My reemployment at HQ Maintenance Command was to expire in November 1999 . By June of 1999 I had already asked for an extension of one year . However as I had already completed 5 years of re employment so the chances of getting another extension were rather remote ! However to our surprise my posting came to Hq Training Command Bangalore in that month . During those days there were rumors that in cases where Air Hq did not want to give extension to an officer without saying so in so many words , he was posted out to a faraway place . This automatically solved the problem of extension , as in most of the cases the officer did not want to move away from his selected place of re-employment and quit on his own :-)
So far as I was concerned , I was not playing the share market , doing side business in real estate or share brokerage during working hours , a routine practice with quite q few number of officers particularly those posted at Delhi . We had no school going kids and no over riding interest in staying at Nagpur so there was nothing holding us back from proceeding on posting! In any case we had decided that I would do my work to the best of my ability and not willingly let go of the IAF, unless they did not want me no more and said so in so many words with reasons as to why !
We thought about the posting . In the best of circumstances , that is if my extension for another year comes through I would then retire from The IAF from Bangalore in November 2000 maximum an year and half stay at that place . In the worst case scenerio I would retire in November 1999 that is after a stay of five months . Under these circumstances we decided to go on posting with least amount of luggage and go by car . It was a daring decision as I had never driven our maruti more then 40 odd kilometers beyond Nagpur and Priti had not driven even that much !! Our complete luggage consisted of 4 packing cases and one TV which we sent off to Bangalore . Priti's niece was married to a Naval Officer who was doing a course at that time at CDM in Secundrabad . Hyderabad being half way we decided to spend couple of days with them before proceeding to Bangalore .
Then the preparations for the car journey began . Got the maps studied the distances and asked various people about road condition, places to stay etc . We asked experienced travelers if we have to break journey and stay over night on the way to Hyderabad . We were assured that reaching Hyderabad from Nagpur on the same day was no problem at all . In fact we met one odd fellow who claimed to have made the journey all the way to Bangalore in one go as they had some emergency at home . After so many positive feed backs we we were assured and started feeling confident that "yes , may be we can make it to Hyderabad on the same day without any hitches ." Now , after all these years and having trapised all over India in our car we feel that all those ghuta hua travelers must have had a good laugh at our anxiety fears . Any way with all these experienced travelers we discussed the sun rise , sunset timings and also the discussed the best time to start . Due to bad habits of most of the Indian drivers and particularly of long distance truck drivers to drive with head lights on full beam I used to be almost blinded and found it most difficult to see the road ahead and on many an occasion had almost gone in a ditch or hit some thing by the road side . So It was decided to drive only during day light hours and call it a day & make night halt at which ever place we were before it became dark and made use of head light necessary . So the rule followed was start as soon as it becomes sufficient light in the morning and stop at any place before sunset . It was a wise decision which was to be followed in all future journeys.
During my morning walks I started going earlier just to check light conditions during dawn and day break to arrive at our wheels roll time ( starting time to the un-initiated ).
Finally the departure date as decided approached .
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