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Statutory Declaration: This text is purely an act of fiction and any resemblance to any place or person existing or non-existant is purely and 1001% purely coincidential.
Statutory Warning: This text is a work of iamgination, written with the intention of entertainment(whether it acheives its purpose, is dependent solely on the sense of humour of the reader ;-)). It contains descriptions of totally non-existant and never dreamt of (maybe..?) objects and circumstances.
Hence, children above 18 years of age are required to read it under parental guidance.
I was supposed to report at the Head Office on the first day to complete HR formalities. There were three of us joining that day. By the time we familiarised ourselves with each other, the HR came in and dumped a bunch of forms in front of us. She explained to us about all the comapny policies, non-disclosure agreements, benefits provided and then left us alone with the specific instruction that all those forms were to be filled in no more than 2 hours. Or we would miss lunch :-(. Well, even first day in Army would be less demanding! ;-).
Once all the forms were filled and were certified as correct by the careful eyes of the HR, we were lead to the lunch room. We poured cold water on our paining fingers(rememer how your fingers pained after first 10th std. board paper...?), and enjoyed a hearty meal of Bengan Bhartha, roti, dahi & dal-bhat.
After lunch the other two candidates were asked to report to their work locations but I was told to wait. Just when I had began wondering what special treatment am I going to receive, one of the lovely Admin girls came upto me and informed me that I am to be shot! In strict complaince with the orders that she had recieved, I was immidiately made to stand against a wall, with the Admin trying hard to aim straight at me. "Bend down, I can't aim at your head.", she commanded. I was about to say, "Please be kind o fair lady.. and aim for my heart .." when she shot, without a warning. My eyes saw flash of light and the whole world turned dark. I supported myself against the wall.. taking my last deep breath. "See", a voice brought me back to consciousness... "See, good shot na!", the bubbly HR was showing me my photograph she had just taken. (Now at this point if you feel like taking a gun & shooting me in the head, then get a gun, find me & do the honours ;-)).
After this shooting episode I was asked to march to the front, my ultimate "karmabhoomi" where I was supposed to defend the honour of breed of "Indian Knowledge Workers". Perform despite all odds.. Follow into the path, yet be original... and work till the last drop of my sweat(Air Conditioner permitting :-)).
So off I went to the development centre at Pune IT Park. The Admins were eagerly awaiting the Knight who would come and save the comapny from the impeding catastrophies.. (ok..ok I'm going a little too filmsy here... but hey, I'm writing this for fun, not for putting it in textbooks of history!)
I was welcomed with a bunch of roses and led to my cabin. It was neatly stuffed with writing pad, pens, pencils, eraser, sharpner, whiteboard markers and a box of facial tissue. I never knew programmers needed that, of all things. But the most important thing I noticed was that there was no computer there. "no Computer!!! how am I supposed to work?". I was told to manage with all the pens and pencils until my boss showed up.He showed up in an hour. Greeted with me with his usual jolly style and asked me to follow him to his cabin. He showed me a small suitcase and said,"Thats your computer". This prompted me to observe it closely and discover to my amazement that it was indeed a compact CPU, complete with CD-ROM & floppy drives and built-in speakers! Very soon I was looking at the CPU neatly placed on my desk and connected to a wafer-thin (ok... a little thicker) monitor. I pressed the on switch and in 35 seconds flat, I was welcomed by Windows 2000 and gently asked to log in.
"Should I install Linux on my machine?", I asked my boss, "I've heard that we plan to port the product (no I can't mention the name. I signed a non-disclosure agreement, remember?) to Linux.". "Yes, we plan to port it", the boss replied in a casual tone, "But that is 6 months down the line. So instead of bothering to spend time on making your machine dual boot, I'll prefer giving you a second PC then". A second PC.... I wasn't sure what he meant. On seeing the question marks on my face, the boss continued.. "Giving you a second CPU is not a problem.. I would prefer giving you two machines to work on instead of making you machine dual boot.". "Ok", thats all I could manage to say, wondering whether he had lost his mind and no one had yet noticed that except me...
My boss left me in care of my buddy who had the responsibility of acquainting me with the office, its people, its culture and most importantly, the work! He was a fair and handsome Kashmiri and did his job pretty well. In a couple of hours I was well acquainted with the office's network topology, employee benefits and had had an overview of the product I was supposed to work on.
Later that day I walked into the cabin of one of my neighbours. He had four(yes, 4) machines piled up in there. "Four machines?!!!" I exclaimed. "Yes, our product supports 7 platforms, so I have 4 machines here and other 3 are in the lab.". "Ok..", I muttered, wondering what the lab is.. Just then entered my buddy, "chal main tujhe apne ghar ki hawa khilata hoon", "Ghar?, par tera ghar to Kashmir main hain... ?", I thought aloud, "Arey to hum Kashmir hi jaa rahen hain...", he said, I wondered what he was joking about. He lead me to a small innocuous looking door across the corridor, and when he opened it, a shiver ran through my spine. I could feel the chill of Kashmir coming out from that room. My body wanted to run back to some heat to keep itself alive & breathing, but my mind pushed it forward, to satisfy its curiosity. The view inside the room was breath'taking. I was so overcome by what I saw that I did not feel the cold, nor heard the sound of the automatic door closing behind. Before me, till my eyes could see all I saw were wheeled verticle containers, more than my height and each containing 4 to 8 CPUs and one monitor. "Come here," my Kashmiri buddy's voice woke me up from my trance, he lead me to the far end of the lab and and pointed at a rack, with four machines. Each machine was labelled with its OS and details of applications installed. "These are our development servers.", he said and then he briefed me about which machine was to be used to develop which part of the software. For me, whose first job was in a startup where we three programmers time-shared two machines, this was like the other end of the spectrum. I really wanted to stay in there for more time and bask in that beauty of infrastructure, but I wasn't really accostomed to breath in "Kashmir", and besides, all the machines there had remote access, so I decided to go back to my cabin. This visit to Kashmir also removed the doubt in my mind, about my boss's mental health.
Back in the cabin, the silence engulfed me. No work to do, no one to talk to. It reminded me of the Prisoner of the Ivory Tower. He lived in the middle of everything beautiful, but he was not happy, because he was lonley and longed for company. I wasn't really lonely, but I did miss the chaotic liveliness and people at my earlier work place.
I did not stay in pensive mood for long. I was where I was, for a purpose. And such sad feelings trouble the mind only when one is distracted from his goal. I logged in in my computer and started acquainting myself with what I was to work on from the next day. I didn't realize how the time passed when I heard my boss's voice, "You are still here? Go home man, you have to work a lot of late nights. Go home when you can." I checked my watch, it was indeed time to go home.
I packed all the papers to tkae home in my old & faithful shoulder bag, offered my prayers to Laord Ganesha presiding at eh entrance of the building, and headed back home.
That night, before sleeping I thought about what I had learnt duirng the day. There was one important lesson I had learnt, one thing that I had realized:
There is no Utopia.
Every place, time and person has its own strenghts and weaknesses. What matters is what are we contributing to. To the weakness, or to the strength. What matters is do we allow circumstances to control us, or we control ourselves and dare to change the circumstances.
And what matters most is that whether we have a purpose, higher than ourselves, which like a maountain peak guides us towards it, enabling us to brave smaller obstacles and discomfort in reaching our final goal.
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