‘Are you ready?’

Razia Khan conducts the exercises today 

After 10 years of conducting free-hand exercises, flawlessly, Razia Khan today woke up to the realization that she was not cut for the task. Discomfiting as this may sound, she was told that she did not know the first thing about exercising: How to pace it out?
“Keep a gap between one exercise and the next,” Arun Patil instructed her from the sidelines. “Give people time to recover their breath after each exercise. Ask them if they are ready for the next. What is the hurry to finish off?”
“Yes, Razia conducts the exercises too fast,” grumbled Khatoon Baig.
Razia took the reproof sportingly and from then on, much to our amusement, took permission from all before starting every exercise. “Are you ready?” she joked, tongue firmly in cheek, before proceeding to the next number.
“You should carry a whistle from tomorrow,” advised Yusuf Rassiwala, who had been quietly watching the fun. “Every time you move to a new exercise, blow the whistle and that shall be a signal for us to get ready.

Kiran Prakash and Purushottam Sharma

You don’t have to take permission every time.”
Tara Chand Seth had a different take: “Instead of giving Razia a whistle, why doesn’t someone give Arun a nipple (soother) to shut his mouth? He talks too much these days, unnecessarily!” And so did everybody get something to talk and laugh about on an otherwise dull morning.
Meanwhile, in keeping with our series of SPOT REPORTS from the group touring the North East,

Setting out on the jeep safari

here’s the latest (and the last) despatch: “After the elephant safari and a visit to Kaziranga National Orchid and Biodiversity Park, we set out for an adventure by jeep across the wildlife sanctuary. But the jeep safari was more like a roller coaster ride. Since there were no proper roads, we had to negotiate kutcha tracks in the jungle, bouncing up and down all the way in the open jeep, hoping to spot some wild animals in their natural habitat. We were told that there are very few counted tigers in the park and they could rarely be seen. But there were the rhinos, wild elephants, deer, bison, etc. Every time an animal was sighted, the jeep would stop for us to take a good look through the tall grass. For city people, these encounters in the wild are hard to describe. We are now headed home -- first to Guwahati from where we shall board a flight to Mumbai in the evening. End of the trip.”
Karun Sharma:
Many a time we paint a person black because of a single incident. It is so simple to tell Razia to keep a little more gap between exercises and we are sure she will do it. When we find that we are not able to make changes in a person, we ourselves are also responsible for the failure. Do it Razia, for the sake of POSITIVITY.