbing down for PT asking myself, ‘is this what I had slogged for?’
Half way through the downhill walk I met the Director crisply walking up, clad in white shorts and sports shirt and greeted him. On reaching the P.T. ground and talking to the PT Instructor, Mr. Gaikwad, I realised that the Director was the first person to come down to the ground do his P.T. After finishing the P.T., I climbed up to my room, changed to the riding gear and started going down towards the riding ground. I again met the Director half way through, in breeches and riding hat, climbing up after having finished his daily dose of riding. All my resistence to P.T. and riding broke down once and for ever. For me this was the best training in leadership - doing first what one asks others to do! And I became a Pimputkar fan and he my role model. After 5 p.m. Mr. Pimputkar would be different and a more relaxed person. He regularly played bridge with the Probationers and would stop and talk to you if you happened to come across him. But during the office hours he was a tough no-nonsense officer.
After the Foundation Course was over I joined the next part of the training at the Income Tax Officers Training College at Nagpur. Months later the Civil Services results of 1967 were out and I, along with 6 others, including C. S. Rao, who later became the Finance Secretary Government of India, in that batch of the Income Tax Service made it to the I.A.S. The seven of us instantly became a Group. The formal communication received from the U.P.S.C. required each selected candidate to confirm that he accepted the offer and that he would be joining the service for which he was selected. I remember with great amusement that the seven of us decided to save money and we sent a joint telegram of acceptance to the U.P.S.C. mentioning all the seven names as senders. The U.P.S.C did not find fault with our corner cutting and confirmed our acceptance individually.
A few more words here about the morning P.T. For P.T., we were initiated into the 5BX Exercises. The 5BX programme was developed for the Royal Canadian Air Force by Bill Orban and was very popular those days. 5BX meant the Five Basic Exercises. One was required to finish these set of exercises in 11 minutes but almost all of us took a considerably longer time. Incidentally the Royal Canadian Air Force discontinued these exercise as a part of their training almost 25 years back. Riding classes were as ‘unpopular’, to borrow a word from Aldous Huxley’s title “The Unpopular Essays”, as the P.T. Anyway we soon got into the rhythm of the riding classes and the loud and clear commands of Nawal Singh Saab. Every Probationer who has gone through riding training in the Academy would remember his lament, “Ghora nahi sambhalta, district kaisay sambhalogey”. The second Riding Instructor, Ajaib Singh Saab, was low key and perhaps a better rider.
I planned my own strategy to survive the riding classes and pass without dishonour. I chose the most docile horse named ‘Laila’ and would make it a point to ride the same horse daily. And I thought our chemistry started working and that fear and awe of riding gradually vanished. Unfortunately my ‘Laila’ ditched me on the day of the test day. It was reported that she was sick that day. Crestfallen, I had to befriend and woo another horse in just half an hour. The bottom line was that I managed to pass the Riding Test in the first go.
As the story went, before joining as the Director of the Academy, Mr. Pimputkar was the Establishment Officer in Government of India and became known for his honesty, discipline, insistence on observance of rules and procedures and a no-nonsense approach. On being suddenly transferred to the Academy, he is reported to have remarked, “These people think that they are getting rid of Pimputkar. They don’t realize that where I am going I will produce 300 Pimputkars every year!”
Punctuality was the flavour of the Course. The Lecture halls would be closed as soon as the Professor/Speaker entered and God help those who got left out! Mess doors would close after five minutes….One of the beneficiaries was Hari’s Canteen. The two Deputy Directors - Mr. R. P. Khosla and Mr. C. S. Sastry - ably assisted the Director in imparting his style of training. Both of them were very firm yet very polite. I recall that on noticing a Probationer chewing ‘saunf’ in the class, Mr. Khosla ticked him off very elegantly. He said, “I suggest that in future you finish off your breakfast before coming to the class”. On another occasion, I was myself witness to Mr. Khosla standing near the Billiards Room stopping a Probationer with a little stubble on his face and sending him back to his room with an advice to go and shave first! At the same time if a Probationer went to see Mr. Khosla or Mr. Sastry, he was treated with courtesy and great civility like a fellow officer and not made to stand like an errant student before a Principal.
During my Foundation Course stay in the Academy, N. N. Khanna, known as “Nippy Khanna”, from the 1966 batch of the I.A.S., was my room mate. He was a brilliantly sharp officer with impeccable manners. During the very first week of my stay, I decided to start preparing for the IAS in the right earnest. However, I encountered a problem. In the evenings, about 4-5 friends of Nippy Khanna - from the IAS and the IFS - would gather in our room for the evening session. They would continue discussing various things till past midnight. One of these Probationers was Ronen Sen from the I.F.S., who was till recently India’s Ambassador to the USA. I found it impossible to sit and do my cramming with so much noise in the room. ‘They have made it to the IAS/IFS and they have a right to their evenings’, I argued with myself. So I decided on a simple solution. I got some cotton-wool from the dispensary and stuffed my ears with it before starting my evening studies. A little later Nippy and his friends came and soon got into serious animated discussions. I found that I could hear hardly anything and my solution worked as I was able to concentrate on my study. None of them noticed my ear plugs. However the next evening Nippy noticed it and asked if I was having any problem with the ears. Not wanting to embarrass him and his friends, I explained that it was an old habit of mine and it helped me in concentrating. But they were very smart people and saw through my explanation. They did not say anything but from the next day onwards they started meeting in different rooms in the evenings and the turn of our room would come only once a week.
Amongst us was a young officer from Bhutan named Dorjee, who was said to be related the Royal family. He was very athletic and took part in every available sport but he genuinely loved riding and ultimately topped in the riding test. He had brought a jeep from Bhutan as his local transport. It looked like the snowmobile that we see these days in snowbound areas. He was very friendly to all and seeing my interest in his jeep, gave me long rides once in a while. I tried my hand at different games too in the Academy. The Billiards Room was not far from my room and I decided to learn the aristocratic looking game. I went there one evening and waited for the ongoing game to finish. My colleagues, who were playing, and who all looked to be very good players, agreed to give me a few lessons on how to hold the striking cue, how to hit the ball etc. However, my first shot itself was a disaster. I somehow half closed my eyes and hit the red ball with the ‘danda’ in a typically Panjabi fashion. There was an uproar in the room as I almost tore off the green cover of the table. My colleagues politely showed me the door and good humouredly banned my entry in the Billiards Room for the rest of my stay. I was luckier with table tennis and badminton. I managed to become the Table Tennis singles champion that year and also won two prizes in badminton.
One of the Probationers belonging to Orissa, who was allotted the West Bengal Cadre, was given the responsibility of teaching Oriya to the Non-Oriya Probationers allotted to Orissa Cadre. While my colleague, M. K. Purkait had the advantage of knowing Bengali, my other Cadre mate, D. C. Gupta, who retired as the Finance Secretary in Government of India, was serious about mastering Oriya and was very studious too. In earnestness I too subscribed to the Oriya newspaper “Samaj”, which would arrive in the pigeon-hole everyday. Of course, I hardly got to see the paper as all the Oriya Probationers, and this includes my teacher, were more interested in reading it than me. The Oriya teacher was such a thorough gentleman that I got to learn very little Oriya. Later on in the service career he was awarded the Padma Shri for his distinguished work and I was mocked at all through, for my poor knowledge of Oriya! Later on in life I could mange the conversation in Oriya quite competently but in retrospect, I deeply regret having missed a good chance to learn writing in Oriya.
Though never expressly or even indirectly mentioned, the impression that I got from the training at Mussoorie was that the politician was someone to be careful of as he was there to get things done in his favour in contravention of the law and the rules. It took me almost twenty years of service to shake off this skewed notion that I had developed about the politicians from my Mussoorie training. I gradually saw my mistake and realised that the M.P.s and the M.L.A.’s represented the people of India and that they are entitled to all the courtesies and consideration. One has to listen to them and give due consideration to their suggestions though one might not always agree with them.
Something which I would have loved to be trained in at the Academy was the basic file handling. After all we are not called ‘Babus’ for nothing! Years later, on my first stint in the Central Secretariat, I found myself diffident in the art of file handling. A brief introduction to arranging papers in a file noting, drafting, writing an Formal/Demi-Official letter and preparing a Report are some of the things, which can be usefully introduced to the Probationers in Mussoorie Training. Another important input which I missed was some training in public speaking. As an officer, one has to address a variety of gatherings and confidence in public speaking helps. Decades later when I became, after repeated written requests to the State Government, the Director General of Orissa’s A.T.I., I introduced these elements in the training of the State administrative service officers and the feed back was very positive.
No reminiscence of the Academy is complete without talking about the Mess. Mr. Furtado was the Mess Manager. Formal Dinner meant western meals of cutlets filled with half cooked minced meat, the usual soup, salad and bread. And what did one do to survive? Obviously miss that meal and eat outside at “The Whispering Windows”, the “BDS” (Bhai Dhian Singh) or the inescapable but lovable “Hari’s”! On a more serious note, I have had the privilege of visiting the Academy a number of times since 1967, but I have noticed that one thing that has not changed in the Mess is the quality of ‘chappatis’. They remain as under/over cooked now as they were 40 years ago!
And continuing on the negative note, the physical environment of the Academy has been badly battered over the years. The hostel buildings constructed after the fire accident do not merge with the environment and remind one of the Soviet era buildings in Eastern Europe. And if that were not bad enough, the small piece of central lawn is gradually getting smaller and smaller because of various constructions creeping in and cluttering it.
A word about the medical facilities in the Academy at that time. During my stay in the Academy there used to be one Medical Doctor assisted by a para-medic staff to look after the health of the Probationers, the Faculty, staff and their families. The more serious cases were referred to the local hospital. And the system seemed to be working well at that time even though the on going joke then was that the medical set-up was meant for the horses of Nawal Singh and, for the Probationers, only if time permitted.
Now one finds that a building has come up for the medical services with various facilities. I have no quarrel with these. But what one can’t digest is that this building has totally blocked the view from that side. One only hopes that the authorities would put a stop to further constructions in that area and make any further construction elsewhere in the premises.
But having said that, one must compliment the construction of the Type V Quraters near the Kalindi Guest House. These are well conceptualised, fully respecting and retaining the view of the mountains. These are some of the sweet and sour notes of my stay in the Academy. Looking back at life, my stay in the Academy was the best time of my life. I wish the LBSNNA all the best in the decades to come.
K.J.S.Chatrath IAS (Retd),1967 batch,Orissa Cadre. (This article is from the book "From Metcalfe House to Charleville- Memoirs" published by the Lal Bahadur National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie on the occassion of its Golden Jubilee in 2010)
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