Just Cognizant'ized

Well into the 101th hour of being Cognizant’ized , Iam compelled to say so far it has been wonderful time yet. Having planned since last night to scribble a few initial thoughts on the blog , I have had multiple revisions and re-statements of the lines just over a zillion times in my mind. How to sound knowledgable ( apparently ) , how to sound politically correct , how not to raise many an eye-brow over the write-up et al are just a few of the scares that pushed-n-pulled me simultaneously. In the end , jovial as my nature is , the best way to compose the first blog-post concluded to be the most natural way I know how to write. So here I go with the 100+ hours journey of entering into this wonderful place called Cognizant.

I shall recount my sojourn with the flashback which was no less than a filmy ‘Hera-Pheri’.

Sometime mid-2010 ( while I was in the US and planning to return to India )

I started having the four-year-itch (vis-a-vis the seven-year-itch) when all of a sudden my brother,who is a Cognizant’ian and my room-mate,yet another Cognizant’ine started speaking so high of their company’s. Afterall , who in this IT-world could ever be so very satisfied and contended with thy-company. Admit it or not , we all have constant whinings and complaints about every other thing pertaining to our employer. I too had many. Here, these two innocent souls were singing odes, which made me wake up in the dead of night in sheer disbelief. My employer too was among ‘The Big Daddy’s’ of IT world. How can other companies shadow the benefits of a behemoth of a company of mine?After so many interminable how’s , why’s and what’s I convinced myself that may I was sitting comfortably in my own cocoon of a la-la land without much attention to the market place. Absolutely oblivious to the market-heating up to the IT jobs , I was far off from India, the center of action, the eye of the twister. With the growing number of ‘knowledge sessions’ these two people subjected me to day-in and day-out , I made my resolve to check out if the reality is somewhere close to where these guys had been tormenting me about. There comes a point in your life, when you feel awkward seeing your own resume as compared to peers. In my case, I was never bereft of such feeling for even a single moment. My resume looked atypical of a 4/5 year experienced candidate, nothing to show-off, nothing which jumped off the page to wow anyone , no significant achievements to boast , not many awards to cite , not many technical skills to blurt , absolutely dead-meat resume, plain vanilla cut n dry profile. Quite surreptiously my brother had earned himself a large fan-base of friends who had approached him to “touch-up” their resumes with his superior command over language. He was so good at it, he managed to have a strike-rate of 100%, wherein he would “brush” their ordinary looking resumes elevated to the position wherein Sir Winston Churchill would feel slighted with accomplishments and citations of brilliance. I immediately summoned my brother in the dead-of-night ( EST) and discussed length and breadth of the polishing that needs to be done to my resume. There it all started, we time and again came back to our most revered SCM ( Software Configuration Management ) parlance , versioning of the resume. Versions 1.x did not go well ; so did versions 2.x; 3.x were the versions which seemed more likely of a good resume. My brother untiringly complied with all my requests and codified all the changes ( fonts, spacing,alignment,content,verbiage et al). In the end, it was decided that the “breathing document”(yes another term borrowed from IT) , it ought to be sent out. The countdown of my arrival started and we timelined that the interviews and all should be coincided aroundthe same time ( which was around the same time last year). He posted my profile somewhere around the last quarter of FY11 ( wow I sound like a manager) and “late-latief” as I am popularly known , it did not get much of attention till about closing days of December. One round of interview and I was pretty certain that I stand a very bright chance of breezing past the interviews round. ( Albeit less knowledgable , God has been kind enough to bless me with a decent level of communication skills, which saved my days many a time in the past as well).

Fast forward Jan 2011

With no response in sight and time running up, started the mutiple-chaining of emails with discussions going time and again. Soon enough, I was getting doubled ( no reference to size ) , my marriage got fixed after months and thousands of man-hours of discussions. She was employed with yet another IT major. So making a job shift was becoming the task-of-the-hour. Round after round, telephonic discussions went on until we aligned on the final list of Go-No Go issues.

Come Feb-2011

Raj gets married and lives thereafter.

March-April-May 2011

The resignation from my company, notice period discussions, retention strategies , onsite travel lures, accomodative work-schedules, the proverbial “Work-Life Balance” promises , promotions et al, all came my way. However, after deciding , there should be no turning back, or in IT parlance “Point-of-no-return”.

June 2011

The ninth hour of the sixth day of the sixth month of 2011 was the reporting time to the Cognizant office@DLF,Hyderabad. It is precisely at such impending moments of life when the whole Big-Bang theory comes to life. The entire universe seems to be conspiring against you making it almost impossible to make it through. The auto-driver who had sworn the previous evening to pick me up does’nt show up;the stand-by autos nearby to my house suddenly vanish into thin air;the distance to march towards the next main road seems to be increasing at the rate of 10-light-years per second;one auto-driver sensing my desperation quotes exhorbitant money to land me at office;one of the experience letters had not been photo-copied;the auto-driver who agrees to drop drives at a sweet-own-leisure;the traffic signals seems to all get in sync and blink only red one after other;the driver misses the right-turn and instead races past ahead of the campus;the designated place of the induction is changed due to reasons best known to nobody so on and so forth.

Finally, I arrive at the board room and immediately get nostalgic about the last time when I had seen such a array of strewn papers to be signed on till the ink in the pen is over. That was four years ago. Now again, the same time, same ambience. The HR team had lined up a ton of rim of papers to be read and filled and signed and dated on. The tonnage of the paper work could have not been lesser than 2 tons per candidate. A few shockers sprinkled here and there;a few jokes,a few games, bundles of presentation sessions,volunteers walking in and out of the room articulating the ‘Sea of C’s”. I just got to wondering if there are as many C’s in the decks , then how many more would be encountered while working. The answer struck me almost instantly. To count the C and get over-whelmed is nothing new, better stop the count and concentrate more on the operational aspects. My previous employer had the noteirity of sloshing everyone with the sheer number of acronyms, the longer you stay the more number of acronyms get into your head. After the second year over there, I could make up a few of my own. After a point , my name as well got acronymised GRS with one of the client portfolios. Then I ended acronymization lest it should creep up to my family members as well.

So finally after an 8-hour shift of reading and signing documents infinitely the day came to a close with opening of the new bank accounts. The 22-member batch of new joinees bade good-byes and good lucks to one another promising to keep in touch. The presenters wished good stay and long tenure at Cognizant to all of us. Prominent members from our batch were very very jolly and we all were happy to start our new innings in our professional careers.

Here I am sitting in the confines of one of the premises of Cognizant and trying to post a blog and multi-tasking with the initial formalities of system updations.

Concluding my post with a few words of genuine appreciation and support to all who had helped me come on-board with a lakh of other Cognizant’ines , I can manage to say a whole hearted Thank You. I appreciate your help and support. I truely feel blessed to be in such a great place to work,have fun and grow professionally.

Ponderings.....

Though this post does not necessarily fall in line with my 'Excuses for not actively blogging' series , I am somehow pumped up to post a few lines(i mean a few hundred of course - I do not know how not to be verbose).

The haste with this I was recalled here to the US just after just over a month in India is indeed one of the most damning events that has taken place for a long time. The events that followed the announcement date for my trip could at best be described as - 'genocides'. A string of mishaps - interminably littered all over have left me little time to contemplate on the pros-n-cons. My usual 'tension-not' attitude took a severe blow with irreparable losses . I had always kept my priorities and people straight with most of my actions directed towards the well-being. In one of the more severest hits I feel suddenly being targeted for being near altruistic. I have never claimed to be a saint NOR did I ever feel good about sainthood, however, I have been innately very proud of myself for having the ability to balance out evenly on the aspect of NOT causing problem to most of the people around me - least of all those who I adore. It is indeed a very saddening reality that being insanely selfless normally results in 'the hunter gets hunted'.

I personally held high my belief that being good always boomerangs with more good added to it. Seldom does it happen that way. It is indeed shameful that goodness does not breed more goodness, instead it often results in being made the dart-board. Though I would not be very comfortable in revealing more details about all my plights on having the courage to deal with the intervening untoward situations, it would be more than enough to say that there are few things that can match the complexity of destiny. It twists and entangles people and situations in such an intricate cob-web that by the time people come out to free themselves it is almost a done-and-dusted story. I have rarely been in such a deeply contemplative state of mind leading to quite a few moments of black-out. However, admittance is half peace. My admission to the fact that quite a few many times in these 45 days I have been sleeping with the devil in my mind and an enraged anger directed towards the nameless.

First of all, the project for which I came to the US, on the imminent insistence of manager was all in the drain. The project after a fortnight of efforts had been called off owing to some business negotiations failing over SoW. Viola , the news was spread to the immediately affected people – me and the project manager who had been hired and fired in haste. The director of technologies had personally called a meeting and candy-coated the news and informed us that since the negotiations had stalled and hence the funding has been curtailed. In lieu of this ‘sudden’ development coming to light , there was just enough funding to pay my company for my services for just a week more. This in crude words means – we failed to complete the business side negotiations before jumping the gun and calling you from India to the US and hence with no money to fund my billing, I would be released from the project within a week. I was visibly upset, however my heart knew no bounds of happiness – as with no project for me, I would be sent back to India within 15 days of coming to the US. This would have given me another window to attend to domestic affairs. However, with the news that we would be allowed a maximum of 2 weeks to sit ‘un-employed’ on bench, after which failure to be pushed into a project would result in being sent back to India for re-deployment I was just counting my days left . Alas, luck rarely sees me in good light , the 12th day I was informed of an interview and pre-decided selection into one of the biggest projects won by my company. The interview went good , with the client manager asking me more of People Management questions – conflict resolution , span of power et al. Big mouth as I am, added to the fact the I had studied OB during one of my XL courses , I breezed past through the interview questions and most probably impressed the manager of my superior communication skills. I was selected and asked to re-locate to one of the most sparsely populated places – Greensboro, NC.

The project, as I have been informed is a long-term project – supposedly 3+ years which could be potentially stretched upto 5-7 years. However , since I harbor no intentions of sticking around in the US for so long , I would be definitely wrapping around my assigned project pretty sooner this year. The place Greensboro , is at best described as a loner place – the population seems to be just a shade over 1 Lakh. I have the first week of my stay was spent in the hotel and next week I came in and out of a friend’s place in a jiffy. Unbearably miser as he is , I could not stay a moment longer and I got out his place to shift to another friend’s place and soon we moved into our leased apartment from Feb 1. The friend’s with whom I have moved in are also new to the place and good fellows. Hopefully the stay over here should roll out pretty much smooth. Fingers crossed.

A few other extremely private happenings have indeed had a debilitating affect which I would spare to put in here. Strength of personality which I am extremely proud of , would surely make me come good.

I close this scribble here as I have no further intentions of pondering over the time which passed by in the last few days. Normally this is not the way I am accustomed to write or be in a deeply thoughtful mode , however I somehow motivated to keep my blog active instead of dead.

Keep rocking and blogging my dear friends !!!!

Why have NOT been blogging off late - Excuse#1

The last time I sat to scribble a new post on the blog was around a shameful 6 months ago. It is giving me pangs of embarrassment to remember the time period when I last posted. In the meanwhile, I have been seeing many of my friends/co-bloggers racing past ahead of me in the cyber-diary. I have been reading most of them and in a sense trying to derive some inspiration to keep up pace with them. A few of the bloggers had posted many a thing from a big personal loss ;concocted romantic utopian fables to lessons on ethics/morality to inability to strike a work-life balance to corporate fundas. These varied topics have made me sit and think, as to how and why am I not squiggling anything on the blog. A RCA(you better get acquainted with acronyms) made me come to the conclusion that, off late so many things have been happening at my end so fast added to the fact that I have been becoming a lazy sloth, so Iam neglecting this part. Excuse me for the sad description strewn with lame excuses. However, with the heralding of the new year 2010, I have vowed to write more often. By the way, it would give me some pleasure and some pain in describing the happenings of the past 6 months . Please bear with me when I flesh out some of them in vivid detail:

Come August 2009 : By the end of july/start of Aug, I was in the rush to make my first trip to the land of $$$. Though I was happy for having got the opportunity to visit US after slogging off my derriere for 3.5 years in the company, i was double minded of the timing. The dilemma arouse from the fact that though at a professional level I would be getting chance to move ahead(or rather in line with the IT herd) it would mean a delay over some imminent personal affairs. As is always my tendency, I figure out the devil in the closet only after I start cleaning up the mess. The onsite opportunity presented variety of pros and cons for me. However, as always happens with me, iam always on the edge of the cliff ready to be gently scrubbed off by the (allegedly)‘feather-touch’ actions of people around me. The whole exercise of the US trip was conducted in such a jiffy that, at one moment I was spreading my legs in front of the travel desk guys to get me Visa stamped , the other I was screaming in the parking lot over the guards to let my bike out of the parking area ; then I was shuttling between the two most uselessly separated office buildings within the same city – a distance of just 20 kms ; then I was made to realize at the 11th hour that US guys do not accept the standart Indian Passport size photos, instead they have a special specification, the studio lady was so rapt in her attention on the ongoing street-fight between two fellows that my call to her was not enough to distract her. I had to make my voice more of a baritone to grab her attention. One set of fotos never come out good for me, so a second shot and a third shot were taken. I snatched my fotos from her and ran away to meet the traveldesk czars who call the shots on who would travel easily and who would have to make a fight at every instance. Then the Visa interview dates were soon becoming the latest talk of the day. It is precisely at such moments of personal despair that rumour mills start to spread news about facing the most unprecedented of circumstances which had to erupt at the exact moment when I ventured out to work. Chief among them were – US Consulate has stopped giving dates for Visa interviews ; The Consulate building is undergoing some reconstruction work hence no dates would be made available till August end; For the IT MNC’s Obama has created more road-blocks than the roads of Pune thereby actively filtering out people rather than letting foreigners into the US ; Swine flu is catching up fast in India and hence US would not allow anyone entry into the US without a certificate from the highest medical authority(Governer/CM/PM/President of India or the CJI??). More the number of mouths more the number of ‘news’. Amidst all such ruckus , I braved to get the dates and schedule my trip to the US Consulate in Mumbai along with dad. The cab driver was driving us nuts with his superlative Ferrari-driving-skills all to be guinea-pig-tested on us. Somehow the Visa interview lasted for about 3 minutes – the lady at the other side of the table was from Florida and my petition mentioned as the same state. She was pretty too, and with a blink of the eye she stamped my petition. I too in my usual suave manner passed on a smirk towards her. Our ‘nain-matakka’ went on for a minute and as it is 100000 other things were already running up my mind. Then the bomb exploded, my stamped passport would reach the office only the next day. Viola, and my ticket for the US was the next day evening!! My dad often says, I end up making things difficult, worse even more, things start becoming difficult when Raj enters the picture. Now I all of a sudden could hear chimes ringing( I somehow felt the pain within my body as to which organ was being used to sound the chimes). No amount of self-sympathy was enough to make the skinny guy convinced that I need it today itself. Of course he meets hundreds of such hopefuls daily, so expecting him to make peace with me was obviously too much. But then we Indians, when do we lose hope. We have the uncanny ability to flight to the last straw even when we see all the shutters of the movie theaters being closed due to ticket unavailabilty , as if we would be ready to stand and watch the movie inside the hall. So was I in all true Indian spirit requesting the fellow to consider my case and issue the visa stamped passport the same day. These Americans have a way of informing upfront, without beating around the bush, the way we Indians are trained to speak and hear any piece of news. Me and dad returned to Pune to start the packing for the possible next day packing for the US trip. The cab driver was denying us the basic necessity of lunch for the day on the argument that , he would air-drop us in Pune in another couple of hours. Dad had to jump into the fray to ask him to stop for lunch. The sumptuous meal was not going in as the fear of not getting the passport for travel was lurking in my perennially disgruntled mind. Without the passport , I would not get the tickets , without tickets I would not get the travel insurance and without the insurance there is only one way of travelling to the US – dead meat form!!! Returning to pune , I had started packing and unpacking all the stuff in the house in search for the perfect baggages for the trip. The very moment I start searching for a thing, it starts following Murphy’s law – it gets hidden into such black-hole like places in the house, that I can never find them. The normally useless stuff like suitcases, were now becoming objects of my desire. Not able to find them , no time to go out and purchase no friends come to rescue , mom starts lecturing on the virtues of leading a well-planned life , ravi absent in his office , office formalities incomplete – NOT a single thing was going good and nothing gave even the slightest of illusion that I would be in a position to travel the next day. All objects – living and non-living, were speaking to me announcing the same message – YOU ARE GOING NOWHERE tomorrow!!! Life is tough , its tougher when you are stuck in shit !!! Somehow , the night passed off un-eventful, with 60% of packing done. The next morning, Iam struck by lightening that I do not have enough of inner-wear clothes – alas, without them I would be doomed. Pune central – rushed to the place and bought about a dozen of them, some single coloured, some multi-coloured and some oddest of color combinations, however , who in this world would be interested in seeing ‘what lies beneath’. To the thankful efficiency of our courier syndicates , my passport which was supposed ot be delivered to my office in the morning, I was tracking minute-by-minute about the status of the delivery. Finally, the sun dawned on those guys and it was delivered in the noon 2:30 PM. I started off to Mumbai in exactly 37 minutes after this momentous event. Mom was all the way in the cab, getting teary over the event that would separate us for a span of just 3 months – that’s how mother’s are, she has been through the separation for well over 4 years of my engineering, and here she is, almost crying over the 3 month duration. Dad was sparingly giving his advices based upon his trip to the Europe and other destinations on the way of lives in country’s other than India. Kator, was watching all the actions in the cab, just passing a smile and comforting mom sometimes. I was all the way rehearsing the place where I kept all the documents, place to go when Iam questioned by any authority’s and of course all the while I was hoping that the $ Vs INR exchange rate soared above 50( selfish me, but then that’s the way my mind was thinking at that point).
Finally, we reached the premises of the airport, when our cab was just kissed by the car behind us and then all hell broke loose. The cab driver was enraged and was hurling choicest of abuses at the other driver and was not ready to budge an inch from the place. It took the cop to interevene and make the driver move ahead – I was thankful to the maamu, as the 3 hour check-in time for all international flights was coming near by. Mom could not control her tears and she broke, while asking me to be strong. Dad too I felt had his eyes a bit damp though it really did not show up. Kator, was in his as usual jolly mood happy for my maiden trip to US. Finally I entered the airport and from there on I never came out to see off mom dad and kator. Seems that they were waiting for an hour.
My flight started off at 11:15 PM and there I finally started off my flight to the US with,without and inspite of all hinderances.
The next few posts would be dedicated to the 3 month vacation( as some of my friends say its hard to call it project work, as I have the infamy of masti during the tightest of schedules), then I would throw light on a few other issues which have been keeping my buzee mind all the more buzee.
In the meanwhile, though there is nothing un-usual about the haste which precludes any IT pro's US trip , it is the manner in which I saw things coming to a dead-stop at one instance and then revving up to speed the other moment.
Request you all to put in your comments !!!

My ex-associates.....

A fortnight ago, a very eventful journey in my life came to an end. Though all good things are supposed to come to an end, this journey was particulary not very enjoyable one. The reason why I say this is coz, as in common with any phase,it was indeed a bumpy ride. Though I was pretty glad that it ended finally. Without further verbalizing it too much, let me tell what exactly happened that pleased me - I finally managed to take a release from the age-old project, I had been associated with it for the past 2.5 years. For all the time I had spent in the project, having faced the ire of some of the team members owing to the nature of my job profile,earned the abuses of some more members for the simple reason of being able to walk scot free inspite of damaging their reputation as a techy guys, sparringly pronounced by a few "incompetent managers" to be absolutely dispensible in the team et al. I had no reason to take any of these comments on my stride - as I had devil-I-care attitude within the team. Let me seggregate our team and let you know of the few of the popular characters and their category(albeit I would not name them,it would be very much implied for those who know my team).

The foremost group, in which I had little friends belongs to the,allow me to call them 'PIT's' - Pain in the Team fellows. This group had a remarkable ability to complain and crib about every damn happening in the team,project,account,company,industry,city,state,country,world and yes of course the galaxy!!! I have worked with such PITs for about an year. Their troop leader was God of cribbers,founder member and promoter of the perennially disgruntled...It seemed so hard to work with this person that I had this growing feeling that breathing in front of him too might be taken as a slight and he might come up with still a worse statement expressing displeasure on the organic activity. His levels of discontent were so high that I was sure that, had Lincon met him by chance during the course of his innumerable failures, he would have long long ago given up any hopes of rising in life. A small narration is in order for highlighting his "quality" behaviour!!! One fine morning, as usual in my carefree demeanour, I had approached him for a technical query resolution on one of our projects. Being in a cheerful mode, I picked up his pen and notebook to jot down a few points without requesting him. This cheeky act angered him boundless and he decided to "teach" me a lesson to not to be cheeky when it comes to project work. Though communicatively impoverished, he was no match for me, his constant references to dislike for the frivolous behaviour of certain team members towards the seniors in the team(yes FYI, he was called the daadu of our project, he has been in this project when Jesus was sermoning the jews!!!) was clearly making perfect sense for me indicating his direction towards me. After a few minutes of discussions on the project, he was back into his true colours - indefatigable pessimism!! He started lecturing about the absolute lack of morality in the managers,who instead of promoting him to onsite chose others;the lack of professionalism in his PeM(yes mine is a matrix organization with multiple managers to report to, i can not divulge further details) by awarding him meagre ratings YoY;the repulsive and obsolete technology which the project was working on;the ever-so-irritating-pain-in-the-Ahem Ahem testers, who had no better work than to challenge his authority over the project;the lacklustre performance bonuses;the chilling AC;the un-bendable chairs;the thankless account executive,who instead of heaping multiple Nobel prizes on him, for writing out the oh-so-novel 'System.out.println' statements, chose to give a simple smile everytime;the HR department who has failed to recognize the wonderful contribution he makes to the company by mere stepping inside the office regularly;the payroll department, who have been foolishly failing to add a few billions to his account;the floor boys who never care to recognize his 'sulken' face day-in-day-out,but manage to carry out their tasks in a purely mechanical fashion;the company tag which has to be 'latkaaoed' daily,wherein the biometric recognition system for employees could have been installed;the RKHS cafeteria team, who has nothing better to do than to server the mundane n repeated full thali to eat;the telephone;the dustbins;the mysteriously houseful meeting rooms;the lighting;the printer room;the pantry area.....the list went on and on and on and on....Amidst all these pestering troubles, I was sitting and wasting his precious 'cribbing time'. I being an extremely patient audience, kept listening to this saga-of-sobs(No pun intended here!!) for about an hour or so. My only rescuer was a smart lady from another team who too could not help overhear the interminably weeping story. She had quickly chipped in to purportedly clarify a doubt on one of the tools used in the project. Till this day, I keep thanking the lady for her much-needed intervention in saving me from the torture and bringing me back from the dead!!!

The second catergory of creatures in the team was "FIT's' - Foolishly Insane Team members. This was another lot of lost team members who had little to boast about. Their technical brilliance was restricted to changing the network ports - client port and company port. Though this act required us to stand out and pluck the cable from one port and insert it into the jack fitted on the desk and hit a few 'ipconfig /release/renew commands' , this too was a major achievment of these fellows. Though I should not be ridiculing any one so much,however, the fact remains that, the simplistic technical issues befuddled them and challenged their intellect to its limit. The 'media disconnected' message on the screen had to be mentioned in their native languages I guess to make them understand that the physical cable connecting to the ports was indeed visibly disconnected. The decision on printing of 'landscape'/'potrait' took just over a dozen print-outs to realize the differences. The torturous task of archiving mails on the local/server was so intriguing that a technichian had to drop by the desk to make them understand the concept of archiving. Remote Desktop connections was too much an ask. The last of these mentioned tasks was a personal experience of mine with a exceptionally fair faced lady in the team. It took me an hour to make her understand that the RDC required unique ID's of each person and of course the password protection policy mandated it to contain a combo of numeric,alphanumeric,special characters. The last thing I remember was creating her the password and writing it down on her notebook for her future reference. It was not for another 3 months before she had remembered her password,when at each instance I had to strain my brain!!!

LOT's was the third category. Lost Out of the world Team members. We had such a group of individuals in our very own team that had this meticulous attention to detail each time a task was performed,however a week later, it turned out that not even the overview of the task could be recollected on time.Yet another subset of this group comprised those members, who had continued to live in the utopian islands forever dreaming about fairy tales and exotic waterfalls. These people had the amazing capacity to have thoughtfully escaped the real-time current state of affairs and continued to live in those figments of foolish imaginative landscapes. One of the members of this group was a fellow with whom I had worked closely till the very last day of my tenure in the team. He used to speak so little,so slow and so surreally imaginative that I had to request him to wake me up once he was done talking. A few of the times, I had indeed asked him to call me on my desk phone,though he sat in the same cubicle very much adjacent to me for quite sometime to just to be able to hear what he was trying to blurt out of his mouth. The superset members of this category were so encapsulated ,enamoured and engrossed with their own thoughts way way above this materialistic world that neither work,managers taunts,onsite lead comments nothing,absolutely nothing in this world could bring them back to the planet earth and its realities. I chanced upon an einstein from this group, to ask about her career ambitions -and what a reply I got. Seems she had developed this fascination for supernatural and occult sciences through one of her ex-classmate that she had decided to give those freaky ideas of 'call-the-ghosts-for-a-round-table-discussion' a sincere trial. I wished her luck and never returned to her for discussing anything out of the project.

We now come to the SIT's - Seriously Insane Team members. I could have never learnt that the level of insanity in this world is Infinite++. Insanity was born after these guys. Music,fags,sex,booze interest us all. But the level of addiction to any of these reaches zeniths - i was made aware by this group. One fellow had this incessant and almost maniacal attachement to music n fags that, had it been allowed, there would have been a DISCO and a chimney beside his seat. I was, and still remain in shock of this guy, about the level of madness he had. The other point on which I used to wonder was, with the peanuts as salary in the company how could he manage to smoke so many cigarettes a day!!! Well then, may be,his grandpa must have left a fortune to his name.

RAT's was yet another group. Regionally Attached Team members. This was a sad lot of overlapping sets which had people grouping and owing their allegiance to that particular group. The characteristic of this was, team members,each being from a different region within the state and country, had formed groups based upon their belonging regions and mysteriously remain attached to that group. I was, and am still proud of myself for never having got attached to any one region,neither in college nor currenly. Hence, I was definetly not one of these!!! Andhra fellows had personal discussions and get togethers,Bongs had a seperate table,in-state people were indeed a majority they too had a chunk of their own. I did not like such groupism so I would rather skip any further description lest I come out with some despicable content.

The most interesting lot was the FATs. This has no acronyms or anything of that sort,but simply meant the word. We were a happy lot with a lot of 'weight' in the team - NOT to mean that we were obese or anything,its just that we were from a 'khaate-peete ghar ke'. Our baggages would lead or trail our presence in any gathering. A lot many times, we had to cover our bulging assets by putting an additional overcoat!! We were the talk of the team, at team lunches. Our share of cake and samosas and pizaas was always kept aside. We had a reserved chair in most parties to be in the middle of all actions and discussions! Occasionally, we were greeted by quite a few pretty ladies in the other teams on account of our extremely contagious smiles and laughs.

The last and the least interesting group is called the M-TPITA's - Managers-The Pain In The ...

They had nothing cheerful about them. Never liked by any majority or far that fact minority too. They acted as high priests of professionalism,paragons of perfection et al,however in reality nothing was further. They always had the killer instinct to hunt down and shoot a few jokes about them in the team. The eternal grin and subsuming sarcasm seemed to have got hardwired in their body. The scheming against certain members of the team, the threats issued, the intonation implied and the below the belt references would have put to shame the most powerful man on earth currently - The US president!!!

With all such characters - PIT's,FIT's,LOT's, SIT's RAT's , FATs and M-TPITA's, I would like to submit myself that, of all these shades I often used to find myself as a part of each group for sometime. So in no bad taste. I have summarized a few of our team characters,whereas a few of them have been left out for the obvious reason being, either they were dear to me or I did not care to write about them. Dear to me ones are pretty few, the latter point holds right for most time.

This was my team for you....I have moved into another assignment though I wanted to caricature a few highlights of the members for a small fee - please put in your comments on the post!!!

Log kehte hain...main impatient ....

Many a times it so happens that ....the most desired things we want in our life come so close and yet by stroke of bad luck or as Maradona called 'Hand of God' ...we fail to grab it ....this indeed explains the innate sadness which is often attributed to anyone and anything except ourselves ...the real fact however per me could not be any further ....things do'nt often take place totally out of your control....its just that the level of control excercised or demonstrated to tackle the situation fluctuates . ...in places where there is absolute debacle we often try to shrug off our shoulders refuting even the least amount of involvement.....whereas in other situations we try to pretend to be acting upon things..in reality where little is done ....however , it seems totally senseless to have a defeatist attitude and resign to fate ..with little hopes ...Easier said than done, I have actually been pondering a lot about such trappings of cliched life off late. As I admitted in some of the earlier posts there have been certain pending issues on which some actionining needs to be done to bring them to fruition,however, the usual escapist's demeanour has been showing its true colours. My personal sphere has been in the centerstage of such events in the offing - but lack of motion sets in the 'happy-with-the-status-quo' feelings ,which being an Arien,I feel not-so-excited about.Dad always keeps saying,Iam restless and peevish and every conceivable thing which is not ideal for an individual. My,self-admittedly impatient soul, seeks action and events taking place all the time and the lull period seems to bring in crazy ideas.The most indelible event registered in my mind when I speak of impromptu action is my 'leaving-my-last-company fiasco'. In terms of debacles, this seems to be one of the biggest debacles of recent times(other than the Engg college failures!!!). Let me brief you all with the details of the disaster(you know my vocab is playing foul - so many words for FAILURE!!). The year was 2006,during the heated and sweaty month of May,the tenth day of the month and the 10 hour of the day. The previous evening one of my good-for-little friend Mr.Srikanth, by the stroke of brilliance had a wonderful idea to attend to the walk-in/referal interviews of one of the biggest IT services company in the world(dare i name it). His accomplice,who was working in the company had sent a mail informing Sri of the event the next day. Too tired of resting in the office, we both went out in the evening(aka night) to have a cup of tea. During the wild discussions, he remembered that we might as well go to oversee the interviews schedule which were being held at a place near Swar gate(yes thats the place). We had discussed all the points required to attend the interviews,except for one major point. The mail mentioned that all the candidates were to report to the venue by sharp 10 AM. Oh my holy God,10 AM in the morning, that too on a Saturday...it seemed a far cry that in any case we would go to attend. However,we bid adios to each other,with hopes of trying to make it to the venue the next day. In the heart of hearts both knew that, the probability seems to be well below .0019. However,neither of us wanted to sound the spoilsport by explicitly stating that "I would not be coming such early in the morning". Each was waiting for the other to say this,so that any failure to reach the swar gate venue on time, one could easily crucify the other for his laziness,stupidity et al.....That night, myself and Ravi, were scheming on making an important strategic decision on how to fend off 'attacks from ......"(he knows and I know,I cannot divulge due to personal reasons). There was an imminent bout of lashings from ..... on our behavious which was in violation of the traditional tenets of 'bandhutva'. As I say this, I fear treading and overstepping the path to actually revealing the intricate details of the happenings thereon. While having dinner, we both were actually loathe to the idea of 'bandhutva' et al which made little sense or rhyme to us. Einstein said 'Two things are infinite, universe and human stupidity and Iam sure of the latter'. The second part of the statement always inevitably made sense to us when it came to talk about 'bandhutva' crap. Any statement,action,feeling,thought,breath was being interpreted as a 'move-to-remove'. The coloured glass vision of the other party was driving us crazy,however,there was pretty much little which we could actually do. Discussing on the matter went ad infinitum and we had finally ended up watching Jason Bourne!!! Each stunt was making us charged up to beat the crap out of ..... Late night munching chips and all junk, we realized that we had no H2O(i.e water,for all the less informed!!). Poor old lady,Mrs.Vimala's daughter in law was disturbed, as she was the only one in the entire building who used to supply us with pure water. For your info,mom was as usual out of town,so we both were the bachelors in the house ....living off chips,junk and tons of maggi. It was during this era of un-interrupted fest,that I was crowned the "Maharaja of Maggi' by my Ravi. To date, I still retain this title.Anyways,let me spare you of all the details of mish-mash and come straight to the point of the interview the next day. Waking up at 9 AM, I was totally out of my senses when all of a sudden I saw 17 missed calls and 4 SMS's from Sri. The messages contained extremely polluted references to me and my near and dear ones. The last message ended with those pavitra words reminding me of the act of sexual intercourse. The pattern of the words if you want to know is (4,3) - reminding me of the versatility of the word which can be used to mean the best as well as the worst in the world. This encompassing word is one of my favourites,which amazes me with its utility coming handy in all situations.Waking up so early on week-ends was blasphemious to my behaviour,but still the pleasure of nailing down Sri for delay was overarching to the pain of getting up early. A strategic decision had to be resulted which required "To bath or NOT to bath is the question". I kept wishing that some event happens because of which all of a sudden the water stops coming out of the tap and hence I can easily pass it off as scarcity of water for me NOT being able to bath. Voila, water comes pouring down from the shower and thereon,it was a matter of breezing through - tidying self with trim and immaculate clothes,filing the resume in the folder and there I go - to Sri's abode. Well aware that he would be still behind schedule,I gave 3 more number of missed calls to him than he gave me - 20! All were deliberately cut-short to increase the count of calls. I reached his home and found him to be skimpily clothed in his bare minimums. What a sight it was, I rushed back into the hall - all scared huffing and puffing at the monsterous sight I just saw. To save time, I refrain from providing other details and directly skip to the most intersting part.By the time we reached the venue, it was half-past ten. We were pretty much sure that, we would be asked to go out as the registrations have been closed. To our horror of horrors, we were given the tokens for shortlisting resumes and then subsequent interviews. I was so sure of my resume getting dustbined that, I was actually raring to come out and go the nearby Burger King for lunch. On a given day, the midas touch comes to people who actually are not seeking it. The initial criteria for entrants was kept at 24 months,whereas mine was deppresingly short of the mark by 6 months. So sure was I of coming out, that I even messaged Ravi to reach Burger King for lunch. All of a sudden, due to some internal concerns the pre-filter criteria was reduced to exactly 18 months - and there , I was standing in the queue for the initial screening. Myself and Sri,never short of cracking nasty jokes were standing adjacent and commenting on the figure of the lady sitting to screen our profiles. Bomb,maal,patakha et al were the most frequent words and we were guessing about the possible ways we would approach her to impress - not so much for the interview but for the pleasure of enjoyment!!!! Sri was shortlisted and the lady was screening mine(resume I mean), and asked a few questions and with a genuinely disgusting grin on her face moved me ahead passing my resume for further rounds. Claps Claps...there begun the really interesting part. It was around 11:30 AM and we were told that in some time we would be interviwed and all. This short while proceeded well into the evening and finally we both were through the rounds of interviews(which we actually spoke great things about nothing). The Tech rounds.Manager round all went by and we were asked to wait in the downstairs for final confirmation. In one of the rounds, the manager asked me "What would your reaction be if you were to be put on bench for a prolonged period of 6 months(with no project)". I still get those unbelievable moments when I shot back at him saying "Six months is too long a period, Id have other options open if Iam not put in a project in a week's time". I immediately, followed it up with the names of companies of which I purportedly had offers from( I had none!!). Seems that, the manager was impressed by the confidence which I aired right from the start of the interview - I was demanding water, coffee et al . He then went on to ask a few more profile based questions, to which I had propped up with "out of the box ideas"(due to prep for CAT), and then he finally asked me if I had any questions. Wasting no time, I followed up with a barrage of queries most of which he fended off very dispassionately. He then asked the cliche,"where do you see yourself 5-10 years down the lane?" . Pat was my reply, "Definetly in a position which allows me to make decisions for a larger audience." Subsequent to the interview, I felt that I was more aggressive than expected and some of my responses were indeed sounding over confident. The manager though bore with me all through the interview and gave me some feedback.Coming downstairs and waiting for Sri, I was caught up in conversation with yet another hopeful at the venue. He was desperately looking for job as he currently had none. As usual, he had a lot more self sobbing story for this job. I listened with utmost patience and promised to help him in my current company by forwarding his resume to my HR. All things went on well into the night and we returned around 9PM - all smiles on the frivoulous achievement least hopeful of.A month passed, before I received the offer letter and there I go, I was in the 9th heaven. The most painful part then started - parting with the current company. I had informed the managers(mis-managers) over there that, I'd want to resign and move ahead in future studies. However, the draconian clauses which they included in their ruleset disallowed anyone to resign before 2 years of confirmation or shell out 2 Lakh Rs as compensation for doing so. The tug of war in this entire episode was very painful wherein I had come in direct confrontation with senior most people over my resignation. I was informed that since I did not comply with the rules of the company I would not be issued any relevant letters which my next employer would need. Co-ersion would never work especially with managers who are hell bent of having it their way or no way. In month and a half that I was spending there, nothing positive was coming out from the company managers and I was getting increasingly frustrated with the inaction. Thereby, I finally walked out of the company without any letters except for the offer and a few other. Subsequent to this, I could not join the next company for about a month and half more, which was getting excruciatingly painful due to obvious reasons. Finally, with the stroke of luck, I was asked to join the company with whatever documents I had. It still haunts me to imagine those painful moments.In such moments of desperation, I often commit myself to irrevocable changes which in most cases result in life-altering consequences. It has been around 2 and half years since then, Iam with the new company and have many positive experiences in my life.There are a few more impending situations which demand action to be taken,I fear my loss of sensibility at certain instances should not takeover me and I result in destructive stances.I close this post with a pensive heart!!!!

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Innovate or IPL

Finallly, IPL 09 is over. With the loads of hype and hoopla surrounding the IPL in the last few months, the showdown event has indeed come to a culmination. So much for the moolahs it raked in as compared to the core theme of the extravaganza - gentleman's game CRICKET. The thought has being doing rounds in my wonderfully evolved brain - has cricket remained the central focus of the game or has been forced out of the ground - in IPL parlance - DLF Maximum!!! The importance of toss, fire in the belly of the batsmen , ferociously killing aim of the bowlers to uproot the stumps, the hounds of fielders aiming the batsmen, the uncertainity over the LBW's,umpires gaining demi-god stratures et al. Money was just a by-product of the game till a few years ago, when the brightest star in the cricketing arena shone upon the earth - BCCI and its office-bearers!!

Amazing is the capacity of human mind to conceptualize the myriad of thoughts and actually implementing them to see immense success or failure. They used to say "There is no short-cut to success". Whooosh has it gone for a toss? Miniaturized version of the cricket game has brought in actually so much of success(read it moolah accompanied by success). I dedicate this post to BCCI and the office-bearers - especially to Mr.LM(dare I mention all names here).

The cricketing genius he is, the simplistic idea of reducing the number of overs to be bowled in a match by as much as 80%, has brought in so much of prosperity. The BCCI, has infact made such a wonderful schema of all aspects of the game to rake in as much money as possible. Every possible outlet for earning green-bucks has been tapped into and has indeed turned into a rags-to-riches story. Our board has attained such a towering position in the cricketing world, which little other boards can even compare of. We have the chutzpah to declare tournaments null and void at our free will, we bring in players of all kinds to play matches for us, we affect the ranking agencies to keep ourselves in the near numero uno positions, we call shots for all other games played in India, donate peanuts of amounts to budding players in the name of coaching them up to bring to international standards etc. The list of dictats for BCCI can go on ad infinitum.

Coming back to the IPL - I still have my reservations about the authenticity of the tournament to promote the game. The pomp and gusto with the players were auctioned made me think about the real motive of show. Players were being bought with money, the other merchandize of the game also being sold out, teams being purchased by so wonderfully talented sportspersons - bollywood stalwarts(I doubt how many would have actually spelt cricket correctly). The biggest stars in filmcity came down to lecture about the virtues of the game, money being "apparently "channelized" to nurture and groom the budding cricketing talent in the country". There was one star who I vividly remember went on and on for couple of hours reciting the godliness of the gentleman's game on the telly. The marketing campaigns which of course took away the sheen from the actual game were as per me, superflous. The monstrocity of the advertisements simply meant to keeps the boxes ringing was too much. Each star "owner" of team has gone out of the way in singing odes to the team,players and of course Mr.LM. LM anyways went away all laughing. Songs were being sung about that perfect strategy each team had decoded to win the IPL trophy. The most in-your-face one was from the "multi-captain" team. The lyrics went over the top, as was the message contained in it . The jingle went gaga about being "reloaded" - i fail to catch what was being reloaded with each defeat being handed over to it repeatedly. The other bollywood star teams too went with a tail between their legs figuratively and literally too. Their jingles too were more on the lines of attacking and winning over the opposition. In reality, it was an irony of all sorts. The very opponents they started out to defeat were the one's who were holding the stick at the other end. The marketing ploys literally made the game feel as if,cricket was just one part of the show,lion's share being pouring in of "Gandhi ji's".
The jersey's,shoes,guards,bats,hands,eyes,noses,butts endlessly were covered with logos. The second season was expected to be as hit as the first one,however, this was marked by a few characteristic guffaws.
I dont think, it is in my nature to be sounding pessimistic and sceptical of any such happening event. However, being well within my democratic rights to give it my spin, I think I need to pen down these thoughts. I have too enjoyed the rapidity of the game especially when the Gilly's and Hayden's ramped down the pitch to hit big time scores. The Deccan Chargers - the team from Hyderabad, won the IP 09 much to my pleasure. Mr.M(self proclaimed baron), was all but having "good times" in the final match!!!

Innovation they say comes in all sizes and shapes. The paradox of IPL vis-a-vis normal cricket, is the shortned version of the game has been one of the biggest hits of the decade. Mr.LM, by no means is short of a visionary. He cut short the overs,banked upon players and their ASSets for cash inflows,made every possible blade of the grass on the ground to ring in money. In the coming years, it would be no less than a wonder, if the sweat of the players would also be bottled and put up for the grabs. The other much innovative items on sale might as well be - the texture of the clothes worn by the players, their spits, verbal utterances,finger nails,air within the stadiums,wooden blades ripped off the bats,guards(i mean the ones used for protecting Ahem..Ahem) et al.
Hail Mr.LM, you have silently become the entreprenuer of the generation with so much of money-spinning abilities by the simple reduction in the length of the game.
Who says, there is no short cut for success? Shorten the length of anything and earn big bucks. Iam on my way to this goal Sir LM,please guide me. My venture might lack the finnessse of your IPL, nevertheless the core values and motives behind remain aligned in lockstep - earn while you shorten. Innovate or IPL is my dedication to you.
Bless us all cricket-fanatics for facilitating the creation of the only multi-billion dollar cricketing board in the world.
I Love cricket,I love money much more than that - God please listen and bestow me too with such wonderful short ideas!!!!