Knowledge Sharing Story
If life was all simple and everything went as planned, there would be no stories. There are stories only because there were some anomalies and things did not go as planned or things happened very unexpectedly. Everyone has some kind of story where there was a miss and a lesson to learn or when things just went out of hand and it was too late. There was still something to learn from each story. I can think about a number of stories for knowledge sharing and were nearly misses. I also have stories when I was late and missed the train. I am going to share story that was a near miss and taught me a valuable lesson. Near miss is a situation when you were about to be in some sort of situation or trouble and were able to avoid it due to good luck or being in the right place at the right time.
There was a time when I got selected for the Indian Air Force as a flight lieutenant and an engineer. This was something very hard to get into and I was the only candidate selected from my college. I had to report for joining on September 5th and was in preparation for starting a career in the Air Force. Interestingly before I went there, in the month of August a vacancy for the post of a lecturer opened up and I applied for it. Having the top grade I got selected and since this was in my home town I decided to stay there rather than joining Air Force which was about 2500 miles away from home and in a different state. My family was happy as I had a good job as a teacher and stayed in the home city close to everyone. I was happy too but also missed a great opportunity of being in the forces.
The story does not end here but begins here. All the guys who got selected with me in the force used to write me letters and also wanted me to join the forces with them in September. I wrote to them that I had a job as a lecturer and decided to stay at home with my family. The selection process for the Air Force was quite difficult and involved 5 days of testing and physical exercises. There were also a number of guys who could not make it but remembered me because we became good friends over a period of 5 days. I forgot about the whole Air Force thing and became involved in teaching and got very busy. It was not until the month of November, when I went to New Delhi for some reason and met a group of guys who could not make it to the Air Force. They looked at me as if I was a ghost.
This is where the story takes an interesting turn. They asked me how did I survive the crash and I just could not understand what they were talking about. Apparently the class I was supposed to join on September 5th went on their first flight on the Russian built AVRO aircraft in October for a learning trip. The airplane crashed and the whole class including the pilot and an instructor died in the crash. Air Force did not allow any photographs for the crash and also avoided the main stream news. They did not let any journalist come near the crash and had cordoned off the area. I stood still for a minute and then after the shock was gone I told the guys that I had decided to not join the Air Force and stay home as a lecturer in the engineering college. Had I decided otherwise, I would not have survived the crash.
This is my knowledge sharing story of a near miss. This was just by chance that I decided to take on a different career, which saved my life. I had lot of people suggesting me to join the Air Force but had no answer when I told them about the incident. The story had made it to a very few national newspapers and I had to go to the library to did the news out. This was twenty years ago.
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