Hail the ASK Consultancy Group - Day One

Hmmm!! civilization at last!!! or atleast the luxuries of some source of communication that was missing past three days, access to my laptop and network for my phone that however has been giving me sleepless nights........hanging from the hangman's noose and refusing to go beyond the clear white screen on start up. I told you, i am always happy with the simple paanch hazaar vaala baat karne vaala phone. these funky gadgetry monsters do me no good :(.

Anyways before i digress too much, well we had gone away from civilization for a three day trip to this village in Kolad, about a hundred kms from Mumbai. Oh ya, i have been in mumbai ( my original karambhoomi so to speak :)), for a week now, as part of our company's group orientation program. and well i thought the outbound trip was one worth mentioning about.

So Day 1 started with our 3 hour trip to the camp. We left last thursday, a motley group of some 26 odd people led by our organizers, the Omnipresent (boss with his towering personality, you cant miss him) Y and the demure yet power packed and indomitable R. The trip was short yet sweet albeit with the dosage of the typical antakshari, from heavy ghazals to the cheeziest and sleaziest govinda numbers. I mean the range went from heavy duty numbers like “Hosh Vaalon Ko Khabar kya” to the mithunda flicks like “Atariya pe lutan kabutar”…….you could feel the depth of the gang I tell you.
On another note, Id like to believe this was also the time when the seeds of a soon to be extremely successful startup were being sown. More on ASK later though. They deserve a separate post per se. :D.

Our camp was set on top of a hill ( came to know of this only on the day when we were leaving though) and consisted of tented accommodation plus a pucca conference room and some ground for exercise. Having first located our tent ( which was quite luxurious contrary to our expectations) and settled down, we had our first session in the evening, that of a usual round of introductions, with everyone introducing someone else. What made it interesting was the fact that a certain bollywood actress and actor came out to be most in demand for partners on a trip to Hawaai. I am sure our instructor spent a better half of the night chalking out a rigorous schedule for accomodating the actress and actor into our oh so busy days. Then of course there were others who revealed there first love for Tuntun, Ajju Bhai et al.

Anyways so after a fine dinner we tucked in for the first day ahead, which promised to begin early. 5:45 am to be precise.

Now I am not telling you my weight, but damn it ask someone like me as well as the rest to get up at 5:30 in the morning and go for a round of PT and jogging and all, and you know whats in store. :(. I mean what do i say. but well we did begin our mornings with the round everyday of the three days. so the first had a couple of rounds of jogging followed by exercises to stretch hitherto unknown parts of your self. As one of us quipped later . “Only now i know i have 207 bones"!!! The extra one because magically, new body parts seemed to be growing these days. But I tell you we did realize the awesome physical condition we all were in. I mean 30 mins, and the combined power of our heavy breathing could have caused a storm in zulu land. :D


Post breakfast, our first session was one of splitting the group into teams that had to “Compete” in and Extremely “Collaborative” Manner in a Win Win scenario. No comments on this though. But yeah we had our teams formed - the wild, ragged, absolutely crazy Junglee Brigades, and the even crazier, whackier "Fundoo Pandooz". With slogans such as "Jhinga Lala Hu, Sharam Haya sab chhhodd do, Fundoo pandooz ko phod do", and "Screw it just do it"......you only missed a couple of spears and some war paint and some knives around there i think.

Our first outbound activity for the day was, rock climbing and rappelling. we were ( or atleast i was :(), a bit disappointed as we did not go for an actual mountain climb rather just had a vertical about 35 feet high man made wall ( wait, i never said i finished climbing it), to climb. But it still was fun nevertheless. Ab main apne baare mein to kya hi bataon, matlab saamne deewaar thi, uske saamne main tha, bus deewar main chadne hi waala tha, ki .....kambhakt yeh bhaaribharkam shareer beech mein aa gaya. Varna woh deewaar aaj tak bani nahin jo hum chad na sakein. The bottom line being i did not go beyond 5 feet i think. :(.

But we had a few others who did it. In fact our first climber almost finished the climb in first attempt, before missing the last bit ( he went on to finish the whole thing again on the last day). Then we had S, who climbed the damn thing like a monkey, hopping from one side to the other with some agility. I swear i should call him the monkey man :D. But he was good. The others also gave really good shots at the activity, differently reaching heights.

The rappelling was a comparatively easier activity, and well i sort of redeemed myself i one way, by successfully trying out the commando style one where you had to literally walk down the wall, facing downwards instead of with your back. It was scary to say the least but well we did it.

Post lunch, there were two activities lined up. One included building a tent with your team lined up and with hands and legs tied to each other such that only the ends had one leg and one hand free. Boy it did seem quite a task. And the way we moved trying to accommodate both ourselves as well as the hazaar suggestions each one of us had, it was stupefying :D. We almost had the tent erected upside down, before some saint realized the folly and directed us. But we did manage to do it, albeit after the other team.
Another activity we played later was that of the game of mats, where the team was split into two columns, and the two had to cross over each other. If you have every tried the frog puzzle on your MS Excel, when you were supposed to be working in office, youll know what I mean. This one took us awhile to crack, and in fact at one point three of us were sitting simply scratching heads and trying to remember our earlier endeavors. But thanks to a few more saner souls we managed to do this one too.

One continuous and well at times stretched factor during the entire trip was the debrief session following every game or activity. And i dont think i remember it with as much fondness as i would perhaps remember my first date with my girlfriend ( if i had one that is), but well yeah it was fun to discuss, and dissect and analyze every aspect of the activity. So we went from a simple objective of climbing a damn rock to relation with the self to fear to psychosis and mitosis and meiosis and win win and win lose. I tell you boss, the intelligentsia of the world would have been stunned at the depth of the discussions we had. We had all the answers to every problem in the world. And no i am not being cynical. I got to be crowned the Arbit CP as well as the Desperate CP King re :), an honor i missed during my ISB days.

Evening was a skit performance by each of our two teams – Jungleez and Pandooz that is. While the Jungleez performed to the tune of “Sholay Rewind” ( my buddies at ISB, take a bow, I took our earlier idea and used it again here J), the Pandooz made a new version of “Mahabharat ki Ramayana”. Both were awesomely hilarious ones. Sholay had its origins in a similar skit I had staged at college but this one was crazier by far. From thakur wanting to get rid of the suave smart and ex Ibanker Gabbar, to Jai Veeru convincing Basanti that Thakur was the best man for her, to maulvi lining up for mausi, to Kalia finally running away with mausi even as Radha implored Jai and Veeru for neglecting her, wooh, I don’t know what we were doing. But it was amazing simply. Never knew, we could come up with so many ideas, and such an impromptu performance in a space of about an hour and a half. Awesome.
The Pandooz had their own version of Mahabharat Ki Ramayan. Another hilarious endeavour with a plot that I would like to keep under wraps for fear of being hounded by the Hindu Fanatics I tell ya. I mean………we had to somehow just stop ourselves from dying laughing. Just kinda got me back to old engineering and MBA days. Sigh!!!!!!!!!

Anyways, so that’s how the day ended, with some bonfire music followed by dinner. Pretty hectic, lots of activity and great fun. We had two more days to go, and were waiting to see what would go.

The next day shall follow. But before I go, I must do this…….Hail the ASK Consultancy Group.

Adios

Chaos.