For my friends

I will remember those sunsets,
I will preserve them, the moments,
I will retain you all, oh! my friends,
and, I will take you along and long.
I have you all under my eye lids.
At a wink of an eye I glance at you.
In sleep and dream I see that it is you.
And, when these lids of mine fall forever,
I still, will have you before my eyes.

This verse is tribute to you all my favourites: pink sunsets, chilly evenings, memorable days, travelled places - for the immense pleasure I derived from you. It is also for my friends and loved ones - bestowers of unconditional love upon me - where ever you are. What survives of us is love and you all, whether animate or inanimate, have given me loads of it. I dearly love you all.

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My affair with IDs and ID cards - Catharsis and Tears

21st April 2010 : After 2 1\2 years of last time I had tears in my eyes, I wept like a child again. It was my last day at TCS. All through the day, I was a little emotional to leave my friends at TCS and my girl friend, who recently moved into my project. That could be explained, after all "Yeh Dil Hein Yaar Pathar Tho Nahin". But that's not entirely the reason.

After getting all the necessary clearances from library and finance teams, I was asked to submit my ID card to the admin. That is the last step in separation process and after that one had to leave the campus immediately. I went to the admin to do this. When I went to his desk, I saw a pile of empty card holders. I knew my card that stuck to me would meet the same fate. I did not want that to happen. While I was bringing myself together to do this I got a call from my team. They wanted me to join a farewell treat they have planned. I sighed in relief as the ID would be there for some more time with me. I asked the Admin how long he would be available, he said he would be there till 6 PM. The time was 5:15 PM and unless until for an elaborate celebration 45 minutes are good enough. I did not enjoy the treat as adrenaline rushed at the thought of surrendering ID card. I spent the good 45 minutes in the pantry and another 30 minutes meeting my friends for the last time in office. I extended those 45 minutes to 75 minutes only to avoid surrendering the ID card that day and to do it the next even it meant that I had to drive 22 avoidable kilometres to office again. At the end of it, confident that admin person must have left office by then, I went in to confirm if I was right( you know I did not want to take the blame of not finishing things on the same day). I was wrong, he sat there like Lord Yama( for the benefit those who do not know who he is - he is the bestower of death on mortals) ready to take my ID card from me. Left with no choice I gave away my ID card to him and he said " it will be taken care". I felt empty, my mind went blank and a soar lump popped in my throat. On my way down, the security at the lift asked me where my ID card was, I felt my throat choking and words hard to come by, I meekly muttered "I resigned". And, tears swirled in my eyes. I got down from the lift and called my girl friend to come out of the module as I no longer reserve the right to enter it. I found it hard to stop myself and tears rolled down. I remember what she exactly said, " what is this, like a small child".If you know telugu even better then you can translate it as she said this in our mother tongue. In chennai sunsets really late in summer as late as 6:45 PM and it is often bright for a while after that. It was 6:45 PM and you get to see some of the best sunsets from the verandas of Siruseri tech park. I relished them dearly for I love evenings and the orange-pinkish sunsets. Sun was setting over the horizon for the day and Sun was also setting on my days at TCS. That was my last sunset at the IT park and I had every right and reason to be upset. It also entitled me with the pejorative to cry if I liked.

I went to the basement to pick my bike and on my way, to my utter discomfort, was asked about my ID card, again. I fetched my bike, kissed TCS and TCS Siruseri a good bye and started to my home. Once I lost sight of the tech park I worked at, till-then-tears became silent sobs, which I could only smother, though only for a while, and not stop them entirely. I cried for 10 kilometers on my way back home. Initially I tried to fight my tears but realised it was of no use and let myself in to the temptation of catharsis - cleansing, a cleansing that is necessary for any separation that is painful.

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My affair with IDs and ID cards - Begins

I came to Chennai crying, I left Chennai crying - what a crying shame !!!

IDs and ID cards - These are,perhaps, the most trivial things in an employee's life. However, every silly thing becomes significant in my life and every serious thing becomes a thing of levity.
September 12th 2007: I began my life as an employee at TCS, Bhubaneswar. This affair dates back to that particular day. I was given a temporary ID card to get into the campus. A month passed by and I was given an employee number and the story begins. Unfortunately, two of us got the same employee number. When it said Welcome Sree Panchajanyam I felt proud. The next time I logged into the portal it welcomed me with a different name and this annoyed me. When I went to the HR and complained about this she reset the back end with my name. When the other guy raised the same concern the next day, the HR replaced my name with the guy's name. It went on and on and finally the other guy won this "battle of resets" and had retained the employee ID. What is to become of me? It took another 15 days for my Emp ID to be activated. This day delay wreaked havoc in my life for close to a month, perhaps worst ever.
So, what happened? On the D-day when we had to key in our choices to select the location of work from the list below
1. Mumbai 2. Kolkota 3. Chennai 4. Delhi 5. Ahmedabad 6. Bangalore,
I realised that this functionality was not enabled for my ID. My girlfriend and I desperately wanted Chennai. She was able to submit her location preferences and I was not able to that day. I was able to do that only after a week. This made all the difference. She was posted to Chennai and I was posted to Kolkota, because by the time I could give my preferences, the limited openings in Chennai were filled in.
Nov 14th,2007: last day of my ILP, and 30 hours of distance started creeping slowly in between us. That was the day I cried my heart out, because of the trouble and pain my Employee ID put me through. I do not feel ashamed to say that I wept like a child, helpless, on that children's day and the celebrations lasted a week starting that day. I lost 4 kilograms in a week( last 4 days at Bhubaneswar and 3 days in Kolkota). At the end of the 3 days I managed to get a transfer to Chennai. I will tell you how, but that is not the topic today. This is one of the reason Chennai is my heaven and bliss.

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"Kites" - a disaster

In the interval I felt sleepy and at the end of the movie I was cursing myself why did I come to watch this movie without heeding to the reviews which forbade watching the movie.
This is the first time I am watching a movie within the first week of its release and perhaps I have to let it be the only time. "Appalling" is the word that would aptly describe my experience at the theatre; "disgusting" is the right word for the plot; "out of place" is the word for background score and debacle would sum it all up for the movie. What took me in to watching this movie was the fact that Hrithik Roshan spent three long years for this script and Barbara Mori was roped in to play the lead actress in the movie, unlike the previous times when all that a foreign actress got was an item number. I believed, before watching the movie, that there must be a sound reason or two, why a foreign actress is chosen for the role. But as it turned out there was none.
Okay, I know I have to give you my reasons to show that it was an absolute no-ball and a wavered of movie. I will elaborate the elements of this so called Romantic-action-thriller.

Action - There is none at all, except for a few rounds of bullets flying here and there towards the climax, and a couple of cars crashing and burning - very typical of an Indian movie, isn't it?

Romance - If you want to watch this movie for this reason, the movie would fail you miserably. You get nothing out of it.

Songs - You will not know when they come by because you will be sticking out of seats and counting seconds to run away home. At least I did that because movie was expensive. 180 Rs is too much for a movie ticket and I am not a kind of man who runs away from enemy because he is a daunting giant. I sat in the movie theatre, undaunted for all the two and half hours and watched every bit of it. That is brave me for you. And to add I did not leave my seat in the interval fearing dissipation of the gathered courage.

Plot - Plot is lost with in the first 30 minutes of the movie and I did not know how the director managed convince the producer to sponsor for such crap. And,I wonder how in the world, Hrithik who is choosy with the scripts boarded this rattling train heading only one way.

Technical values - Pointless. Forget it. Why talk of values when movie fails to deliver what it is supposed.

COST OF THE MOVIE
The movie costed me, 3 hours of time ( half an hour for buying the tickets )+ 180 Rs (ticket fare) + 20 Rs( Zandu balm - I swear I bought a new one, it was long due and the movie precipitated the need for it) + 4 Rs ( 2 crocin tablets for headache - if one does not work tonight another for tomorrow morning).

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No Time to blog

For the past 4 days it is clocking 10 PM before I leave home from office and 10 AM before I wake up. I am writing this piece at my office desk, so I think readers must have understood that I am in short of hours. Oh! yeah 24 hours are not sufficient, with my new found love for webmethods designer and eclipse IDE.
I take time of in between deploying a web app to the server which is unusually slow late into the evening. I am as hurried as a housewife who puts vegetables on the stove and goes of to collect papads that are drying in the sun. I have to go back to check if my project is deployed before soemthing uneventful happens on the server...

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First drops of rain at SAG

Bangalore welcomed with an evening drizzle, it is not about that. It isn't the literal rain. It is the nectar of satisfaction that you derive when you solve a problem, however small it might be. I got that today. All I managed to do was to write page numbers onto a PDF through Java. That was yesterday. Today I set the outer borders for the PDF table with the iText jar. It is an amazing feeling to work on long yearned thing. I was rearing to work on a Java IDE other than the developer IDE, I have been working on for the past couple of years now. An year and half back I did get a chance, but I dismissed with a condescending hand. Later I realised my folly in acting so, but hmm... opportunities pass by before you know it is an opportunity and you will be left in want of it. If I can draw a comparison it is like a shooting star, you never know when it comes and when it passes by. It is not just about Eclipse IDE it applies for everything in life. You should know what you want and what you might want to smell an opportunity.
Okay philosophy apart,I set up the external jars, set up a java project and ran it with ouput the day before- all on Eclipse - it is all so easy isn't it for core java developers out there?. But when I did this all by myself for the first time, it was as exciting and as gleeful as saying "amma","appa" of a language for the first time. Later followed studying the open source which was all the more fun and "O-O-P-S" is oops as the name itself suggests, and needless to say -"Mazaaa aa gaya" - ha ha. Apart from Java, Eclipse and external jars what is exciting today is I am going to Chennai tomorrow - HIP HIP HURRAY. I need not explain, if you are reading this it means you know the reason why I am ripping and hipping away to Chennai - Anbe En Anbe

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I start to learn French

Hey!! that was from yesterday. I love literature and I like learning about various cultures world over and across the nation. I missed on an opportunity to learn Tamil while I was in Chennai, and now I wonder how I have missed this chance.
So why French all of a sudden now. It isn't a bolt from the blue. In the initial learning program of TCS in Bhubaneswar, I missed by a whisker to sit in the French class. All the students whose batch number was even went on to learn french and all the odds sat in the Japanese class. I wanted to learn French and in all my Japanese classes brooded over the lost opportunity. Needless to say, my Japanese did not go beyond the word "kenchikuka" - which I believe means thief or is it a policeman? You never know and I will not go and google for it anyway. So that's how it began. Then in Chennai, sometime during mid last year, I saw a board " learn french" in nungambakkam and alighted the train. I went over and inquired various details. Though the course content was interesting, I dropped the plans as it was to far to travel from place of my work.
Over to Bangalore, I register at BBC online classes and start to say Monsiuer and madame. Thanks to my organization I have got a laptop to do that. It has just began, let us see if I can post in French one day.

Au Revoir amies !!!

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How it feels to be lonely?

Away from home and away from friends how it feels to be? You would expect a soothing song to lull you to sleep. After the best part of the song plays by, you spring back awake wondering how you could catch sleep. You chose the next song and the next and every song meets with the same fate, the mobile suffers in your hand. As if to convey it cannot take more, the mobile hangs and you are forced to turn it off and on again. You take a look at the time and it is too late to call anybody. You call your girl friend. She picks up the call after 10 rings, half asleep, says "hello" and slips back into sleep.Then what do you do? I don't know what you would do but I resolve to take revenge on my mobile for I own it and it does not have any constitutional rights.But again my pocket does not give the liberty of a phone a day. Now, I will tell you how I caught sleep yesterday, the day before and every day for the past 1 1/2 weeks. I get tired of thinking, I get tired of trying to get used to the present and at last nostalgia swells in my tired eyes to burden them even more. My eye lids fight this weight but give in finally to cover my eyes. The next morning I try to force these lids open they ask for an excuse to stay shut and I am late to office.

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Anbe en Anbe - Chennai

I leave Chennai, I arrive at Bangalore.Chennai - my second home; A city I loved to be in; A city which I never stayed out for more than a week, continuously, in the past 2 1/2 years- wrenched my heart when I left it. The pain I underwent when leaving this place cannot be described in words.
Chennai is humid, hell to stay in the months starting from April to September, because Lord Sun dries this place and people all he can, and of course returns this back the water he has sucked, during the following months in the form of incessant rains. In short Chennai is untenable, both in summer and rainy seasons. But that does not deny the fact that I made this place my home. And also me stating the shortcomings of Chennai climate does not negate the truth that I love this place. Tamil and only tamil runs all over except in corporate spaces, even some times these are filled to brim with hums of Tamil.
I am not confusing you, neither am I contradicting myself by putting only the shortcomings of the place and still saying I like it. All I have to say is Chennai as city has a character of its own, it thrives at its own frequency. People come here learn new things, perhaps a new language and evevn in some cases, like me, new culture. Another place I have seen that retains it character and vibrates at its own frequency is Kolkota. People view these cities as retard metropolitans, but for me these are cultural crucibles.
I have a question for all of you who resent being in place that resists change - when you go to a new place, say the united states do you try and adopt to the new culture there or do you demand them to adopt your culture?Again, agreed it is true that I am talking about a nation and you are expecting to be welcome in your own nation, but in a different state. But thats how culture survives. Go to the Indian villages which are respected and revered as true India, what do you expect? Then why can not a city be so?
But onething I can tell the readers, ask for help in a language these people her understand you will not be turned down. I made some of my best frens here at work. I learnt the lessons of life from people here.And never encountered regional discrminication at work or any other civilized quarter of the city.Leave out the auto wallahs, you can not demand an auto driver to be civilized( if you find one, you are blessed) irrespective of the city he drives auto in and also leave out the scum - it is a part and parcel of every city.
Classical music tradition - the oldest in the world- is a glorious gem in the crown of this princess. Every week you have concerts, art exhibitions, literary evvents and many more fine art related expos going on around the city. What else can an art enthusiast ask for?
Chennai has got one of the best intra city road transport facility and it comes second to none in terms of traffic regulation and control. I say this comparing this place with Hyderabad( my own state capital), Kolkota, Bangalore,Bhubaneswar(it hasn't get traffic at all), Visakhapatnam - some of the major cities in Eastern and Southern India. Wait, why am I trying to convince people that Chennai is a great city to stay in ? I don't care what you think about it. For that matter my girl friend hates this place. She was the happiest person when I got an offer in Bangalore, because to take the offer I have to move out of the place and she can follow me out of Chennai. But one thing is true those who love this place cannot stop loving for all the shortcomings and I am one of those. Chennai I will be back one day, this time to settle in your heart forever.This time I will come better prepared learning your tongue and earning a little more to counter " not-so-favourable" climate with an A/C and also to put up at a place which does not have water problem. Do not bother what others say my dear Chennai, you have fans and you will always have them no matter what. Rest assured that along with me you have another vote whether or not she likes you!!!

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Joining letter from SAG

Though I am posting this today, this post should be considered latest as on 18th of March 2010.
I received an offer last week from SAG. Most do not know that, there exists in this world an organization with this name.However, few know it and value it. The offer I received was decent, compelling and impounding, all at once. SAG is the vendor and parent organization of the product which I have been working on for the past couple of years. It is a dream for many to be a part of this organization. With all the "many" I shared the dream. For most of them, it remains a dream due to various reasons. But I had an offer in hand with a decent compensation. An year back it would have been easy to pick this offer and walk away from my current employer, TCS. During the last year I have revised my own benchmarks and redefined them at TCS. And, as a consequence my supervisors and managers were pleased. In my quest to learn integration and SOA, I have treaded into areas entirely unwelcome to a 1 year old in the IT industry. In the process I struggled hard, did a lot of homework, dug into te unexplored nooks of the application and at times reverse engineered it. I was recognized, and was given challenges that dragged me further into the technical realms which I though I would never get into in this lifetime owing to my aspirations of being an MBA grad from a deemed B-school. I never resented the deviation from my path for at my heart I am a computer science graduate. Of course I operate very much with 1s and 0s.
With all the work I have been doing, I was rewarded, appreciated by the immediate superiors and also by managers and heads up in the hierarchy. I was viewed at as a reliable resource and I never disappointed anyone. At times there were glitches with immediate colleagues but it wasn't to be worried about "much", as I believe attitude is a personal thing and should not intervene in profession. And, I was careful with those who did not realize this fact.To be honest, though it did not matter much it caused ripples in my otherwise pleasant work environment.
Irrespective of the tide I am riding at TCS I decided to switch lanes and move on to quench my thirst to learn and to reach there where I wanted to be, faster. Simply put I want to be the best in the business and want to occupy the space which a technocrat alone or a management graduate alone cannot occupy. I want to be the best of both. A manager who can soil his hands in technology. A techie who can handle sales and clients with ease and panache. Weird dream isn't it ? But I cannot help. Neither is it seemingly possible from where I am.
I put forth my plan to quit before my manager. He was taken aback as nobody expects you to quit when all the good things are happening around you and especially when you are in middle of so many proactive measures. In the following weeks I was asked by senior management reasons for quitting. After listening to my career aspirations, they told me what they were willing to do for me and they promised to move me into a different work environment and showed me a path to be a technocrat which was non-existent till now in TCS. They had some plans to provide technology verticals for associates who like to be full fledged technocrats. The promises of travel abroad, change of role or no other promise succeeded in influencing my decision. I really appreciate all the pain my managers have taken to convince an associate whom they consider is worthy. But I knew what I have before me. A chance to be one among the few. With this playing at the back of my mind I boarded this train to Bangalore to confirm my intention to join SAG and thereby collect my offer letter. TCS ends and SAG begins both, alphabetically and in the context of my life. I know, I am leaving a secure job and all the recognition I have here behind to negotiate a blind curve. But ha! life is like that -take caluculated chances. And I believe I have caluculated odds pretty well. Anyways how much interest does a savings account yield though it is secure? 8%? And, how about a well managed stock ? Again I am not specculating, I am investing in my future.

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