Anurag Jain's Blog on Bangalore Events, Travel, IIM Bangalore, IIM, IIMB, Management

Friday, December 20, 2002

Posted 10:04 PM by Anurag

Major R S Bangari (a PhD colleague) sent a mail 2 days about his regiment Para-Troopers' golden jubilee celebrations to be held today at Jakkur airfield. I went there for sure! As the show was to start at 0800, Me and Hari got up at 0610 today and drove down to Jakkur in nice december pink-winter morning. The place was full of defence people and NCC cadets. General public didn't seem to know about the celebrations so much. The show started with paratroopers jumping from a turbo-prop Dornier(?) flying at a low altitude. This feat was repeated thrice. Then there were microlights and ultralights taking off all over the place. After that came the feat of my key interest: sky-diving. Since sky was clear and it was a real bright day, visibility was real good. At least some 20 paratroopers dived at real good height from a turbo-plane again. After a good free-fall, they opened thier chutes. Three of them had chutes of each color from Indian Flag and they bonded together and made a visually appealing tricolor combination. The last guy to touch down came real fast! He must have been the best of the lot. After this there were back-pack paramotor flights, more microlights, gliders etc. Then came AirForce helicopters. Starting with the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH). That was real COOL,. what with all the hovering, flying in reverse, nosediving, tearing the air upwards vetically and all!! ALH I saw for first time early this year at AeroIndia Air Show at Yelhanka. ALH is a real marvel of indigenous engineering. After ALH came regular Air Force choppers which showed some typical paratrooper regiment's operations. Then I think came a Schweizer from HAL Rotor Wing Academy. Which also performed neat maneuvers. Show got over at 1000 and then we started for back to hostel. On the way back, took a break at Barista (MG Road) for that essential cuppa coffee. All in all it was a perfect morning!

See pics at http://www.anuragjain.com/aviation.html#paras

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Monday, December 09, 2002

Posted 2:30 PM by Anurag

Yesterday was a wonderful sunny Bangalore day when I got to meet some old friends after quite sometime. Rashmi called up from Kanteerva Indoor stadium where her hospital was participating in a health care show. As Paras had come down from Bhopal on a business trip and was there with Rashmi, I went to meet 'em both and that's when Rashmi gave me surprise news that she got engaged last week!! After the good news, we three and Rashmi's 2 colleagues (Arnab and one more person) went for lunch @ Casa Piccolo. Later had some fun at the show and then me and Paras came back to the campus and had nice chit-chat time @ Cafe Coffee Day. Somehow, Swati's always missing from action. She seems to be too busy with her boyfriend and job.

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