All of us (Sagar, Jayanath, Sashikanth, venkatesh, Raju, Subbu, Chandra, Chakri, Pala, Mahendranth, Rajmohan, Nag, muthy and Praveen) were in different groups in Bhilai and started merging once we reached Durgapur. We had Andhra samiti and all of us were excited to go there and celebrate Ganesh Pooja. We were introduced to lot of new folks (seniors).. Sudhakar (he left the organization within 3 months of our joining), Bhavani, Goki, K S Rao, Sarma, Babjee, Satyanarayana etc….Bhavani was Andhra samiti’s secretary and was instrumental in collecting Annual/registration fees. Praveen seemed not interested in Andhra samiti and Chakri used to call him Independent man as that was his initial impression (was definitely wrong though). There was a guy named Nani and I was not sure why he used to visit us but was a regular visitor. He was charming, friendly, co-operative and was settled in Durgapur for some time. We used to ask him questions on whether there were any girls in Andhra samithi and how were they and how to approach them whether it was easy etc.. Fortunately he was always positive and encouraging. One day there screened a movie in Andhra samithi and all of us were looking forward to visit. Later there was this Ganesh pooja function during morning and evening. During the Morning pooja, we were introduced to Sachidanandam garu, president of Andhra Samithi, MS Rao (people used to call him Mikasur), Chari, Venugopal etc….All of us were looking forward for that event and especially Sarma, Venkatesh, Sagar myself were part of serving food to the attendees at lunch and it was sweaty.. Venkatesh told me that he was afraid that people would find all the items more saltierJ. In the evening too, we volunteered to serve dinner and then took a lot of photos while trying to grab the attention of some lovely ladies. For reasons unknown, on that day I don’t remember lot of girls coming to the function and when we enquired Nani, he asked us to be a little patient.
Andhra samithi was a very well organized association and brought most of Andhraites together. It has an office cum library in a 16-room hostel. There were lots of cultural and literary events organized every year during all major festivals/events.
The first of such a gathering happened to be during Sankranthi, with Rangoli, songs competition, Dance shows, funny games/events etc. Thereafter followed A FETE in February, Ugadi special programs, Ganesh pooja, Andhra formation Day, Dussera and Deewali. Besides all these, there used to be an annual picnic (during winter-Nov-Jan). This, along with some movie shows once in a while gave ample opportunity to all members to assemble, gossip, participate, win, taste some good food and make new acquaintances. They also had a monthly digest’ Andhravani’ summarizing the forthcoming events.
When our batch joined in Durgapur, we were invited to a party by Sudhakar. He also invited Bhavani (who was a member and secretary of Andhra samithi).
Later this news was published in Andhravani as though the party was arranged by Andhrasamithi. Sudhakar was upset with Bhavani regarding the party since it was his initiative and he had politely invited Bhavani as a friend. But the credit went to Andhra Samithi unfairly and he was not happy with it. There were a series of discussions over the incident, where some people supported Sudhakar”s attitude and some people criticized him for making a mountain out of a molehill.
Sudhakar used to be a very friendly, down to earth guy and was always in a very good mood. One day we were in the mess and he was talking about two individuals, Chakri and Pala. According to him, Chakri was a very decent guy. One day, Sudhakar gave a lift to Chakri on his way to the plant and Chakri was ready to be dropped anywhere in the plant as he could walk down to his department. He did not want to bother Sudhakar to take a different route to drop him exactly where he needed to go. He said” enduku bau neeku antha mohamatam… plantloki enter ayindai modalu.. nannu dimpeyandi nannu dimpeyandi.. nenu nadichi vellipothanu”
On the other hand, Pala, a heavyset guy, would also get a free ride sometimes but appreciated the offer only if he was dropped right in front of his destination. Sushakar recounted, “Now this guy, Pala, as soon as he sat on the rear seat, it was as though my horse had lifted its front legs. Moreover, he has no intention to walk even a few steps – he rather wishes to ride right up to his chair.” Then Pala, laughing good-naturedly, suggested that Sudhakar should get a kid to stand in the front to balance Pala. Then Sudhakar replied that it won’t be sufficient and he needs the crop from the wheel and axle plant that is cut out from the ROUND. Everybody enjoyed the leg-pulling routine and joined in the fun.
Coming back to Andhra samithi, people were of the opinion that our batch was a dynamic team which changed the face of Andhra samithi and brought most of the scattered andhraites together. There was a new momentum in the activities and people were interested to join the club.
I am sure; I will have two to three more bulletins on Andhra samithi as it played some important role in my life.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Durgapur Blues- JOT/SOT Invigilation/Evaluation
During our training period, our services were required to assist in the junior and senior OPERATOR trainee (JOT and SOT) exams-invigilation and correction. Most of the times it was for one task, but interested people can opt for both the tasks (both invigilation and correction) so that they are eligible for two compensatory leaves .We, especially south Indians always opted for double duty, as we were very far from Andhra and any additional leaves will help us to stay with our parents for a couple of extra days.
Either Invigilation or Assessment was mandatory though. So everybody was assured of at least one compensatory leave. But for assessment, they need more people and used to offer the additional comp off. Naturally, there was a competition among lot of people for double duty. Among all south Indians Raju and myself were always present for double duty. I remember how difficult it was for us to perform the double duty without committing any mistakes as it directly affected to lives of so many applicants.
A bus used to pick us up from the hostel and drop us at the examination centers (typically some schools/community centers). We used to assist the invigilators and represent steel plant. All the candidates used to respectfully address us as ‘sir’. We felt very proud for the different treatment. We announce the basic rules and see their reaction. We faced their situation before lot of times, but this is a different feeling to be playing the role from other side. All of us were very friendly and we kept everybody at ease. Once the exam started, we faced many problems as some questions were not printed properly, some answer books were not right. Some questions are fully omitted from a few of the candidates. They had very little time which they could not afford to waste. Unfortunately we had limited options and tried to provide quick fixes. We were sure that the exam was very tough (Frankly, I felt it is tougher than our Management Trainee exam) and nobody could score much. The problems in mathematics were extremely difficult and I was not sure how the examinees could answer such questions.
By evening all the papers were sealed in covers and handed over to the assessment centre (Our Training department and administrative building 7to 8 storied building). We were given a partner for correction (not known till last minute, it is like preventing people from collusion) .My partner and I were given the bunch of answer sheets and the key. We started correcting them, one person reading the answers and other person correcting it. Lot of people could not score much as we expected. But to our utter astonishment, there were people who scored almost 90 percent of marks. I was not sure how it could happen. Frankly we used to believe that there were lots of irregularities in the process.
There were various techniques used by candidates to suggest their identity so that some insiders can help. For example writing something different and marking some pages with some figures/pictures/symbols etc….
Once I Joined the Department (after successful completion of our training), we were asked by our non-executives whether we knew any trainees so that they can pass on some identity hints to us which they expect us to forward it to our friends (trainees) .As a matter of fact, one day during the assessment one senior executive entered into one of the rooms and asked whether we found any sign/symbol. In response, one of our Hyderabadi guys ‘Mahendranath’ strictly ordered the senior person to leave the room and stop encouraging any unethical means. He was not worried about the guy’s role/his status. I still remember and appreciate the gesture.
During correction/assessment, Sagar, Raju, Venkatesh and myself were part of one group. Sagar was reading the answers and all of us were correcting them. We had lot of fun and were urging Sagar to read faster. Raju said’ unable to wait for next answers … read faster….) .
Sagar was annoyed and said philosophically.. "arey, manamu life tho adukovaddu ra…” irritating Sagar made us laugh and encouraged us to do the same again, just to see his anger…
The correction task was tough and for people who were part of double duty. We were sleepy and had back pains and the target to complete so many papers seemed impossible.
I remember Raju saying’ in order to recover from these pains, we need to take 2 days off work.J
I still remember that the very first time that we did the invigilation, Nag, Praveen and I were part of it and we started from Steel house in the first batch. The bus dropped us at Training department. We had big chats during the morning time before we were taken to the examination centers.
After we finished everything, we missed out Nag somehow and Praveen and I discussed a lot during our waiting time for bus to return us at Steel house. We were excited and shared our experiences in excitement. We also discussed about his friends and my friends. That was the first time when I talked to any guy who was out of my network (Sagar, Jayanath, Sashikanth, venkatesh, Raju, Arun Jain, Shashi Bhagat, Subbu). Of course , I knew all andhraites by then, Chandra, Chakri, Pala, Mahendranth, Rajmohan, Nag, muthy and Praveen. On that day, though the bus was delayed, I was happy that I could make another good friend.Though our friendship(Praveen and mine) was very short lived,but was great.
Either Invigilation or Assessment was mandatory though. So everybody was assured of at least one compensatory leave. But for assessment, they need more people and used to offer the additional comp off. Naturally, there was a competition among lot of people for double duty. Among all south Indians Raju and myself were always present for double duty. I remember how difficult it was for us to perform the double duty without committing any mistakes as it directly affected to lives of so many applicants.
A bus used to pick us up from the hostel and drop us at the examination centers (typically some schools/community centers). We used to assist the invigilators and represent steel plant. All the candidates used to respectfully address us as ‘sir’. We felt very proud for the different treatment. We announce the basic rules and see their reaction. We faced their situation before lot of times, but this is a different feeling to be playing the role from other side. All of us were very friendly and we kept everybody at ease. Once the exam started, we faced many problems as some questions were not printed properly, some answer books were not right. Some questions are fully omitted from a few of the candidates. They had very little time which they could not afford to waste. Unfortunately we had limited options and tried to provide quick fixes. We were sure that the exam was very tough (Frankly, I felt it is tougher than our Management Trainee exam) and nobody could score much. The problems in mathematics were extremely difficult and I was not sure how the examinees could answer such questions.
By evening all the papers were sealed in covers and handed over to the assessment centre (Our Training department and administrative building 7to 8 storied building). We were given a partner for correction (not known till last minute, it is like preventing people from collusion) .My partner and I were given the bunch of answer sheets and the key. We started correcting them, one person reading the answers and other person correcting it. Lot of people could not score much as we expected. But to our utter astonishment, there were people who scored almost 90 percent of marks. I was not sure how it could happen. Frankly we used to believe that there were lots of irregularities in the process.
There were various techniques used by candidates to suggest their identity so that some insiders can help. For example writing something different and marking some pages with some figures/pictures/symbols etc….
Once I Joined the Department (after successful completion of our training), we were asked by our non-executives whether we knew any trainees so that they can pass on some identity hints to us which they expect us to forward it to our friends (trainees) .As a matter of fact, one day during the assessment one senior executive entered into one of the rooms and asked whether we found any sign/symbol. In response, one of our Hyderabadi guys ‘Mahendranath’ strictly ordered the senior person to leave the room and stop encouraging any unethical means. He was not worried about the guy’s role/his status. I still remember and appreciate the gesture.
During correction/assessment, Sagar, Raju, Venkatesh and myself were part of one group. Sagar was reading the answers and all of us were correcting them. We had lot of fun and were urging Sagar to read faster. Raju said’ unable to wait for next answers … read faster….) .
Sagar was annoyed and said philosophically.. "arey, manamu life tho adukovaddu ra…” irritating Sagar made us laugh and encouraged us to do the same again, just to see his anger…
The correction task was tough and for people who were part of double duty. We were sleepy and had back pains and the target to complete so many papers seemed impossible.
I remember Raju saying’ in order to recover from these pains, we need to take 2 days off work.J
I still remember that the very first time that we did the invigilation, Nag, Praveen and I were part of it and we started from Steel house in the first batch. The bus dropped us at Training department. We had big chats during the morning time before we were taken to the examination centers.
After we finished everything, we missed out Nag somehow and Praveen and I discussed a lot during our waiting time for bus to return us at Steel house. We were excited and shared our experiences in excitement. We also discussed about his friends and my friends. That was the first time when I talked to any guy who was out of my network (Sagar, Jayanath, Sashikanth, venkatesh, Raju, Arun Jain, Shashi Bhagat, Subbu). Of course , I knew all andhraites by then, Chandra, Chakri, Pala, Mahendranth, Rajmohan, Nag, muthy and Praveen. On that day, though the bus was delayed, I was happy that I could make another good friend.Though our friendship(Praveen and mine) was very short lived,but was great.
Durgapur Blues-Jayanth NameSake
Janardhan Karmakar returned from RMHC site for re-claimer capital repair work. On that day most of the important work from my department of Heavy Maint was over. I asked Janardhan whether he handed over the work to them. He nodded his head in positive way. I checked up the log book later to find the following interesting line
The work is complete and handed over to 'Mr.Jain' I enjoyed the comedy as I recalled my friend Jayanth (not Mr.Jain) from RMHC had later conveyed that the work was handed over by my team and that Janardhan was a very positive Charge man.
Frankly the name Jayanth was very simple and easy to pronounce, but some incidents (3 YEARS before the above incident and the latter mentioned below indicated that still it was not over yet) show that there was a serious issue with it.
Jayanth received his appointment letter in July and he was addressed as JAYANATH. Though it was a very slight mistake, we never thought it to be the beginning of a recurrent series of mistakes.
We had completed our induction training at Bhilai and were transferred to Durgapur .In our Training department we were supposed to sign the attendance registers. We were surprised to see one more modified version of the name Jayanth as
‘JAYAWANTH’ and this continued for almost a month. We started calling Jayanth by different names.
During our JOT/SOT invigilation/correction phase, we have to wait for our partners who were assigned to us only in the last minute. All of us were informed and Jayanth was shocked to see his name printed as
‘JAYAWTH’.
As expected, his partner found it difficult to pronounce his name and was unable to get to Jayanth as no body knew JAYAWTH. Jayanth anticipated the same and he made it to his partner in time. His name continued to be spelt likewise till he was posted to his department.
After a few months, we had forgotten the incident when one day Jayanth seemed extremely happy. We all asked Jayanth the reason for his sudden high spirits. He proudly showed his name in the mess register (we were having a self run mess and most of the hoteliers were members of it)
‘JAYANTH BELLARI’ (HIS FULL NAME WITH NO SPELL MISTAKES FOR THE FIRST AND LAST TIME)
The work is complete and handed over to 'Mr.Jain' I enjoyed the comedy as I recalled my friend Jayanth (not Mr.Jain) from RMHC had later conveyed that the work was handed over by my team and that Janardhan was a very positive Charge man.
Frankly the name Jayanth was very simple and easy to pronounce, but some incidents (3 YEARS before the above incident and the latter mentioned below indicated that still it was not over yet) show that there was a serious issue with it.
Jayanth received his appointment letter in July and he was addressed as JAYANATH. Though it was a very slight mistake, we never thought it to be the beginning of a recurrent series of mistakes.
We had completed our induction training at Bhilai and were transferred to Durgapur .In our Training department we were supposed to sign the attendance registers. We were surprised to see one more modified version of the name Jayanth as
‘JAYAWANTH’ and this continued for almost a month. We started calling Jayanth by different names.
During our JOT/SOT invigilation/correction phase, we have to wait for our partners who were assigned to us only in the last minute. All of us were informed and Jayanth was shocked to see his name printed as
‘JAYAWTH’.
As expected, his partner found it difficult to pronounce his name and was unable to get to Jayanth as no body knew JAYAWTH. Jayanth anticipated the same and he made it to his partner in time. His name continued to be spelt likewise till he was posted to his department.
After a few months, we had forgotten the incident when one day Jayanth seemed extremely happy. We all asked Jayanth the reason for his sudden high spirits. He proudly showed his name in the mess register (we were having a self run mess and most of the hoteliers were members of it)
‘JAYANTH BELLARI’ (HIS FULL NAME WITH NO SPELL MISTAKES FOR THE FIRST AND LAST TIME)
Durgapur Blues-Chakri's VoterCard
In Bengal Chakraborthy is title/last name/ family name. In south India we have it differently, Chakravarthy (spelt differently, rather correctly. Bengalis do not have letter ‘v’ so they substitute with B) is our first name/given name.
Lot of our folks wanted to have the Voter ID cards those days. Bengal govt was one of the first to introduce them. Most of us were enthusiastic about getting them. (Unfortunately, I could not do that as I was in Hyderabad during those days. People used to pull my leg saying, he works in Hyderabad, as it is head office, and he sometimes visits Durgapur, as it is his branch office).
Chakravarthy was hesitant on getting it done as he got used to being called Chakra borty by his colleagues and on railway reservation forms and by other localites. Unfortunately we failed to make Bengalis understand that, Chakravarty is a name and not the last name. They always insisted that he had roots in Bengal and they were sure that his ancestors were Bengalis.
Anyway, Chakri followed the crowd and proceeded to fill up the voter card application with capital letters hoping that they would blindly copy the correct spelling onto the actual card.
M.K.CHAKRAVARTY, fathers name M.V.RAMA SUBBA RAO.
In the meantime, I decided to jump on the bandwagon for my voter card. I went to the Congress party office in Benachity, near DSP employees Cooperative society and dutifully submitted the application to them. Not sure what happened to it. Chakri was worried that his name would definitely be mispelt. But we were assuring him that Chakri had done the smart thing by writing/filling the application form in CAPITAL LETTERS.
The day arrived when we would all be in possession of our Voter cards. Lot of our Bokaro hostel folks were not curious about their own voter cards but for Chakri’s card. All of us looked on with bated breath as Chakri tore open his envelope. As feared, the govt babus had not failed to do their duty. He was shocked to see the names and our loud laughter reverberated through the entire hostel.
Chakri’s name was printed as M K Chakraborty, but the better part of it was his father’s name, which was changed into VENKATRAO CHAKRABORTY.
God only knows how his father’s name was changed; probably they thought Chakri forgot to put the family name for his father. Later chakri and I tried to change it to reflect the correct name. We visited City centre office multiple times but in vain. Though it was disappointing for chakri, the incident always brings laughter without fail upon recollection. Some time I laugh out loud by remembering the incident and it ends in wistful tears ….I miss Durgapur and miss these wonderful people in my busy life.
Lot of our folks wanted to have the Voter ID cards those days. Bengal govt was one of the first to introduce them. Most of us were enthusiastic about getting them. (Unfortunately, I could not do that as I was in Hyderabad during those days. People used to pull my leg saying, he works in Hyderabad, as it is head office, and he sometimes visits Durgapur, as it is his branch office).
Chakravarthy was hesitant on getting it done as he got used to being called Chakra borty by his colleagues and on railway reservation forms and by other localites. Unfortunately we failed to make Bengalis understand that, Chakravarty is a name and not the last name. They always insisted that he had roots in Bengal and they were sure that his ancestors were Bengalis.
Anyway, Chakri followed the crowd and proceeded to fill up the voter card application with capital letters hoping that they would blindly copy the correct spelling onto the actual card.
M.K.CHAKRAVARTY, fathers name M.V.RAMA SUBBA RAO.
In the meantime, I decided to jump on the bandwagon for my voter card. I went to the Congress party office in Benachity, near DSP employees Cooperative society and dutifully submitted the application to them. Not sure what happened to it. Chakri was worried that his name would definitely be mispelt. But we were assuring him that Chakri had done the smart thing by writing/filling the application form in CAPITAL LETTERS.
The day arrived when we would all be in possession of our Voter cards. Lot of our Bokaro hostel folks were not curious about their own voter cards but for Chakri’s card. All of us looked on with bated breath as Chakri tore open his envelope. As feared, the govt babus had not failed to do their duty. He was shocked to see the names and our loud laughter reverberated through the entire hostel.
Chakri’s name was printed as M K Chakraborty, but the better part of it was his father’s name, which was changed into VENKATRAO CHAKRABORTY.
God only knows how his father’s name was changed; probably they thought Chakri forgot to put the family name for his father. Later chakri and I tried to change it to reflect the correct name. We visited City centre office multiple times but in vain. Though it was disappointing for chakri, the incident always brings laughter without fail upon recollection. Some time I laugh out loud by remembering the incident and it ends in wistful tears ….I miss Durgapur and miss these wonderful people in my busy life.
Durgapur Blues-Benachity the Market Place
We had couple of shopping streets(not complexes) in Durgapur. The closest one to Steel House hostel was a shopping street ‘Benachity’, where we never tried taking snaps or to record memories, but most of our shopping used to be from that place .It was around 2 miles from Steel House. We go straight to Durgapur Club and take a left to benachity. It was a real big 2-2.5 mile street(like Las Vegas’ strip) .You get book shops, sari houses , groceries , vegetables ,electronics , house hold items , furniture, ice cream parlors, hotels, transport communications(of course only STD in those days-No internet).,shoe shops etc… One problem with the street though, they are open only from 10 to1 pm/2 pm and closed for 2-3 hours. Then they are open in the evening . Most of the shops have somewhat lazy sales guys who are mainly recruited/allotted by trade unions. I remember couple of experiences where we tried to bargain items and the salesmen were angry/impatient and they asked us to go to another shop.Same situation in other shops too.We got used to the work culture slowly.One important thing that south Indians definitely remember was the Madras stores, it is one of the oldest stores and a Tamil guy was the owner.He used to get all the spices that we needed.He was multilingual.We really felt happy to see some body talking to us in Telugu.He was also the distributor of Telugu magazines such as Swati, Bhoomi , Film magazines(Sitara , Jyothi chitra etc..)His tore was also very close to the vegetable market .So it is like we get everything in that particular street itself. First day we landed in Durgapur, almost every gang (south, north, and east west. AGAIN IN South Telugu, Tamil etc…) was there and looking at the town .Benachity was real representative of Durgapur. There are mini buses from there (Prantika)to almost all corners of Durgapur. Benachity was very good as we get everything there. In those days (1993-August) we did not find many STD booths. There were two STD booths in Benachity to Biringi. We used to go to a place called ‘Prantika-Heart of Benachity’ and a decent restaurant. We used to have dinner there some times (mostly when our mess is closed-Saturday/Sunday). First we go to the STD booth (it is actually a big room where at least 20-25 people wait to get their turn).There was no queue as such. People wait there after they write/register their numbers. The guy will try to dial the numbers in order but, if u r unlucky your number is busy or connection problem, u need to wait again. Once we register the name /number, we go to prantika restaurant and order items and complete the dinner (Mainly one main course-Sabjee and Roti/Naan etc..)After we check out we go and check our luck at STD booth. In those days the pulse was also expensive .Raju who was the only married guy of our gang, used to call his Mavayya (wife’s father) and wife. He has not allotted the marriage quarters yet. Unfortunately though my parents at Hyderabad did not have Phone connection in 1993.So first three years, I did not talk to my parents over phone from Benachity.
Once, myself and Arun kumar jain went to benachity .Venkatesh, Sagar, Jayanth and Veerraju were also there but after reaching the first booth(near Pranthika), Raju registered his number(in line/queue) but Arun Jain was upset with the rush and asked me whether I can accompany him for his call to another booth(close to the end of the street-Biringi).We both started walking towards the booth and it was really far but we were close friends then and were talking about so many things. Arun Jain was a short, smart and possesses excellent Hindi and English spoken skills. He was from Hardwar and I was invited to his place and we were also discussing, planning about going to Purl also once. He also wanted Bhagat to be joined .There was another guy called Manish Gupta looks very similar to Arun Jain Short/Smart but ‘V’ shape face. For some reason I was not sure whether I wanted Manish as part of our group. As we discuss/plan things we reached the Booth. To our utter astonishment this booth was definitely different than the one at Pranthika. Definitely less crowded and lot cleaner. Arun registered his number and we were sure that our call will be connected and we will be done within next 20 minutes. The guy was dialing numbers and he connected a girl to her registered number. We were watching the girl (as we did not have anything else to do ), frankly there was no privacy. you go to a booth and talk in front of every body. This girl was in a very decent dress and she seems to be talking to her boy friend (though it is not uncommon during those days but not a very common thing as of Today.).We started paying more attention to her conversation. It seems she was asking her boy friend to be confident as he is worried, how to tell their parents about this etc… She was consoling him that she would be there in that city (her native place) and both of them could think about strategies on what needs to be done to convince parents and how to survive by getting right jobs and managing their lives(Like QSQT movie).But the guy was asking lot of questions. Though this girl wanted to end the conversation that guy was really worried and was not ready for disconnection. Finally, this continued for almost 15 minutes and she paid around 600 Rupees .It was a big amount for us in those days as we used to get Rs.3265/- per month during our training. We were upset after the conversation for couple of reasons, For making us wait for 20 more minutes and reminding us that we did not have a confident girl friend(Sorry.. we did not even have a normal girl friend).
Anyway jain finished his turn and we were walking back to Steel House. This time both of us were upset to the core (though did not disclose) and the distance also seemed more. We did not actively continue our plans of Hardwar trip, Puri trip etc… Just discussed about how frustrated we are to be away from parents and close friends back home.
Once, myself and Arun kumar jain went to benachity .Venkatesh, Sagar, Jayanth and Veerraju were also there but after reaching the first booth(near Pranthika), Raju registered his number(in line/queue) but Arun Jain was upset with the rush and asked me whether I can accompany him for his call to another booth(close to the end of the street-Biringi).We both started walking towards the booth and it was really far but we were close friends then and were talking about so many things. Arun Jain was a short, smart and possesses excellent Hindi and English spoken skills. He was from Hardwar and I was invited to his place and we were also discussing, planning about going to Purl also once. He also wanted Bhagat to be joined .There was another guy called Manish Gupta looks very similar to Arun Jain Short/Smart but ‘V’ shape face. For some reason I was not sure whether I wanted Manish as part of our group. As we discuss/plan things we reached the Booth. To our utter astonishment this booth was definitely different than the one at Pranthika. Definitely less crowded and lot cleaner. Arun registered his number and we were sure that our call will be connected and we will be done within next 20 minutes. The guy was dialing numbers and he connected a girl to her registered number. We were watching the girl (as we did not have anything else to do ), frankly there was no privacy. you go to a booth and talk in front of every body. This girl was in a very decent dress and she seems to be talking to her boy friend (though it is not uncommon during those days but not a very common thing as of Today.).We started paying more attention to her conversation. It seems she was asking her boy friend to be confident as he is worried, how to tell their parents about this etc… She was consoling him that she would be there in that city (her native place) and both of them could think about strategies on what needs to be done to convince parents and how to survive by getting right jobs and managing their lives(Like QSQT movie).But the guy was asking lot of questions. Though this girl wanted to end the conversation that guy was really worried and was not ready for disconnection. Finally, this continued for almost 15 minutes and she paid around 600 Rupees .It was a big amount for us in those days as we used to get Rs.3265/- per month during our training. We were upset after the conversation for couple of reasons, For making us wait for 20 more minutes and reminding us that we did not have a confident girl friend(Sorry.. we did not even have a normal girl friend).
Anyway jain finished his turn and we were walking back to Steel House. This time both of us were upset to the core (though did not disclose) and the distance also seemed more. We did not actively continue our plans of Hardwar trip, Puri trip etc… Just discussed about how frustrated we are to be away from parents and close friends back home.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Durgapur Blues-Tales of communication system
During my first 2-3 years of stay(1993-Augusttill 1996),there were only two STD booths in Benachity to Biringi. First we were used to go to the STD booth (it was actually a big room where at least 20-25 people wait to get their turn).There was no queue as such. People wait there after they write/register their numbers. The guy will try to dial the numbers in order but, if u r unlucky your number is busy or connection problem, u need to wait again. Unfortunately though my parents at Hyderabad did not have Phone connection in 1993.So during my first three years, I never tried to dial my parents from Benachity.
Anyway this continued for some time and we had a phone at hostel and I used to wait for my parents to call me at that number on all alternate Sundays during my first year’s stay and on all Sundays later. Unfortunately, from Steel house some of our seniors were making regular personal local calls ,from that number and my parents were getting a busy tone. But I think, I had the best use of the opportunity. I informed those people that I was waiting for my long distance call and requesting them for finishing their local call soon. Though there were some fights initially between some south Indians to localites (I remember one day Venkatesh was extremely angry on a guy and shouted a lot on him. That guy was our senior (of course, we never had any great respect for seniors unless they are from our own department).Some times, I used to get the call only after 1 hour of waiting for various reasons. But after the call I used to feel revitalized and recharged for next week’s chores.
Later our Boss Atul Kapoor got a connection and he offered e to use the phone(receiving).It was a great help to me and I was always appreciative of his help.The communication was becoming better day by day.
By the time my parents got phone connection, it was amazing; almost every 100 yards from our hostel till benachity/biringi ,there were countless number of ISD/STD/PCO booths. The booths were no more crowded. You reach the booth, dial the number and talk to your dear ones. The pulse rates were also drastically reduced for STDs. So we started calling our parents/close friends as and when we wanted. Especially after 7:00 PM it was half rate and 8:30 PM- 1/3 rate. After 11 PM it was ¼ pulses.
During this time some old timers (Durgapur senior citizens) were not happy with the fastest service they are getting because of the countless number of booths. Now they cannot chat (and meet people of similar mindset/habituated to have ‘Adda’) during their wait time before they are connected. One day, I was shocked to see the rush at a public booth on my way to Benachity (thru a short cut) where still the same old procedure of registering the number, 15-20 people waiting to be called and blaming the operator and the world as a whole and having ‘Big ADDA’ (where as there are at least 2-3 other booths which were at a stone’s throw distance). I immediately understood the situation though.
Frankly, all of were benefited to the core-especially ½ and 1/3 pulse rates. This also distributed the traffic. KS Rao benefited (or lost lot of money) by using ¼ pulse. He got engaged during that time (our 4th year in Durgapur) and we all shifted to Bokaro hostel (though Venkatesh, Sashikanth, Sagar, Nag, Jayanth moved to Tagore house). Myself, KS, GOKI, Praveen Chakri, Subbu, George, Sitaram, Sastry, Raj Mohan James, Sarma(he did not shift to our hostel but used to stay with us during his wife’s leave/absence ).
Everyday, sorry…… every night KS used to approach one of us for borrowing some money to call his wife (sorry, was not yet married) for hours together and used to spend Rs.300-400 during ¼ pulse. He was prompt in paying back his debts though, we all were praying god that he gets married soon so that he can start saving. He was irregular to office and used to take countless number of leaves (Of course I am also same kind but I think I only second to him).
Anyway this continued for some time and we had a phone at hostel and I used to wait for my parents to call me at that number on all alternate Sundays during my first year’s stay and on all Sundays later. Unfortunately, from Steel house some of our seniors were making regular personal local calls ,from that number and my parents were getting a busy tone. But I think, I had the best use of the opportunity. I informed those people that I was waiting for my long distance call and requesting them for finishing their local call soon. Though there were some fights initially between some south Indians to localites (I remember one day Venkatesh was extremely angry on a guy and shouted a lot on him. That guy was our senior (of course, we never had any great respect for seniors unless they are from our own department).Some times, I used to get the call only after 1 hour of waiting for various reasons. But after the call I used to feel revitalized and recharged for next week’s chores.
Later our Boss Atul Kapoor got a connection and he offered e to use the phone(receiving).It was a great help to me and I was always appreciative of his help.The communication was becoming better day by day.
By the time my parents got phone connection, it was amazing; almost every 100 yards from our hostel till benachity/biringi ,there were countless number of ISD/STD/PCO booths. The booths were no more crowded. You reach the booth, dial the number and talk to your dear ones. The pulse rates were also drastically reduced for STDs. So we started calling our parents/close friends as and when we wanted. Especially after 7:00 PM it was half rate and 8:30 PM- 1/3 rate. After 11 PM it was ¼ pulses.
During this time some old timers (Durgapur senior citizens) were not happy with the fastest service they are getting because of the countless number of booths. Now they cannot chat (and meet people of similar mindset/habituated to have ‘Adda’) during their wait time before they are connected. One day, I was shocked to see the rush at a public booth on my way to Benachity (thru a short cut) where still the same old procedure of registering the number, 15-20 people waiting to be called and blaming the operator and the world as a whole and having ‘Big ADDA’ (where as there are at least 2-3 other booths which were at a stone’s throw distance). I immediately understood the situation though.
Frankly, all of were benefited to the core-especially ½ and 1/3 pulse rates. This also distributed the traffic. KS Rao benefited (or lost lot of money) by using ¼ pulse. He got engaged during that time (our 4th year in Durgapur) and we all shifted to Bokaro hostel (though Venkatesh, Sashikanth, Sagar, Nag, Jayanth moved to Tagore house). Myself, KS, GOKI, Praveen Chakri, Subbu, George, Sitaram, Sastry, Raj Mohan James, Sarma(he did not shift to our hostel but used to stay with us during his wife’s leave/absence ).
Everyday, sorry…… every night KS used to approach one of us for borrowing some money to call his wife (sorry, was not yet married) for hours together and used to spend Rs.300-400 during ¼ pulse. He was prompt in paying back his debts though, we all were praying god that he gets married soon so that he can start saving. He was irregular to office and used to take countless number of leaves (Of course I am also same kind but I think I only second to him).
Durgapur Blues-Damodar River
Everyone was ready and waiting. Chakri was still getting ready . We all had another round of Tea. Out side the steel house there is a small tea stall where we all used to spend time waiting for our friends , Buses and most of the times ‘Just pastime’.
People slowly started getting irritated , Arun Kumar Jain started cribbing ‘ agar abhi hhi hum ek admi ko ane ke liye bolega tho bhi itna time nahi lagega’ . Arun kumar Jain and Sashi Nath bhagat were really getting impatient for two reasons, one, they were the only folks from North and other being Chakri was getting ready for 2 hours.
Since I was the organizer (was called a guide to Durgapur Darshan, frankly it was my first time too but I was always interested in seeing the places and used to capture the information as much as possible so that I can visit one day), I had to answer every body’s questions and handle their frustrations. It was during our first 2 months in Durgapur. I used to have one old camera (Yashika), we all visited lot of places in Durgapur. Suddenly we all saw Chakri running and rushing from his room wearing a red shirt. It was like a great moment for all of us as the waiting of our life time was over. We all got into the mini bus and reached Damodar River. There is a dam over the river and was built during British rule. It has lot of picnic points and Trees. The downside there is not much water as only 1-2 gates were opened. The river was called as ‘Sorrow of Bengal’ by some and ‘Sorrow of Bihar’ by others as there are lot of uncontrolled floods and calamities which ruined lot of families. We started taking photos. Suddenly, some one from the controlling room called us and asked us not to take the pictures of the dam. Those days were, frankly, not as restricted as current days but for some reason they seemed not liking us/group of youngsters walking on grass, shouting , taking photos etc… By then we already had taken around 10 photos.
On that day I never thought I will visit that place later so many times. Once we all purchased scooters, we explored lot of areas there (Dam).
On our way from Steel House to Damodar River, you first cross ‘city centre’ and then pass by an area where there was a hill. You cross CMERI and the road splits into two, as we reach close to railway station. One route takes you to railway station (from there you can go to Damodar river by taking right) another route will directly takes you to the river. But this route is really a great route as you drive on the pathway next to water/river and you run along with it/parrelel) and reach the Dam’s entrance where the other route merges.
Though I came with Chakri once, Goki once and Rajmohan once but there are multiple number of times I came with Praveen. Especially on Sundays. There are four to five places we used to sit/relax/chat/enjoy the dam, water and mother nature.
You can walk down the dam and can sit in the sand (gates were closed).I was doing my MBA 2nd year during that time and myself and Praveen visited that place and sat on the sand and were studying. He was reading some general stuff and I was preparing for my MBA exams. Praveen also used to bring his Speakers which he did purchase few days before and tried to connect them to his walkman. Definitely it was great time. It is winter and afternoons in winter, especially in Durgapur and at Damodar river used to be top class. You don’t feel cold and don’t feel hot.
Another place is, walk on the dam and reach other end, there were some cement benches where you can see the controlled water (lot of water controlled by 20-25 gates) and its peaceful sound. Power plant at a distance and extremely peaceful surroundings. Other than Sundays, this was never crowded. This place was good during evenings(till 8:30 PM). The water was not flowing but the sound of the water trying to cross the gate and gate not allowing it to flow down was really great. I remember one specific incident. One day it was around 7:30 PM and I and Praveen were chatting there for almost 1-2 hours, we just walked here and there and looked around for some water/snacks. There was a very small tea shop and this shop did not contain any thing. It was a very very small shop and we were little disappointed. That shopwala was also seemed not keen on expanding his shop as very few people visit that place. To our astonishment the tea tasted real good. I think the timing was right, mood was on and a very peaceful day without any tensions and responsibilities. There was always a sense of belongingness, cohesiveness among all of us. As we were far from Andhra and nobody to take care of. I think the days in Durgapur are the best considering many factors. While penning my feelings now, I strongly think, I should visit Durgapur again once (which I have been planning for the past 10 years).This thought is strengthening day by day.
When u r driving from railway station to Dam, you find a mini dam .This is fabulous, probably my best pick. There was a giant tree and you see the water running /flowing/roaring. This dam is probably the right canal of Damodar river which supplies water for Drinking and day to day usage. The water was so great that we never had water filters/aqua guards etc... We used to collect/drink water from bathrooms for all purposes. On the other note, as they had the abundant supply of water, the usage /wastage of water was also at higher levels. You can sit near the tree or walk to other end (there a re only 3-4 gates) and watch the roaring white waters, the large tree. This place was best for all seasons and all times of the day. After my marriage was settled I visited this place 3-4 times.
People slowly started getting irritated , Arun Kumar Jain started cribbing ‘ agar abhi hhi hum ek admi ko ane ke liye bolega tho bhi itna time nahi lagega’ . Arun kumar Jain and Sashi Nath bhagat were really getting impatient for two reasons, one, they were the only folks from North and other being Chakri was getting ready for 2 hours.
Since I was the organizer (was called a guide to Durgapur Darshan, frankly it was my first time too but I was always interested in seeing the places and used to capture the information as much as possible so that I can visit one day), I had to answer every body’s questions and handle their frustrations. It was during our first 2 months in Durgapur. I used to have one old camera (Yashika), we all visited lot of places in Durgapur. Suddenly we all saw Chakri running and rushing from his room wearing a red shirt. It was like a great moment for all of us as the waiting of our life time was over. We all got into the mini bus and reached Damodar River. There is a dam over the river and was built during British rule. It has lot of picnic points and Trees. The downside there is not much water as only 1-2 gates were opened. The river was called as ‘Sorrow of Bengal’ by some and ‘Sorrow of Bihar’ by others as there are lot of uncontrolled floods and calamities which ruined lot of families. We started taking photos. Suddenly, some one from the controlling room called us and asked us not to take the pictures of the dam. Those days were, frankly, not as restricted as current days but for some reason they seemed not liking us/group of youngsters walking on grass, shouting , taking photos etc… By then we already had taken around 10 photos.
On that day I never thought I will visit that place later so many times. Once we all purchased scooters, we explored lot of areas there (Dam).
On our way from Steel House to Damodar River, you first cross ‘city centre’ and then pass by an area where there was a hill. You cross CMERI and the road splits into two, as we reach close to railway station. One route takes you to railway station (from there you can go to Damodar river by taking right) another route will directly takes you to the river. But this route is really a great route as you drive on the pathway next to water/river and you run along with it/parrelel) and reach the Dam’s entrance where the other route merges.
Though I came with Chakri once, Goki once and Rajmohan once but there are multiple number of times I came with Praveen. Especially on Sundays. There are four to five places we used to sit/relax/chat/enjoy the dam, water and mother nature.
You can walk down the dam and can sit in the sand (gates were closed).I was doing my MBA 2nd year during that time and myself and Praveen visited that place and sat on the sand and were studying. He was reading some general stuff and I was preparing for my MBA exams. Praveen also used to bring his Speakers which he did purchase few days before and tried to connect them to his walkman. Definitely it was great time. It is winter and afternoons in winter, especially in Durgapur and at Damodar river used to be top class. You don’t feel cold and don’t feel hot.
Another place is, walk on the dam and reach other end, there were some cement benches where you can see the controlled water (lot of water controlled by 20-25 gates) and its peaceful sound. Power plant at a distance and extremely peaceful surroundings. Other than Sundays, this was never crowded. This place was good during evenings(till 8:30 PM). The water was not flowing but the sound of the water trying to cross the gate and gate not allowing it to flow down was really great. I remember one specific incident. One day it was around 7:30 PM and I and Praveen were chatting there for almost 1-2 hours, we just walked here and there and looked around for some water/snacks. There was a very small tea shop and this shop did not contain any thing. It was a very very small shop and we were little disappointed. That shopwala was also seemed not keen on expanding his shop as very few people visit that place. To our astonishment the tea tasted real good. I think the timing was right, mood was on and a very peaceful day without any tensions and responsibilities. There was always a sense of belongingness, cohesiveness among all of us. As we were far from Andhra and nobody to take care of. I think the days in Durgapur are the best considering many factors. While penning my feelings now, I strongly think, I should visit Durgapur again once (which I have been planning for the past 10 years).This thought is strengthening day by day.
When u r driving from railway station to Dam, you find a mini dam .This is fabulous, probably my best pick. There was a giant tree and you see the water running /flowing/roaring. This dam is probably the right canal of Damodar river which supplies water for Drinking and day to day usage. The water was so great that we never had water filters/aqua guards etc... We used to collect/drink water from bathrooms for all purposes. On the other note, as they had the abundant supply of water, the usage /wastage of water was also at higher levels. You can sit near the tree or walk to other end (there a re only 3-4 gates) and watch the roaring white waters, the large tree. This place was best for all seasons and all times of the day. After my marriage was settled I visited this place 3-4 times.
Durgapur Blues-Tales of Chakri's Scooter and Hammer mill
“Vasu, give me your scooter keys….” I turned in response to Chakri’s voice in our Bokaro Hostel breakfast ‘Adda’. I was in B shift (2PM to 10PM). Chakri told me that he had a flat tire and wanted to borrow my scooter as he was in general shift (7:30PM to 4:00 PM). I understood the urgency and immediately handed over my scooter keys. I can change the spare tire within 5 minutes, so it was not a problem.
Chakri’s scooter (WB40A7026) was bought a week before I bought mine (WB40A 7081). His vehicle maintenance was excellent during those days. He made sure that all the accessories were in place before actually driving the vehicle and used to ensure its regular/scheduled maintenance. To tell the truth, Chakri had decided on the scooter in lieu of a motorbike because he needed the reassurance of the spare tire, which was not possible with a bike.
We started playing our daily game of cricket (George, Sarma, Subbu, KS, Nag, Myself). At around 10:30 AM, we were done with the game and I was ready to change the tire. It was very difficult to remove the tire as all the bolts were tightly fixed. I requested Subbu to help me. He also tried a lot but finally he gave up. Sarma was our subsequent choice for this tough task. Sarma is a well-built, healthy guy. He was one of the most charming persons in our group and he never said no to anybody.
Sarma joined us and started rotating the spanner in the right direction. With his energetic efforts, he was able to loosen all the bolts. Subbu and I were balancing the scooter to assist Sarma’s fitting job. Both of us were cursing Chakri on why he had not done tire rotation IN YEARS.
Finally Sarma finished fitting the extra tire. Subbu decided to take the scooter for a trial run. I was surprised to see that and informed Subbu that mechanics did that once they had completed the repair works. We had neither repaired anything nor was Subbu a mechanic. Even before I could finish my sentence, Subbu had started the scooter and taken it a little further. He did not even go beyond the gates and stopped, saying that there was still some problem with the vehicle. Upon closer observation, we found the problem to be that
“The front wheel had the flat tire and we had replaced the rear tire”.
All of us were in shock, then burst into laughter and started blaming one another for working on the back tire. Subbu was of the opinion that it was very easy to change the front tire and solved the problem in a jiffy. Anyway, Chakri was the subject of ridicule for some more time since it was most unusual to have a flat tire problem in the front wheel. When I recounted this tale to Sarma in 2000, during my stay in Omaha and had tracked down his contact details, we laughed hysterically one more time. It also reminded us of another hilarious incident.
Later that day, I went to work (B shift). I regaled my Bosses and colleagues there with what had happened earlier in the day and almost all of us forgot the office etiquette and burst into an uncontrolled bout of loud laughter. I was in a department called ‘heavy maintenance ‘which does a central mechanical maintenance for Durgapur Steel Plant. Our Boss Jhaji was a very charming person and he is a senior ‘promotee’ officer. He was always down to earth and never was a believer of hierarchy. After listening to our story ‘according to Heavy maintenance standards you have done the right thing”, he recalled another incident (official). Once ‘Heavy maintenance’ was called to perform a replacement work in Hammer mill .The building was huge (3-4 floors) and it housed two hammer mills, one in use and another standby. We were asked to replace the defective one. We reached the site and there was nobody at the site to show us the job on that day. All non-executives waited for some time and became impatient and started saying ‘ humko itna door laake aap officer log harass karthe hai’ .Then Jhaji(under pressure) instructed them to check the hammer on our own and start working (the hammer was extremely huge and difficult to remove from its position, then the new one has to be positioned and tightened).We checked both the hammers and neither of them were working and we assumed one to be defective(as it is close to the repairing bay) . We duly removed it and positioned the new one.
Satisfied with their effort, all the people came back from site by noon. Suddenly AGM Sundaram got a call from Hammer mill department and they wanted the work to be started, Sundaram thought we finished the work and informed them the same. He was ashamed to the core when he was told that
‘ your people have replaced the working hammer mill with the new one and they did not remove/repair the defective one”
Chakri’s scooter (WB40A7026) was bought a week before I bought mine (WB40A 7081). His vehicle maintenance was excellent during those days. He made sure that all the accessories were in place before actually driving the vehicle and used to ensure its regular/scheduled maintenance. To tell the truth, Chakri had decided on the scooter in lieu of a motorbike because he needed the reassurance of the spare tire, which was not possible with a bike.
We started playing our daily game of cricket (George, Sarma, Subbu, KS, Nag, Myself). At around 10:30 AM, we were done with the game and I was ready to change the tire. It was very difficult to remove the tire as all the bolts were tightly fixed. I requested Subbu to help me. He also tried a lot but finally he gave up. Sarma was our subsequent choice for this tough task. Sarma is a well-built, healthy guy. He was one of the most charming persons in our group and he never said no to anybody.
Sarma joined us and started rotating the spanner in the right direction. With his energetic efforts, he was able to loosen all the bolts. Subbu and I were balancing the scooter to assist Sarma’s fitting job. Both of us were cursing Chakri on why he had not done tire rotation IN YEARS.
Finally Sarma finished fitting the extra tire. Subbu decided to take the scooter for a trial run. I was surprised to see that and informed Subbu that mechanics did that once they had completed the repair works. We had neither repaired anything nor was Subbu a mechanic. Even before I could finish my sentence, Subbu had started the scooter and taken it a little further. He did not even go beyond the gates and stopped, saying that there was still some problem with the vehicle. Upon closer observation, we found the problem to be that
“The front wheel had the flat tire and we had replaced the rear tire”.
All of us were in shock, then burst into laughter and started blaming one another for working on the back tire. Subbu was of the opinion that it was very easy to change the front tire and solved the problem in a jiffy. Anyway, Chakri was the subject of ridicule for some more time since it was most unusual to have a flat tire problem in the front wheel. When I recounted this tale to Sarma in 2000, during my stay in Omaha and had tracked down his contact details, we laughed hysterically one more time. It also reminded us of another hilarious incident.
Later that day, I went to work (B shift). I regaled my Bosses and colleagues there with what had happened earlier in the day and almost all of us forgot the office etiquette and burst into an uncontrolled bout of loud laughter. I was in a department called ‘heavy maintenance ‘which does a central mechanical maintenance for Durgapur Steel Plant. Our Boss Jhaji was a very charming person and he is a senior ‘promotee’ officer. He was always down to earth and never was a believer of hierarchy. After listening to our story ‘according to Heavy maintenance standards you have done the right thing”, he recalled another incident (official). Once ‘Heavy maintenance’ was called to perform a replacement work in Hammer mill .The building was huge (3-4 floors) and it housed two hammer mills, one in use and another standby. We were asked to replace the defective one. We reached the site and there was nobody at the site to show us the job on that day. All non-executives waited for some time and became impatient and started saying ‘ humko itna door laake aap officer log harass karthe hai’ .Then Jhaji(under pressure) instructed them to check the hammer on our own and start working (the hammer was extremely huge and difficult to remove from its position, then the new one has to be positioned and tightened).We checked both the hammers and neither of them were working and we assumed one to be defective(as it is close to the repairing bay) . We duly removed it and positioned the new one.
Satisfied with their effort, all the people came back from site by noon. Suddenly AGM Sundaram got a call from Hammer mill department and they wanted the work to be started, Sundaram thought we finished the work and informed them the same. He was ashamed to the core when he was told that
‘ your people have replaced the working hammer mill with the new one and they did not remove/repair the defective one”
Monday, July 6, 2009
Durgapur Blues-Difficult to be away from Home
It was the summer of 1993. I would soon turn 23 and had completed my B.Tech. the year before. Since I was unsuccessful in landing a job right out of college, I had registered myself for the MBA course. Along with my regular post-graduate studies, I applied myself diligently to the preparation for subsequent interviews and written tests. I appeared and qualified in all the eight exams that I felt were suitable and my confidence levels peaked with each letter of acceptance that arrived in the mail. Just before heading home from classes, I had reiterated the luxury of having a job while pursuing higher academic goals to my close friends.
This indeed was a summer of happenings. We had recently moved into our very own newly constructed residence which in itself was a dream come true. When I arrived home, my mom was resting on the verandah and I had a hearty lunch. Just as I belched and burped to signal the end of my meal, my mom produced an envelope from SAIL and I literally jumped from the chair. She beamed proudly with a triumphant look while I tried to digest this latest attestation of my performance. I was invited to attend the training program for Management Trainees at Bhilai, with Durgapur being my eventual destination.
Once the enormity of the news sank in, I felt this strong need to share it with others. But I had no friends in the vicinity (remember, we were new in this colony), no chatty neighbors, no telephone connection and our home was pretty far from my extended family’s location. So, I remember blurting it out to the builder of our house who was the only familiar face there. And then I waited for my father to come home at night. I was on cloud nine – the feeling of having proven my mettle was all-encompassing.
July 20 was to be my last day at home. My friends were invited to an impromptu birthday/ farewell party while I made sure that I had packed well for my first solo journey away from home. I was functioning on an adrenalin rush and the gathering was a smash hit. Unwrapping their gifts and birthday cards late into the night did not tire me out. I even managed to squeeze in the movie 'Disco Dancer' that was telecast on Doordarshan and which I had waited for a long time, before succumbing to slumber.
My mom was constantly at my side while I dressed to leave the next day and as I carried my bags to the auto stand a couple of hundred yards away, she accompanied me. I was mildly irritated and asked her to go back home when I saw her anxious face and bare feet! My sense of euphoria was replaced by the practical comprehension of the journey that I had embarked upon. I would be completely on my own with no mom to come home to, I would miss my home and my personal belongings and nobody would care for me as my mom had done so far.
And to think that she did not say a word about her state of mind! I was her baby and to date, she was always a busy mom tending to her child’s needs and comforts. How she would miss my presence and how my memories at home would be vivid yet not reassuring! Her life revolved around me as I had never stayed in a hostel in my entire student phase and with me gone, she would take a while to adjust to me being absent. My entire trip to the railway station was filled with painful longing for my mom and shame for my ineptitude at gauging her situation.
My friends and relatives were crowding the platform to wish me well and it did serve to lift my spirits. They were extremely proud of me and their blessings and wishes galore reinforced my decision. I had an uneventful sojourn from Hyderabad to Durg with a break at Nagpur where I had to switch trains.
I was greeted by a welcoming group at Durg who guided our batch of incumbent trainees to the hostel and our rooms. Even though the environs were new, I met some old acquaintances and spent the evening in idle chatter. I retired for the night exhausted both mentally and physically and when I awoke at dawn, I sat bolt upright. Neither the window by my bed nor the scene outside looked friendly or personal. My doubts resurfaced with renewed aggression – why did I have to come so far away from home? What have I set out to accomplish in my life? Does forsaking my family, friends and hometown guarantee success in my profession? Will every morning be identical to this as long as I opt for a career with SAIL? Am I stuck with this scenario for a lifetime?
The sense of ‘not-belonging’ followed me everywhere – the only constant then was my loneliness. Though outwardly I was surrounded with colleagues and I was busy forging new friendships, I somehow knew that this would not last a long time. My time here was limited and I promised myself that I would make sure of that.
This indeed was a summer of happenings. We had recently moved into our very own newly constructed residence which in itself was a dream come true. When I arrived home, my mom was resting on the verandah and I had a hearty lunch. Just as I belched and burped to signal the end of my meal, my mom produced an envelope from SAIL and I literally jumped from the chair. She beamed proudly with a triumphant look while I tried to digest this latest attestation of my performance. I was invited to attend the training program for Management Trainees at Bhilai, with Durgapur being my eventual destination.
Once the enormity of the news sank in, I felt this strong need to share it with others. But I had no friends in the vicinity (remember, we were new in this colony), no chatty neighbors, no telephone connection and our home was pretty far from my extended family’s location. So, I remember blurting it out to the builder of our house who was the only familiar face there. And then I waited for my father to come home at night. I was on cloud nine – the feeling of having proven my mettle was all-encompassing.
July 20 was to be my last day at home. My friends were invited to an impromptu birthday/ farewell party while I made sure that I had packed well for my first solo journey away from home. I was functioning on an adrenalin rush and the gathering was a smash hit. Unwrapping their gifts and birthday cards late into the night did not tire me out. I even managed to squeeze in the movie 'Disco Dancer' that was telecast on Doordarshan and which I had waited for a long time, before succumbing to slumber.
My mom was constantly at my side while I dressed to leave the next day and as I carried my bags to the auto stand a couple of hundred yards away, she accompanied me. I was mildly irritated and asked her to go back home when I saw her anxious face and bare feet! My sense of euphoria was replaced by the practical comprehension of the journey that I had embarked upon. I would be completely on my own with no mom to come home to, I would miss my home and my personal belongings and nobody would care for me as my mom had done so far.
And to think that she did not say a word about her state of mind! I was her baby and to date, she was always a busy mom tending to her child’s needs and comforts. How she would miss my presence and how my memories at home would be vivid yet not reassuring! Her life revolved around me as I had never stayed in a hostel in my entire student phase and with me gone, she would take a while to adjust to me being absent. My entire trip to the railway station was filled with painful longing for my mom and shame for my ineptitude at gauging her situation.
My friends and relatives were crowding the platform to wish me well and it did serve to lift my spirits. They were extremely proud of me and their blessings and wishes galore reinforced my decision. I had an uneventful sojourn from Hyderabad to Durg with a break at Nagpur where I had to switch trains.
I was greeted by a welcoming group at Durg who guided our batch of incumbent trainees to the hostel and our rooms. Even though the environs were new, I met some old acquaintances and spent the evening in idle chatter. I retired for the night exhausted both mentally and physically and when I awoke at dawn, I sat bolt upright. Neither the window by my bed nor the scene outside looked friendly or personal. My doubts resurfaced with renewed aggression – why did I have to come so far away from home? What have I set out to accomplish in my life? Does forsaking my family, friends and hometown guarantee success in my profession? Will every morning be identical to this as long as I opt for a career with SAIL? Am I stuck with this scenario for a lifetime?
The sense of ‘not-belonging’ followed me everywhere – the only constant then was my loneliness. Though outwardly I was surrounded with colleagues and I was busy forging new friendships, I somehow knew that this would not last a long time. My time here was limited and I promised myself that I would make sure of that.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
IT Recession-Another look
Dear friends,
Honeymoon days are over. Back to reality.It has been a practice in india (especially South india and Hyderabad in particular), to concentrate only on boom and follow the crowd.
Current impact cannot be really called as IT recession but it is global in nature.As of Today the total job losses in India are around 7 Lacs and IT has only 10% of that(around 70k).If you really consider indian companies (not including the MNCs), this will drastically comes down to 20k .
Of course Satyam Started adding to the same now as they declared 10k employees redundant.
There are real serious problems in India in s/w market. If we look at the real statistics
IT ocntributes 7-10% of GDP , added direct 20 lac and indirect 80 lac employment .Close to 60 billinon USD imports which make economy real worry free.
People/Employers started exploiting the situation in lot of ways
Income Tax benefits , Governemnt support in assignng land etc...Even small companies without a vision started playing with this.People who are not s/w professionals but purely from business front joined the race.Started increasing the salaries , and pay structure, not looking for employee background , not bothering about loyalty and behavioural trust.
It is the game of opportunity.Emploees too started exploiting it to their favour by shifting companies every six months without botheirng about current organization , there is no centralized mechanism to keep all these things on track. Now we are worried about our kids not getting jobs in IT industry and blame obama for everything.
uNFORTUNATELY THOUGH, Copanies started using current recession to their favour to play unethical games and torturing employees(or taking revenge on them) through rigid rules and conditions(Once upon a time s/w companies used to provide lot of freedom and flexibility to employees)
Honeymoon days are over. Back to reality.It has been a practice in india (especially South india and Hyderabad in particular), to concentrate only on boom and follow the crowd.
Current impact cannot be really called as IT recession but it is global in nature.As of Today the total job losses in India are around 7 Lacs and IT has only 10% of that(around 70k).If you really consider indian companies (not including the MNCs), this will drastically comes down to 20k .
Of course Satyam Started adding to the same now as they declared 10k employees redundant.
There are real serious problems in India in s/w market. If we look at the real statistics
IT ocntributes 7-10% of GDP , added direct 20 lac and indirect 80 lac employment .Close to 60 billinon USD imports which make economy real worry free.
People/Employers started exploiting the situation in lot of ways
Income Tax benefits , Governemnt support in assignng land etc...Even small companies without a vision started playing with this.People who are not s/w professionals but purely from business front joined the race.Started increasing the salaries , and pay structure, not looking for employee background , not bothering about loyalty and behavioural trust.
It is the game of opportunity.Emploees too started exploiting it to their favour by shifting companies every six months without botheirng about current organization , there is no centralized mechanism to keep all these things on track. Now we are worried about our kids not getting jobs in IT industry and blame obama for everything.
uNFORTUNATELY THOUGH, Copanies started using current recession to their favour to play unethical games and torturing employees(or taking revenge on them) through rigid rules and conditions(Once upon a time s/w companies used to provide lot of freedom and flexibility to employees)
Beautiful Life
Dear friends,
Some time back I got a call from my old friend and he informed me that he is coming to phoenix for a short time. Then I recollected that it is a real long gap (3 years) since we had talked to each other .He came to my house later as a formality. When I knew that he is coming to my house, I was thinking what to talk with him, whether he will leave me before my normal offshore call etc… We slowly started talking and gradually traveled into the past, we recollected lot of jokes, experiences games, the quotes, the beautiful times etc… I am really happy for sharing lot of things with him, just remembering those beautiful days .I gave full credit to my college and those days. By next day I had recollected lot of other incidents and realized that I am really missing them. Every person has lot of memories in his life and only when you remember them or recollect them, your heart realizes how much you miss them. We never have time for these beautiful times. We tend to bury ourselves in regular routine life and become real lazy bones. We maintain relationship only to our close family friends and the people around us. I was telling my friend” once I get transferred to other location, chances are fair that I can forget you and try to gel with the people around there in the new location” We have time for potlucks, get togethers, picnics etc.. But not some time with our close people who were once part of our life and we had spent lot of time with them. Finally we forget them (their memories) and fall into the vicious cycles of routine life. My mom was saying the other day,” Vasu .. life is too small to enjoy, it looks like most of the incidents happened just yesterday and I see my life is almost over”. It is true, when I saw my uncle’s marriage VCD recently and I see my mom to be young, dynamic, beautiful and healthy. But now things have really changed. God has given us a special quality of remembering our near and dear, but the man made boundaries are not allowing us to relish the memories. God has created this beautiful land with lot of resources for our own happiness. But we made boundaries; we made artificial walls, false hierarchies, wrong comparisons and finally losing the fun in the life. Let us decide to call/mail our near and dear, be your normal and show how happy you are to talk with him. I am sure the waves will automatically pass on to them. I know that everybody cannot recollect the memories at the same time and when you really want to talk to them, or revive relationship, they are so called busy in their routine. We have lot of communication facilities these days like Cell phones, E-mails, cheap calling cards. Letters which are posted in India for free by websites etc...Inspite of that the relationships are being neglected. I am not talking about all, I know there are exceptionsJust look back .Remember your friends, recollect the incidents you shared with them, stop false comparisons, stop talking about your Job. Stop showing off, be down to earth. Once these are done, just look inside and outside, the world is really beautiful. You have great gifts of the world.
Tip : Love thy loved ones for life is too short
Experiments with Experiences-Real Meditation
Dear Friends
Everyone is born same and as we grow, we start learning. We find the differences in culture, Caste, Religion, disparity in Wealth, status and other boundaries created by human beings. We tend to build a personality, obviously based on the experiences we undergo. Slowly we develop a complex and limit our exposure to the outside world. Then we start comparing with others and develop either ego or jealousy etc… We finally lose people whom we really love at a particular point of time and we really had good time with. I am sure everyone might have experienced the above. Finally we tend to concentrate only on Money, Career, immediate personal interests etc. We forget to give importance to inner things, thoughts that really need a respite and they want us to take away the veil.We need to understand what we really want, how energetic we are, how confident we can be, how efficient we can be.Is there any way to extract the latent energy?What is meditation? Is it thoughtlessness? Emptiness? Thinking over a specific thought? Spiritual need? Relaxing technique?I believe most of the above are true as per individual’s needs and beliefs. My mother believes it to be spiritual and by praying god and thinking about him and serving him through prayers is our duty and it really gives her satisfaction. For me, it is not really spiritual, but a relaxing technique where in I control my incoming thoughts and avoid them by concentrating on a single thought. I normally think about standing in Tirupati Q and slowly walking towards Varaha swamy temple, then the rooms where we get locked for sometime, then I continue walking towards main entrance, then winding, unwinding, the citadels, the entrance to golden citadel. I listen to chanting then the darshan, then coming out. By the time I complete the thought I will be in deep sleep. Frankly I am not a religious person, but somehow we happen to travel to Tirupati countless number of times, I think this incident I can concentrate by repeating this incident in my thoughts, any number of times.Some people don’t like chanting. They think it to be disturbing and noisy during meditation. Instead they choose to meditate in silence, alone, for a reasonable amount of time.What are the advantages of meditation? I am sure; people who do it on a regular basis can only understand and help others on the benefits of Meditation.We can control our emotions.We understand ourselves as we spend some time for ourselves everyday because of meditation.When we understand the tremendous happiness we get out of Meditation, we really give less and less importance to lot of unnecessary thingsWe can identify our potential and we will be energetic always.The inferiority/Superiority complex we develop and further complications resulting out of it will be gone.
Tip: Think light feel ‘Light’
Independce Day
Dear friends,
As I was almost ready for onsite assignment for a new project, I just checked up with my offshore team and I found they are totally new to my then company-infosys (and two of them were freshers). But I could see the eagerness in them to learn things. We had a bumpy start and the first request was handled by ML at offshore (he was a sub contractor to Infosys) was very decent guy .He used to offer lot of solutions, and work hard in the first few days (being fresh to our AMEX account). All of us learnt the Amex process related things and technical findings together. They shared some tips and I sent them my learning. This continued for 4 months, mean time, the team was fully comfortable with the system. Finally the project, which was started as pilot for four months got extended for one more year.A funny thing happened one day as one of my friends here at onsite asked me during general chat, about my resources at offshore. He recognized my resource immediately, saying that my ML was in his earlier project for 10 days and he was pushed out of the project because he did not know the basics (=3.4) in Mainframe. Then I replied, “ He is the best resource we have in our team”. Later my ML at offshore revealed the secret that he was not a mainframe guy and he learnt everything after he joined our project. Since he was a contractor he had to manage to stay in the job.I never really felt that I was dealing with a guy who is inexperienced (in fact I never faced any problem with him, technically). What made the difference? Is it the positive attitude and freedom of mind?Here’s another shared experience, where my friends were part of two small projects (a team size of 5 each) and all of them are highly experienced and added to this, they are well versed with the application (business rules etc…). The team leader happened to be an autocratic person, with rigid rules and strict controls. The team was questioned for every small mistake and a lot of other cheap politics was deployed. Finally the project was scrapped for not meeting the timelines (though the team worked for all 7 days a week and 14-15 hours for the 4 months) and quality (in spite of regular reviews, DCS).Finally the Onsite & Offshore had conflicts. We could not get the next project. The team never had a peaceful moment during the project execution. Everyone in the project thought it was their nightmare.Did micromanagement and red- tapism helped?What is the difference between the above two incidents? Whether ‘ the learnability and positive attitude won OR technical experience, where the human factor was lacking and micromanagement was in place, helped a project?It is identified decades ago and management schools of thought have elucidated the fact that a humane approach is required for executing a given task. The world is not changed yet. Human being is a complex creation of Creator. Unfortunately the importance has not been identified yet. Some people are lucky to be in S/W business where such incidents are rare and since they also change projects often, the bad phase is definitely for a short duration.What goes wrong? Human mind is like a bow and arrow, the more you stretch and give more freedom (within some boundaries) the more you can give the world. Normally most of the people become demoralized for answering questions for which we ourselves feel guilty. Of course, we get demoralized for everything we are questioned, but sense of guilty, if added to the faultfinding session, will be real disturbing. This demoralization phase will continue to grow and eventually there will be a stage where we question our basic intelligence and we also rethink about our caliber and question our achievements in the past.We continue to make mistakes when we are not free. We all know the famous Tagore’s ‘where the mind is without fear..’. If everyone understood the above fact then why there are still lot of stray incidents where people get demoralized. It clearly tells that we know that fact, but we refuse to implement it as people around spoil us.When I became PL 9.5 years back all my close friends wished me good luck and offered a free advice, ”From today onwards you have to maintain some distance between you and your team mates, else they may take advantage of you. You also need to get regular status updates from them otherwise they will forget who they are reporting to etc.”Problem with the above is that, there are chances in which the above advices can be taken. Chances are fair that people might misuse the power they get. We should not get carried away through such things. As you all know “With great Power comes Great Responsibility”.Every person will have his way of handling things. Wearing false masks will never help us.Also let us try to understand our tasks, depending upon the role we play
Case1: Should the task to be completed where people automatically take up the responsibility and stand till the completion?
Case2: Should we force people to work and intimidate them by pointing their mistakes, demoralizing them, making them incapable to take decisions on their own?
Case 1 requires a participative leader, who provides freedom to his teammates and gets work done without much tension, as there were no misunderstandings. It also helps the personal development of the individual to take up the higher responsibilities, as opposed to case2.In order to give the best we have, we need to maintain a little composure during disturbed times. Try to think of the achievements you made, and identify the problems that we really need to address for our own development.Always think that each and every problem will add an experience to you, where you learn a new thing and become matured. The experiences will not only teach you what to do but also what not to do.Today being the Independence Day, I have chosen this topic. We lost our lives for obtaining the freedom and let us not fall into the rigid hands again.
Tip:The most important thing in life is to work freely within the identified and agreed upon boundaries, to give the best we have to the world to get back the best from the world.
As I was almost ready for onsite assignment for a new project, I just checked up with my offshore team and I found they are totally new to my then company-infosys (and two of them were freshers). But I could see the eagerness in them to learn things. We had a bumpy start and the first request was handled by ML at offshore (he was a sub contractor to Infosys) was very decent guy .He used to offer lot of solutions, and work hard in the first few days (being fresh to our AMEX account). All of us learnt the Amex process related things and technical findings together. They shared some tips and I sent them my learning. This continued for 4 months, mean time, the team was fully comfortable with the system. Finally the project, which was started as pilot for four months got extended for one more year.A funny thing happened one day as one of my friends here at onsite asked me during general chat, about my resources at offshore. He recognized my resource immediately, saying that my ML was in his earlier project for 10 days and he was pushed out of the project because he did not know the basics (=3.4) in Mainframe. Then I replied, “ He is the best resource we have in our team”. Later my ML at offshore revealed the secret that he was not a mainframe guy and he learnt everything after he joined our project. Since he was a contractor he had to manage to stay in the job.I never really felt that I was dealing with a guy who is inexperienced (in fact I never faced any problem with him, technically). What made the difference? Is it the positive attitude and freedom of mind?Here’s another shared experience, where my friends were part of two small projects (a team size of 5 each) and all of them are highly experienced and added to this, they are well versed with the application (business rules etc…). The team leader happened to be an autocratic person, with rigid rules and strict controls. The team was questioned for every small mistake and a lot of other cheap politics was deployed. Finally the project was scrapped for not meeting the timelines (though the team worked for all 7 days a week and 14-15 hours for the 4 months) and quality (in spite of regular reviews, DCS).Finally the Onsite & Offshore had conflicts. We could not get the next project. The team never had a peaceful moment during the project execution. Everyone in the project thought it was their nightmare.Did micromanagement and red- tapism helped?What is the difference between the above two incidents? Whether ‘ the learnability and positive attitude won OR technical experience, where the human factor was lacking and micromanagement was in place, helped a project?It is identified decades ago and management schools of thought have elucidated the fact that a humane approach is required for executing a given task. The world is not changed yet. Human being is a complex creation of Creator. Unfortunately the importance has not been identified yet. Some people are lucky to be in S/W business where such incidents are rare and since they also change projects often, the bad phase is definitely for a short duration.What goes wrong? Human mind is like a bow and arrow, the more you stretch and give more freedom (within some boundaries) the more you can give the world. Normally most of the people become demoralized for answering questions for which we ourselves feel guilty. Of course, we get demoralized for everything we are questioned, but sense of guilty, if added to the faultfinding session, will be real disturbing. This demoralization phase will continue to grow and eventually there will be a stage where we question our basic intelligence and we also rethink about our caliber and question our achievements in the past.We continue to make mistakes when we are not free. We all know the famous Tagore’s ‘where the mind is without fear..’. If everyone understood the above fact then why there are still lot of stray incidents where people get demoralized. It clearly tells that we know that fact, but we refuse to implement it as people around spoil us.When I became PL 9.5 years back all my close friends wished me good luck and offered a free advice, ”From today onwards you have to maintain some distance between you and your team mates, else they may take advantage of you. You also need to get regular status updates from them otherwise they will forget who they are reporting to etc.”Problem with the above is that, there are chances in which the above advices can be taken. Chances are fair that people might misuse the power they get. We should not get carried away through such things. As you all know “With great Power comes Great Responsibility”.Every person will have his way of handling things. Wearing false masks will never help us.Also let us try to understand our tasks, depending upon the role we play
Case1: Should the task to be completed where people automatically take up the responsibility and stand till the completion?
Case2: Should we force people to work and intimidate them by pointing their mistakes, demoralizing them, making them incapable to take decisions on their own?
Case 1 requires a participative leader, who provides freedom to his teammates and gets work done without much tension, as there were no misunderstandings. It also helps the personal development of the individual to take up the higher responsibilities, as opposed to case2.In order to give the best we have, we need to maintain a little composure during disturbed times. Try to think of the achievements you made, and identify the problems that we really need to address for our own development.Always think that each and every problem will add an experience to you, where you learn a new thing and become matured. The experiences will not only teach you what to do but also what not to do.Today being the Independence Day, I have chosen this topic. We lost our lives for obtaining the freedom and let us not fall into the rigid hands again.
Tip:The most important thing in life is to work freely within the identified and agreed upon boundaries, to give the best we have to the world to get back the best from the world.
Positive Thought
Dear friends,
I never thought I would ever leave Hyderabad and work elsewhere. But things, which are bound to happen, will happen. I had to go to a place, which is 40 hrs from Hyderabad for my first Job. Though it was painful initially, we had excellent time there, as everyone in my batch was in the same boat. There was great cohesiveness amongst us. Of course later we formed smaller groups and started sharing our personal life, stories about everything under the sun. As you know, with all relationships, there also comes up a lot of misunderstandings, thought mismatches, arguments etc…Once I was returning from my vacation, back to my workplace. I suddenly started thinking about my friend and the arguments we had. I was thinking ’I should have said this. I should have done that etc…’ Within the next one hour blood started pumping high and my mind was not in my control. I was feeling totally pressurized and soon I started feeling severe, uncontrollable headache.I did not carry pills during my journey. My headache doubled within next one hour.Later the train stopped at Vijayawada and I had my lunch and during that time. I took some mango juice. For no reason a quick thought came to my mind that it was my friends’ favorite too. Unknowingly I started recollecting the good times we shared together. For next 1 hour I was thinking about the same and surprisingly I felt relaxed. My mind was relieved of the tension. My headache was slowly reduced. I was totally fresh and I started feeling much happier.Then I was asking myself, why do lot of people ask us to be positive, control emotions etc…? I thought it might be a better anger/tension/depression control mechanism for me.Whenever I feel tensed up, I try to think of things, which relieves me off the stress.Whenever I feel depressed, I try to think of things, which boost my confidenceWhenever I feel bad about a person, I try to think of good things that person has done to me. (We all know that every one has some good and bad qualities)Why do people with great wealth and success in their career still have lot of health problems? In most of the cases they don’t deal things with positive thought. Depressing thoughts can kill or force you to throw away your god-gifted life.
The advantages of the positive thought will be,
1.Immediate relief (Once you are normal then try for the permanent solution to the irritating problem)
2.Chance to look at the good things of a person or about our past and looking back into our mistakes too (Basically self-realization)
3.Health considerations
4. Better control over the immediate task (without a better control of mind, body won’t help us and we cannot perform the task of our choice)
I have tried the above and it worked lot of times for me. I hope every person will have their own way of dealing anger and other things in their life.So lets get over with all troubles by avoiding bad thought and recollecting some good memories from our past.
Tip :Be happy , happy all the time
Problem(atic) Life
Dear friends,
It happened to me around 7.5 years back. I had to drive down to Kansas City from Omaha, where I was staying. I promised my friend that I will be there positively that weekend, and reserved a car and complimented myself for planning well in advance and getting a very good deal on the car. But as we all know that man proposes and god disposes, suddenly snow was predicted for that day and I started from office early so that I can reach my destination before the snow starts. We started at 70 mph and continuously increased speed to 100,110 mph. I was in full control and was happy to cross Nebraska and entered Missouri .It was growing darker. After some time I could see lights flashing behind my car, in the rear view. A Cop stopped me. He gave me two tickets, one for speeding and another for not buckling seat belt to the child. He was very pleasing and took around 25 minutes, then fined me 225+60 dollars. Now, it started snowing. I traveled the next 1.5 hrs in heavy snow (of course with heavy heart, as 300 dollars was very high for me as it was my first trip to the US and used to see every dollar as 47 rupees).I knew that this was a serious damage and was going to blow up my insurance costs also for next 2-3 years, on top of the monetary loss. I tried my level best later for 10 -15 days to avoid the fine (thru driving classes etc.), but in vain.Now if I think of the same problem I don’t feel pain with the same intensity, of course I don’t feel heavy at all even if I forcibly try to feel the same. I don’t know where it had disappeared.
Later our .net project was under tremendous pressure, as the proof of concept that has been shown by Microsoft guys did not work with the amount of data we have in our database. We had a real tough time as we were not sure what would happen and where to go. We tried all options under tension. Every day we tried and exhausted a new option ,but without a solution. My friend started thinking the impact of this on our career. What would happen next? How would our superiors take this incident? Will we be held responsible for this problem (though this problem is basically with the Microsoft product and their initial assumption that the product would be compatible)? My friend has gone to the extent of saying the impossible. I remember him saying this to me with fun ’if only god takes a few days of my life and gives a solution to this problem, I am happy to accept it.’ This is our normal tendency .We tried to maintain cool-heads and I told him lot of incidents that the life of any problem is short and we will eventually come out of the problem soon. Anyway within 2 weeks he found a solution. (He might even get a royalty from Microsoft for this)The above two incidents clearly convey a message, that the life span of any problem is much shorter than what we imagine. During the troubled moments we think that we have reached the end of our life. If only we could control our emotions (tension) in the initial days by trying not to think too much of the problem.Think about the problem without getting tensed. Do not think of the future consequences too much. I know everyone will have his/her own method to have their emotions under control.I happened to watch a movie around 10 years back (a stupid movie of course). There is a good learning experience from the movie though. Heroine asks hero“How come I never see you tensed up? Don’t you feel tensed up at all?”Hero answers with smiling face “biggest tension in life is the death; can any tension/problem supercede it?”I suddenly recollected my mom’s sayings ‘Don’t ever feel tensed up for any problem, as the age of the problem is smaller than your life’The consequences of the unnecessary thought process are countless. But the health takes the precedence amongst them all. Every positive and encouraging thought makes you healthier and vice versa.We face lot of problems and we eventually find a way out of it. Just look back at your life spent by you so far, the countless number of problems and every time you came out of it. But maintaining composure by avoiding demoralizing thoughts during the problem phase will help you to be energetic, healthy forever.To sum that up,Here’s a typical life cycle of any problem.
1. The ‘Problem’ itself
2. Unnecessary thoughts about future consequences
3. SolutionFor phase 1 – You have to work your way out of the problem, plan accordingly (as you always do)Phase 2 - This is what we need to avoid, till you get a solution to tackle the issue, as this is the killer.Phase 3 – This is your plan to find your way out – lots of beer if that helps ;-)
Finally, one word. When you want to enjoy the money you earned by sacrificing your health (as we are young now, we really neglect our health), you end up in using the money to save your health in later part of life. Think twice before you feel tensed up.
Tip of the week: Smile is the curve that keeps everything straight.
It happened to me around 7.5 years back. I had to drive down to Kansas City from Omaha, where I was staying. I promised my friend that I will be there positively that weekend, and reserved a car and complimented myself for planning well in advance and getting a very good deal on the car. But as we all know that man proposes and god disposes, suddenly snow was predicted for that day and I started from office early so that I can reach my destination before the snow starts. We started at 70 mph and continuously increased speed to 100,110 mph. I was in full control and was happy to cross Nebraska and entered Missouri .It was growing darker. After some time I could see lights flashing behind my car, in the rear view. A Cop stopped me. He gave me two tickets, one for speeding and another for not buckling seat belt to the child. He was very pleasing and took around 25 minutes, then fined me 225+60 dollars. Now, it started snowing. I traveled the next 1.5 hrs in heavy snow (of course with heavy heart, as 300 dollars was very high for me as it was my first trip to the US and used to see every dollar as 47 rupees).I knew that this was a serious damage and was going to blow up my insurance costs also for next 2-3 years, on top of the monetary loss. I tried my level best later for 10 -15 days to avoid the fine (thru driving classes etc.), but in vain.Now if I think of the same problem I don’t feel pain with the same intensity, of course I don’t feel heavy at all even if I forcibly try to feel the same. I don’t know where it had disappeared.
Later our .net project was under tremendous pressure, as the proof of concept that has been shown by Microsoft guys did not work with the amount of data we have in our database. We had a real tough time as we were not sure what would happen and where to go. We tried all options under tension. Every day we tried and exhausted a new option ,but without a solution. My friend started thinking the impact of this on our career. What would happen next? How would our superiors take this incident? Will we be held responsible for this problem (though this problem is basically with the Microsoft product and their initial assumption that the product would be compatible)? My friend has gone to the extent of saying the impossible. I remember him saying this to me with fun ’if only god takes a few days of my life and gives a solution to this problem, I am happy to accept it.’ This is our normal tendency .We tried to maintain cool-heads and I told him lot of incidents that the life of any problem is short and we will eventually come out of the problem soon. Anyway within 2 weeks he found a solution. (He might even get a royalty from Microsoft for this)The above two incidents clearly convey a message, that the life span of any problem is much shorter than what we imagine. During the troubled moments we think that we have reached the end of our life. If only we could control our emotions (tension) in the initial days by trying not to think too much of the problem.Think about the problem without getting tensed. Do not think of the future consequences too much. I know everyone will have his/her own method to have their emotions under control.I happened to watch a movie around 10 years back (a stupid movie of course). There is a good learning experience from the movie though. Heroine asks hero“How come I never see you tensed up? Don’t you feel tensed up at all?”Hero answers with smiling face “biggest tension in life is the death; can any tension/problem supercede it?”I suddenly recollected my mom’s sayings ‘Don’t ever feel tensed up for any problem, as the age of the problem is smaller than your life’The consequences of the unnecessary thought process are countless. But the health takes the precedence amongst them all. Every positive and encouraging thought makes you healthier and vice versa.We face lot of problems and we eventually find a way out of it. Just look back at your life spent by you so far, the countless number of problems and every time you came out of it. But maintaining composure by avoiding demoralizing thoughts during the problem phase will help you to be energetic, healthy forever.To sum that up,Here’s a typical life cycle of any problem.
1. The ‘Problem’ itself
2. Unnecessary thoughts about future consequences
3. SolutionFor phase 1 – You have to work your way out of the problem, plan accordingly (as you always do)Phase 2 - This is what we need to avoid, till you get a solution to tackle the issue, as this is the killer.Phase 3 – This is your plan to find your way out – lots of beer if that helps ;-)
Finally, one word. When you want to enjoy the money you earned by sacrificing your health (as we are young now, we really neglect our health), you end up in using the money to save your health in later part of life. Think twice before you feel tensed up.
Tip of the week: Smile is the curve that keeps everything straight.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Experiments With Expereinces-Show off
Dear Friends,
One of our relative’s families (my aunt/uncle) is very rich. I used to like their reception during the functions they celebrate. I don’t remember missing any. Of course they used to celebrate countless number of lavish functions spanning 4-5 days (like the one in ‘hum apke hain kaun’). In fact I got to get the opportunity to meet all my other relatives during these get-togethers. The arrangements were exceptional and none of our relatives would miss them. If the venue is different then they used to reserve train tickets to all of us, breakfast, lunch, dinner. My aunt (the rich hostess) used to say that she has prepared say 20 items and had kept a side Rs.2 lac just for miscellaneous expenses(15 years back). They used to arrange hotel rooms, other services besides the normal transportation from function palace to the guest houses .We all used to praise their money, their status, their generosity. Everyone used to swarm my uncle just to show others how close they are to him. Days continued and there were some unforeseen incidents took place. Also there were lots of down serge in their business. Gradually they made losses and fell into debt traps. Now the other relatives stopped praising them. Started commenting on them (it is hot news right?), some people even became cruel enough to take revenge for their past wraths.I am sure the above case is very common in most of our relatives. We all know that these things are bound to happen and as they say ’sukh me sab sathi, dukh me na koi’.Here’s another incident. My wife has a friend and after a long time we found that their family is in Chennai. We located their address with difficulty and finally reached there. We talked with them for an hour and while we were returning she also accompanied us to the main gate (there is nothing wrong in that, but coming from 5th floor to see us off is something different).Then she was casually showing us their car. I got an answer for the question in my mind. Whether we had / hadn’t seen their car (10 years back) our attitude towards them would have been indifferent.We all spend a lot of money, time, effort to show off our wealth, status, rank, greatness etc. We try to compete with others in celebrating functions and some times overdo it. We all build homes and have extra guest rooms too. Have we ever asked one question? Whether we invite people to our home, do we invite them in to our heart? Whether we have some people who can really feel happy for our wealth or feel sad & supportive, when we are falling down? What do we achieve by showing off? What do we achieve by feeling temporary pride? I am simply talking about this unnecessary show off. Now-a-days most of the things are available in market on Installments and Credit cards. The standard of living is still has definitely risen. By showing off the things we are making fools of ourselves. If we purchase a car, TV, Fridge etc., they are for us and not for status. If we concentrate more on social relationships rather than social status, we can really get the happiness and the relationship we want. I am not against any functions/parties but believe me now-a-days these are just celebrated as some means of showing off status/wealth/rank. Remember our greatness is ours and we need not to show it off. We spend a lot in showing off our status , if that money is spent on helping the needy (in your relatives/friends/close circle) we can get the people/relationship and as we all know there can be nothing happier than seeing lot of satisfied, happy faces.
Thanks and Regards
Srinivas Darbha PMP, CISSP, 6Sigma Greenbelt & Esteem Professional, Competent Toastmaster and Leader
One of our relative’s families (my aunt/uncle) is very rich. I used to like their reception during the functions they celebrate. I don’t remember missing any. Of course they used to celebrate countless number of lavish functions spanning 4-5 days (like the one in ‘hum apke hain kaun’). In fact I got to get the opportunity to meet all my other relatives during these get-togethers. The arrangements were exceptional and none of our relatives would miss them. If the venue is different then they used to reserve train tickets to all of us, breakfast, lunch, dinner. My aunt (the rich hostess) used to say that she has prepared say 20 items and had kept a side Rs.2 lac just for miscellaneous expenses(15 years back). They used to arrange hotel rooms, other services besides the normal transportation from function palace to the guest houses .We all used to praise their money, their status, their generosity. Everyone used to swarm my uncle just to show others how close they are to him. Days continued and there were some unforeseen incidents took place. Also there were lots of down serge in their business. Gradually they made losses and fell into debt traps. Now the other relatives stopped praising them. Started commenting on them (it is hot news right?), some people even became cruel enough to take revenge for their past wraths.I am sure the above case is very common in most of our relatives. We all know that these things are bound to happen and as they say ’sukh me sab sathi, dukh me na koi’.Here’s another incident. My wife has a friend and after a long time we found that their family is in Chennai. We located their address with difficulty and finally reached there. We talked with them for an hour and while we were returning she also accompanied us to the main gate (there is nothing wrong in that, but coming from 5th floor to see us off is something different).Then she was casually showing us their car. I got an answer for the question in my mind. Whether we had / hadn’t seen their car (10 years back) our attitude towards them would have been indifferent.We all spend a lot of money, time, effort to show off our wealth, status, rank, greatness etc. We try to compete with others in celebrating functions and some times overdo it. We all build homes and have extra guest rooms too. Have we ever asked one question? Whether we invite people to our home, do we invite them in to our heart? Whether we have some people who can really feel happy for our wealth or feel sad & supportive, when we are falling down? What do we achieve by showing off? What do we achieve by feeling temporary pride? I am simply talking about this unnecessary show off. Now-a-days most of the things are available in market on Installments and Credit cards. The standard of living is still has definitely risen. By showing off the things we are making fools of ourselves. If we purchase a car, TV, Fridge etc., they are for us and not for status. If we concentrate more on social relationships rather than social status, we can really get the happiness and the relationship we want. I am not against any functions/parties but believe me now-a-days these are just celebrated as some means of showing off status/wealth/rank. Remember our greatness is ours and we need not to show it off. We spend a lot in showing off our status , if that money is spent on helping the needy (in your relatives/friends/close circle) we can get the people/relationship and as we all know there can be nothing happier than seeing lot of satisfied, happy faces.
Thanks and Regards
Srinivas Darbha PMP, CISSP, 6Sigma Greenbelt & Esteem Professional, Competent Toastmaster and Leader
Experiments With Experiences-Willingness to Survive
Dear friends,
This article is part of my ‘experiments with experiences’ series. I thought of sharing with you all as we all need to have the’ Willingness to Survival’. Four years back, one person driving his jeep and was also accompanied by his friend met with an accident. The accident was really fatal and it cut his throat to almost 90 percent.
The friend next to him was shocked and passed out. To our utter astonishment the driver didn’t die. He took out a towel, tied his head to neck and drove to a nearest hospital. But
they didn’t admit him. He drove for another 15 min to a Govt. hospital and fell on the floor. He was immediately operated and was saved.
In another incident, my friend’s uncle is a police and he faced some opposition in a village and he escaped from the villagers with a great difficulty. The villagers cut his hand with axes.
He threatened them all by shooting in the air and fled from there. He reached a nearest hospital after 45 minutes and survived.
But look at this case.
My own uncle, who is normally very slow driver and a depressed soul, one day fell on a speed breaker (in a non-crowded area) and woke up from Coma after 2 years.It is the willingness to survive that keeps us going. We observe that in spite of so many complications people are ready to survive. The world has a standard rule ‘survival of the fittest’ .We need to be strong at mind in all times. As we all
know we cannot avoid problems, but we should have the courage to face them. Lot of us get tensed up and try to give up in troubled times.But people who come out of the problems grow stronger and can face anything. We are really not sure about next life. But we got one opportunity to make this life happier, healthier. Try to make your personal life stronger, so that you get all the support to take up
any problem effectively.Tip: Live life King size
This article is part of my ‘experiments with experiences’ series. I thought of sharing with you all as we all need to have the’ Willingness to Survival’. Four years back, one person driving his jeep and was also accompanied by his friend met with an accident. The accident was really fatal and it cut his throat to almost 90 percent.
The friend next to him was shocked and passed out. To our utter astonishment the driver didn’t die. He took out a towel, tied his head to neck and drove to a nearest hospital. But
they didn’t admit him. He drove for another 15 min to a Govt. hospital and fell on the floor. He was immediately operated and was saved.
In another incident, my friend’s uncle is a police and he faced some opposition in a village and he escaped from the villagers with a great difficulty. The villagers cut his hand with axes.
He threatened them all by shooting in the air and fled from there. He reached a nearest hospital after 45 minutes and survived.
But look at this case.
My own uncle, who is normally very slow driver and a depressed soul, one day fell on a speed breaker (in a non-crowded area) and woke up from Coma after 2 years.It is the willingness to survive that keeps us going. We observe that in spite of so many complications people are ready to survive. The world has a standard rule ‘survival of the fittest’ .We need to be strong at mind in all times. As we all
know we cannot avoid problems, but we should have the courage to face them. Lot of us get tensed up and try to give up in troubled times.But people who come out of the problems grow stronger and can face anything. We are really not sure about next life. But we got one opportunity to make this life happier, healthier. Try to make your personal life stronger, so that you get all the support to take up
any problem effectively.Tip: Live life King size
Back to school efforts
Last Thursday, my kids were being issued their new books for the ensuing academic year by the school authorities. We were quite early and yet were greeted by a long line of parents/ prospective buyers and some excited students. Dutifully, I joined a queue and waited for my turn to pay first before getting delivery of my booksets. A blackboard displayed the requisite amounts against the respective grades. This actually was my solo venture during this annual exercise and the net total for two kids' books was frankly extravagant! My impulse was to go for my wallet and ensure that I was indeed carrying enough cash - there is no credit facility here. Soon, some bored-of-waiting parents raised the doubt about the actual market price of the bookset and if it would be more economical to purchase them the old-fashioned way. A brief discussion ensued where the animated adults indulged in flashbacks of their childhood days. I could relate to their incredulity at the prices, myself being a product of government schools where new books every year was unheard of ( do hand-me-downs ring a bell?) yet if necessary were quite affordable.
A couple of days later, I visited a fairly big bookstore to get some stationery and the crowd was impatient and chaotic. Many people were on the sidewalk hoping to get in eventually. I came back meekly thanking my lucky stars for not having to go through this near-stampede. Back home, the next step of dressing the books in smart brown sheets with neatly typed labels and favourite kid stickers was already in progress under my wife's deft fingers. I heaved a sigh of relief and realised that we were all set until next year.
A couple of days later, I visited a fairly big bookstore to get some stationery and the crowd was impatient and chaotic. Many people were on the sidewalk hoping to get in eventually. I came back meekly thanking my lucky stars for not having to go through this near-stampede. Back home, the next step of dressing the books in smart brown sheets with neatly typed labels and favourite kid stickers was already in progress under my wife's deft fingers. I heaved a sigh of relief and realised that we were all set until next year.
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