The Armament

Dear Jatin,
I am indeed grateful that you remembered me today through the medium of your email. I am fine and hope the same with you. Often the writer straightaway jumps to the meat of the letter and forgets the niceties of normal conversation - even if it is through letter. Like I had mentioned before, I am doing a course at ASCI in anticipation of my retirement . The course will help us in preparing for life out of uniform. It is quite interesting and as part of our curriculum we visit various companies and government installations. You will I am sure be interested in our activities . I am sure that you are keeping abreast of our activities through our blog. Today we went to an installation where they were manufacturing armaments. We were looking forward to this visit for a long time and it finally fructified after an inordinately long time. We were accompanied by scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO). They were about 27 n number. For a change our visit was well coordinated and reception was in place. That was after we were unexpectedly delayed due to a wrong turn here and a misdirection there...

Group Photo Prior to Briefing

The project was in place since 1998 and has gone from strength to strength since that time. The project director was One Mr Manoj Kumar - a dynamic and hard working mechanical Engineer from Jabalpur. When asked where he was from - his reaction was typical- "I am from Jabalpur , but for the past 23 years since the inception of the project I have been in Hyderabad. It has become a second home ."  He continued in the same vein " when we came here , the entire area was a jungle but we were provided complete cooperation by the government and the locals alike. What you see here today is the facility developed painstakingly over a period of time. I am happy to say that we are now totally self sufficient not only with respect to the project but also otherwise. We employ and train people locally for carrying out tasks on the armaments locally. It not only provides us readily available manpower but also helps them make something of their lives. It is a symbiotic relationship".
Before we proceeded on a briefing and tour of the facility we all had a group photograph for posterity. Mr Manoj Kumar then conducted us to the briefing room where he proceeded to brief us about the work that they were carrying out to help India a better place to live in.

Briefing

By the way I hope that you did not feel bad that I did not call you on your birthday. In my defence I can only say that your phone was consistently giving the 'switched off' signal. I hope you got my greetings on the facebook.Any how Mr Manoj Kumar then proceeded to brief us in general and then about the armament and its capabilities. I can tell you with confidence that the ability of the armament is such that it can destroy pinpoint targets at a designated distance.
While the lecture was on we were simultaneously fed and provided bevarages. Considering that there were scientists from the ISRO also attending the lecture, it was but natural that the questions turn technical and searching . They id not let Mr Manoj Kumar off easily and posed searching queries , which I have to admit that Mr Manoj Answered quite satisfactorily . Of course we had a few questions of our own...

Further Briefing

In the morning we had a class on Supply Chain Management. I had mentioned Prof  Sachendra earlier who was the instructor of the day.As usual his teaching methods followed  unexpected and interesting turns . In this way we were to assimilate the lessons on supply chain Management in an effective manner. With the instruction still fresh in our minds, it was but natural that our questions were more to do with logistics mechanisms involved in the transportation of the armament to its place of use, planning for the procurement of innocuous raw material which could be converted into the deadly weapons and capacity and capability of the plant as also procedures in place for maintaining high standards of quality , so that the weapon did not fail in the time of need. Being put through the paces a number of times in his professional life Mr Manoj Kumar came up with the right responses to our queries. We thank him for  his patience
Well, all good things mist come to an end. The major gains from the visit being that we could learn about an armament which we had only seen in the Republic  Day Parade, up close and meeting the scientists from ISRO and getting to know them. Do you know - We have a tremendous respect for these  intrepid ISRO scientists who have done India proud with their accomplishments and put India on the world space Map. I am sure that with their hard work , dedication and superior brains they will continue to do India proud in times to come. We hope to visit SHAR soon in the near future.
I am sorry that I will have to reluctantly take leave from this verbal onslaught and hope that you will continue to keep in touch - now that the ice is broken .....

Bye