MY BODY A TEMPLE

as a small kid i have often wondered at how much some people put their bodies through,.. just to try and stretch the limits of what the human body is capable of...i have heard of Buddhist monks up in the Himalayas surviving blitzing winds with a wrap around maroon shawl...or those on the Ripley's believe it or not series trying everything from surviving extreme colds to STAYING underwater for inhuman periods ...crazy.. but then these very weird ones not only survive but thrive in such crazy situations....well doesn't it strike us as to how different are we from these people in flesh and blood..NOT VERY DIFFERENT...so hypothetically speaking most of us too should be able to do the same crazy stuff...survive fatigue, cold, rain and vagaries of weather and terrain... its almost like your bodies were roughed into the wildest and toughest environs to live it up and get immune to it...evolution in its own little ways...sounds easy

but my own genesis into this world was a brutal shock as i slid helplessly into the life i never thought I'd see... life seems easy with mom's food served on every meal, friends to shoulder ur tribulations and pains, comforts of air conditioned rooms/cars /malls and all... the coziness of your mink blanket on a wintry evening someone looking over you when ur down with viral... movies to watch and the realm of mobile phones,Internet and i pods to kill time alone... these were trivial things i had so darn often taken oh so lightly..until life dished out its vaccinations in bulk to make me face the toughest and the bleakest times as if it was my daily bread...
... from the comfort of familiar surroundings i was roped into the profession of arms... almost too soon i found myself fighting the simplest pleasures in life with an oath to build up mental robustness.. it would have been easy if life other wise was a battle by itself...somehow with things happening the way it did i found my worst days until then, a cake walk in comparison to what i was undergoing at the academy...

when the going gets tough, the tough get going

... that was exactly how the anthem went in my little world of guns, guts and glory...it kept me away from my family, friends and life, making hell seem so real...mercy was something i never saw...i thirsted to see a smile, a gesture of love.. and all i could see in the din of military training was toughening and stretching the limits of my poor body till i saw where i could reach, till i saw no boundaries anymore... the pain was sometimes blunt and numb..the misery overpowering... the elements wicked to the core...we saw pain as if it was never ending..we lived through nights when the cold freaky wind snatched the very essence from our souls...we've survived days of brutality which was dished out with so much ease...we lived days missing out on everything and everyone in the real world...a world that got even more distant as the misery built on...

there were many who couldn't make it to the "last step" - the gold embossed words inscribed on the stairs through which we march across to the haunting tune of 'auld lang syne' on the last day of passing out from the academy...there were many who broke down in silence...many cried nights through...many sacrificed life and limb-a price, that training days expects from the wanna be officers and gentlemen