Saturday, June 14, 2008

A room full of Land Mines ...

A room full of 34 land mines, a bomb squad of 10 people who had less than a minute of preparation and very little room to move around, and a tricky set of mines cause they had to be diffused in a pre decided sequence or else they would all blow up. And 30 seconds or all would blow up anyway. Would you strategize or would you pray? We strategized in the little time we had but managed to diffuse only 16 and it all blew up. Right in front of our eyes. All of us survived and I was chosen to tell this tale. Are you wondering how?? It was coz the bombs were made of yellow sheets of paper that we had to cross out with a marker to diffuse during a team building activity inside an auditorium in Mysore!!

If that sounds like fun, you bet we had the time of our lives on the ITMC trip to Mysore, right from the minute we left, driving down from Bangalore the previous evening, till the minute the bus dropped us to our homes the following evening. The ITMC trip to Mysore was for a team building exercise that Srinath and Sujatha from the ILI had planned out for us, and it turned out to be so much more than just that.

From walking at midnight looking for a tea stall and walking back coz we didn’t find one, to the breakfast where our madam president wouldn’t let us eat coz we were getting late for the session (which we ate to our hearts content anyway), from the session where we we’re faced with a myriad of perspectives and opinions, and we learnt the difference between winning to win, and winning to defeat, to the dance moves that one could perform within the constraints of a bus seat with no leg space irrespective of the song being played, from learning about people’s ways of communicating with the animal kingdom to being rewarded with encouraging words of your peers who got to know things about you which probably even you were unaware of, it was an experience that I possibly cannot put down on a sheet of paper, but will cherish through a lifetime.

It was a beautiful sunset, flavored with a slight drizzle and great company that we started out with, only to return with absolutely no energy left, friendships to last us a lifetime and a million memories to cherish forever. Cheers!!!