Reached Pune Railway station in one piece, after having spent a dreadful night in utter terror with those two specimens in the train. It is generally said that one could smell the rat from a mile away. I could smell the rotten stink of figures and their positive and negative variations from a berth away. God! Why do you have to manufacture people of LIC so badly?
The ‘simple’ and the easy-to-understand road map supplied by the National Insurance Academy (NIA) was helpful to a large extent to reach NIA without being deceived by the auto rickshaw wallahs. The weather was pleasant and that helped me in enjoying the scenic beauty of the mountains of Pune.
The Karimnagar and the Siricilla (two towns in Telangana) Branch Managers (BMs), who were accompanying me in the autorickshaw, plunged themselves happily into their favorite topic – the LIC. I was not existing for them in the autorickshaw!
The auto stopped at the security entrance gate of the NIA. After undergoing the initial and routine security checks, we were dropped at the reception. Wide roads, well cut grasslands, flowers, butterflies, honeybees, birds, trees, ponds, fountains and a sort of intoxicating raw aroma greeted us. Mirror like neatly polished dust free floors, artistically painted walls, cobweb free corners and the immaculately dressed ever smiling staff compelled me to revise my opinion about the insurance Training Institutes.
I felt 10 years younger, carefree, positively enthusiastic and impatiently waited for the tomorrow to come… the much-hyped training to commence. When will that tomorrow come? Needless to add, for the first time during all these years I felt like working – working sincerely. During the rest of the day, we did not do anything except eating a well-cooked hot and delicious lunch and dinner. Ignoring the other participants who were reporting at the reception, we set out to explore the raw beauty of the NIA campus with childlike innocence, wonder and awe.
If the God appears before me and asks me as to what I want, I will ask him….
Oh God! Give me troubles
Troubles after troubles
So that I may not forget you.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
