2 days 2 certificates

On Jan 24, 2009 at 5.30pm I had my karate grading exam. I reached Kamla Devi School at 5.15pm. My sensei Ravi sir was already there. I changed into my uniform and was ready on time. There were almost 100 students appearing for various grades. They were divided age wise in three groups. Warm ups started at 6pm. Then punches, kicks, push ups, knuckle push up, squats, elbow crawls went on for 45 min. Later we were hauled outside into the play ground. There we moved in large circles doing 'mawashi geri'. Later I could not complete my 'walk on the knee'. Never mind. Finally we 'bunny hopped' and 'duck walked' back inside.
Inside we did stretches and then katas started. This is where I stopped. I have forgotten 3 katas that I knew in 2000. Too many years have passed by and I have 'restarted' karate only 4 months back. I will learn first 2 katas in next 15 days, surely. The exam got over at 7.45pm. Well it was one and half hour of solid work out. Certificates were issued to us at the end. I am happy at my 'purple belt' (4th KYU) certificate.

Then on Jan 26, 2009 at 10am, I had WIMP&TVSE Association's AGM held at Juhu. Prateek was going to Bandra. I went along with him till Amitabh's house and then walked through the lane besides Arogya Nidhi hospital. The hall is opposite well known Chand Society.
At 11am proceedings started. B N Tiwari took the mike and later B K Chaturvedi spoke. They spoke about Resul Pookutty, as he is the first ever Indian sound engineer nominated for Oscars. It is truely a great honour for the association and also for the FTII. A certificate of appreciation was given to him that was accepted by someone else as Rasul was not present. They placed a shawl on his shoulders, handed him a bouquet and a coconut. I was impressed. I regreted not bringing my camera along. I wanted to click picture of that certificate. The honouring did not end there. Tiwari announced Arun Chakravarti's name and honoured him too in the similar fashion... and next was my own name and later Jagmohan Anand's. Strangely we three are from FTII and Chakki and me are from same batch. Somehow it is strange that Tiwari spoke highly about everyone as sincere professional technicians but for me added 'he is a very nice person'. I will relish that comment for long. Long back my friend Macmohan also said the same thing while introducing me to someone at a party.
After this three of us were called to the dias and take over the responsibility of judges for the executive committee elections. Boy that was some marathon. The attendance was nearly 300. All three us had to sign all the votes. Voting process too was quite slow as there only two ballet boxes. After all the voting, counting started. This too was slow. I had to device a method to make it faster. It did work. Finally I announced the results making a small goof up. Bhagat Singh and Subhash Sahu won. The proceedings went on till 6.30pm. At 6.45pm I walked out in a tired daze clutching the shawl, flowers, coconut and the precious certificate.