Remembering Academy days

 Basically I love to write short-story which is a relatively difficult task and needs a lot of concentration. I couldn't get myself focused for over a year, because of various reasons. In order to gain back my concentration and confidence I again started writing lyrics which I had left many years back. I posted those in the Facebook. Fortunately it helped me to restore my confidence because I received unbelievable response from my friends, especially the young ones. It amused me a lot to know that the young friends were wondering- how a difficult person like me could write such romantic verses on love and allied emotions. That experience is worth preserving and I would certainly remember till the last day. During my college days many of my short stories were published in the college magazines and in other magazines where I received awards. Apart from that I never sent my stories for publication. After superannuation from Government service, I started to revive my skills as a story-writer and succeeded in writing some stories and a series, in the lighter vein of post-retirement escapades but those are yet to see the lights of the day because I have not sent those for publication. Believe me, I am scared a lot to imagine the reaction of my young friends if the stories got published.

Towards the last phase of my government service I was posted as Director of the Training Academy of the Finance Department. That was a difficult assignment in the sense that we tried to modernise and modify the routine training and designed the curriculum keeping pace with the advanced training programmes. The Principal Secretary was a dynamic administrator and allowed a free hand to design the courses of study  which  were deliberated upon, discussed and adopted after due modification. The entire exercise took over four months and finally the curriculum was ready before the arrival of two hundred plus direct recruits of Finance Service Officers. The Principal Secretary asked me if we could take up training of all the officers at one go. ‘We can very well take up the challenge but accommodation would be a problem as we could provide hostel facilities only for hundred trainees at a time’, I replied. It was decided that they would be trained in two batches. I was asked to continue as Director till the training programme of two batches was over. That is how I came across two hundred plus young and fresh recruits who knew me as a stern and heartless administrator.

I am not really surprised to find their exhilaration in my emotional outbursts in the lyrics.