The POINTless POINTS !

“Hurray, I’m off for POINTS training, it’s gonna be fun”, was the very first thing I said when I had my movement letter in hand. For the non-DRDians, POINTS(acronym for POst Induction Training School) is supposed to be a 5-month long “enlightenment” course for the inglorious ignorant nerds that join this premiere institute of science and technology and research as scientists, or atleast so are they called. The future could-be/would-be pioneers of defence tactics and strategies are supposed to be trained here with classroom lectures detailing various aspects of defence research being handled (or made stagnant) by the organization. Scientists are supposed to learn about ships, missiles, fighters, weapons, explosives and radars, and then use it @ work. Sounds techie, geeky and top classified data? Remember I said “supposedly” ?

Getting back to reality, POINTS is best defined as “5 months of sarkari paid vacations”. It is aptly termed as the most fun-filled part of being in DRDO. Five months of no-tension, no-responsibility life with full and sufficient pay! We B-Techers like to call it the 9^th semester. It all seems like college continued; wake up just 5 minutes before class, continue the sleep during the lectures, comment on lecturers and subsequently run after them for their notes, bunk after lunch and make professional proxy groups. Has been more than 20 working days now, and not a day has been completely lectured in and not a single class has started on time. Fortunately they end before time! They name a 50-paged copy-paste report as a group task and a slightly larger, generally unrelated, congregation of technical terms, borrowed from a previous such object, as a project. With studies seemingly the least important aspect of POINTS, we are stuck with no option but to rote movies and series on our blessed personal idiot boxes that come these days in so nice packages. 

The course, “POINT School”, continues for a period of 5 months, over which the Govt. of India spends slightly less than 1.8 lakhs per student. With a strength of aound 200, this amounts to 3.6 crores, which is but a huge amount. The system definitely needs a revamp and a complete inside-out survey. Maybe that’s why, this batch of ours is the last in the history of POINTS. After all, why wouldn’t the Govt. want to save money!! Lolz

      

          Love,

                   ~~ S i D ~~

Group A Class 1 Technical Gazetted Officer

           Now, blissfully ignorant

*composed sometime around the first days of June, 2010. the scenario changed a lot later.

*this are solely the author's personal views and the data may not be correct and relevant

My Sukhoi Dream

Sitting in front of the officer’s mess here at 2^nd wing IAF, Pune and the twinjet multirole 4^th generation Su-30s roaring miles above my head with their majestic afterburners engaged, I start reliving my childhood dreams of fighter planes and how my fancies have been fulfilled now.

I remember precisely how some years ago, when I had first learnt about fighter aircrafts and had seen some videos on TV, I had become a fighter-maniac. My notebooks and copies had stickers of fighter planes, whom I knew by their color not their name. I remember the way I used to fold my fingers on my right hand to resemble a fighter and used to pop it out of the window of buses, cars and trains and used to imagine myself as the pilot performing crazy maneuvers. It is not the past, as even today I cannot resist myself from the temptation of doing the same whenever I have a window seat. The missiles, the bombs and the gun turret always fascinated me. And TV serials like Talespin worsened my temptations. I perfectly remember the first time I had been to an airport and had seen an Indian Airlines flight take off, and had cherished the thunderous roar it made. I imagined myself as the pilot when I was sitting on my papa’s bike and the handle bar as the throttle lever. But as I grew up, and as how I behave became so important, I gave up all finger folding and stuff that made me look immature. But my fancy never died.

And today I feel like I have realized my fancy. I can never be able to fly a fighter but atleast I could go near it, touch it, feel it and grace it. As I saw a majestic beautiful gracious Su-30 take off 200 meters from me, so many thoughts flashed through. My stickers, my drawings, the black one(now F-16), the grey one(now MiG), my folded fingers, my dad’s bike’s handle and my fancies. Then I realized how lucky I am. It was as if destiny. Getting placed into DRDO, despite the odds, the trouble during my initial joining, and a then disappointing posting into a mechanical lab and a even worse attachment to a base at my resident town ruining all plans of a paid trip to a nice new place. But all the time it was luck trying to bring me as close to my fancies as possible.

Luck got me into DRDO, as the only one out of 29 other deserving candidates and got me posted into a lab that works on engines for fighter planes. She got me attached to the most advanced wing of IAF housing over 60 Su-30s. She arranged an air-show for me on my very second day. And what more, she got me an officer who readily allowed us to sit in the cockpit and actually hold the throttle lever, the ultimate realization of my fancy. As the plane took off with a roaring thunder, I could not stop but thank God and luck for providing me with such a graceful opportunity. Not everyone gets to see a Su-30 take off and how few are fortunate enough to sit in its cockpit. Those 10 minutes when the plane showed aerobatics were like bliss for me. I was in a different world altogether. Never ever had I been so thankful to God. Never before had I been so satisfied, fulfilled and happy. As the plane pitched and rolled, tears filled my eyes. Thank you so much God; today’s been the best day of my life!