mere funde

… Well, not really. But almost there. 

When I landed in Gurgaon, in November ’05, the first reaction was – Wow!! What am I doing in this God forsaken place?? But then I got used to things. Made friends. Work became fun. Trips were made to Pilani. And truly speaking, I am hating the moving from Gurgaon experience. It sucks!! 

Tomorrow morning there will be no more familiar faces. No Pooja, no Gogo, or Sanchita, or Rahul. No more cribs by Shivangi. No funny ringtones from Manju. No lunch with the gang. No chai with Anoop and Praguna. 

Damn!!

Just looking back at a couple of times from the many that I will cherish forever from the last three and half years at work. There are many more, but these are the ones most prominent in memory, as I go to work for the last time, for a year, tomorrow. Thanks to all my colleagues – you guys have been legendary!!

Where were you when India won the T20 World Cup?

I remember it very clearly. Conference Room 1, Tower A. With the Chemistry team, attending a Questel webinar on optimizing the use of the MMS database. Akshat was there. So were Nachi, Bala, Bong and others. It was one awesome evening. Listening to updates on the phone, and running all the way to Don’s house for the presentation!! Thanks guys!! The Chem team rocked!!

The first ever late night for a deliverable.

I think we were barely a month into our jobs at Evalueserve. Staffed on an urgent project from a large prospect. We had completed our share of the work, when the BR half of the work came in, under prepared. A decision was made. Me and Anoop stuck with research. Nawani and Charul worked on the final deliverable. We worked till 3 in the night. And a deliverable was sent, which the client appreciated. And Nawani treated us to lunch the next day. Oh, and we also took recruitment interviews the next day. Brilliant!!

The Big B.

20 people, one client, three months. And we came out of it very strong!! This was the big project. The big client. The brilliant organization of work.  The client became a regular, and all the people who worked on it, great friends. Special thanks to Pooja. Wouldn’t have been possible without her. Gogo, Sanchita, Praguna, Namita, Ankur, Mohunta, Shivangi, Mrinal, Manju, Akanksha, and I am still missing many more. You name the person, and he would have worked on it. Thanks a ton everyone!!

PS: Cherish was also the topic for my ISB pre-interview essay!!

… has begun. Including today, I only have a little less than six more days left in this part of the world.

And I haven’t even started packing. Well, I was supposed to pack over the weekend, but an allergy attack, which is still having some effects, had me sleeping for the larger part of the weekend. The skin has become dry and very irritable. There is some pain in my palm and knee joints. And I am feeling very very week.

Anyhoo. Thankfully, I am almost on schedule for my ISB related issues. I have taken all the pre-term course tests, and while I cleared Accounting and Business Stats, I flunked Quantitative methods – I took the tests while I still had fever. So not too bad I guess. However, I still registered for Accounting and Quant Methods. I have ordered a laptop to seeme through the BSchool stint. Some discount ninjas on the ISB mailing list got a sooper awesome deal on a Dell Latitude E5500 (supposesd to be sturdy business like), and we got more than 30% off the market price. I have included the specs below. All of this for 47k. Not too bad I guess.

• Intel C2D P8600 (2.4Ghz)
• 160GB 7200rpm
• 2GB RAM
• 3 Yrs – complete cover
• 9 cell battery
• Targus back pack

Now hoping to get better quickly and getting back to the last three days at work!!

… has begun to sink in. 

I told my first major client that I will be taking a break only yesterday. It was not a one I was emotionally close to, and it did not hurt as much.

Today, however, I informed a client, that I am personally very close to, that I will be leaving. It was a client that I helped develop. A client who allowed me to experiment. A client who taught a lot to me. And a client with a heart of gold. I could always get a good laugh from them. They always had a kind word, and always asked how I was doing. You guys are amazing.

Tomorrow is going to be worse. I will be informing my largest client of my move. The client I actually spent a lot of time working (I haven’t done much of it at EVS btw), and have seen growing to become one of our largest client. It was while working with this client that I formed some of the finest friendships at work. People I trust. People who trust me.

It is a shitty feeling. And it is not the work that I will miss. It will be people, on both sides, who I will miss. The client who genuinely appreciates your work. The co-workers who are ready to help me whenever required. Friends who were more eager about my app results than I was.

This is to everyone who I have worked with. Thanks people. I will miss you!!

Continued from Part I. 

The tow guy, for some wierd reason, decided to land up at Churu instead of Jhunjhunu. By now Jeete was max frustrated and decided to take a nap while Ankit, Sudeep and I soaked into an episode of Nach Baliye. Despite the fact that I officially despise all reality shows, I could not stop staring at the chick who choreographs Baichung Bhutia. Cute. Anyway, the  guy arrived by around 1:30 and took the i10 away. We quickly loaded all our stuff into the Alto and sped towards Pilani with haste.

Since we were all hungry, we decided to make a pit stop at the famous dhaba. Despite being a nice Saturday afternoon, the Dhaba wore a deserted look. We quickly ordered some chicken, magnet (cheese tomato), and dal tadka. The food wasn’t the greatest ever, or perhaps we it just tasted better when you had to survive on mess food. Sadly, there was no beer to accompany the food. And the sight of rats feeding on the stuff in kitchen did reduce our apetite after all. Jeete could not finish his chicken and we had to get almost half of it packed.

The sight of the road leading up to the BITS entrance recharged all our batteries and we had a sense of renewed vigor and stamina. I have felt this strange feeling everytime I step on the BITS campus to sign on the entry register, but this time it was different because I knew there will be no more trips for another year. We headed straight to Sky since we did not have keys to the Alumni Home rooms and Bansal was out networking with a few people.

Also, Ojas, Pappu and Bikini were already there. I ordered an orange juice with ice and decided to lay down on the soft grass. It was a batch snap day and the Sky was unusually crowded, not that it effected us anyway. After spending some time there, Jeete and Bikini decided to head up to the music club and we tagged along. A lot of memories kicked in for the folks and Jeete and Bikini did try their hands at playing with the new guys, and the Bikini even sang “With or Without You”. The current clubbers treated us to some of their self composed stuff, and these guys are seriously talented. Keeping rocking guys

Ankit and Sudeep headed to a Dance Club practice and apparently taught them some steps too. Way to go guys!! Meanwhile, the rest of us headed to the SAC and watched a robotic football match – the guys have seriously come a long long way. After this Bikini and I headed back to Sky to have a small session with Pappu and we were joined by Ojas, Bansal and Dev in some time.

I must note here that this was the longest ever time between reaching Pilani and heading to C’Not. After the pit stop at Pappu’s, we headed quickly to C’Not and got our asses seated in front of Blue Moon. After this followed one of the most amazing sessions there. There was a lot of music, booze, and reminiscing. I had with me half of STAR-PLUS. Add to that Bikini, Pappu, Ojas, Kanika, Modi, Mama, and many more. It was like we cared about no one else. I was shouting (read singing) at the top of my voice. There was lot of plucking of the guitar by Bikini, Jeete, and some junior who was playing really well. We also ragged a couple of guys. Well not really. Just got them to give their intros.

I have really spent a lot of quality time at C’Not with Chimpu and I will really miss the guy. You are an amazing person, and I hope you always remain the same.

Next stop – ANC. After some maggi, dosa and few other things, I was really nostalgic, and wanted to take a walk around the campus. Dev and I headed off while the guys stayed back at the ANC. When we returned, Chimpu was there. After some chit chatting, Chimpu had to head home (it was 2 in the night). We hung around for some more time, before I decided that I need to sleep. I hadn’t had much sleep over the past couple of days, and really needed some rest.

We (Jeete, Bansal, Sudeep, and I) woke up around eight in the morning and headed to Dev’s place for meeting Uncle and Aunty, and some yum breakfast. We also dumped some songs from his Comp on to the USB stick. After that we picked Ankit and headed to the UCO redi for some more breakfast. Jeete wanted the music of DevD and I wandered into the hostel and got it from the DC++ from some random dude’s room. Also, Bansal finally had had a fill of his chikoo shake while I gorged on some delicious kela rabdi.

Ankit wanted to head off to Delhi all by himself, and while Bansal went to drop him off we packed stuff and got ready for another adventure. When Bansal returned, he was ambushed by Subji who asked him not to follow his path, tummy wise.

After saying bye to Chimpu, we quickly headed for Sikar. Collected the i10 and paid equally for the towing and the broken clutch plate. Also got the Alto repaired for like 20 bucks. We had lunch at a pretty shady place, but the beer made it worthwhile.

After this, around 3, we split up, Sudeep and Bansal in the Alto, and Jeete and I in the i10 and started back on a long long journey. The way back was through Neem ka Thana to Kot Putli which joined the Delhi-Jaipur highway (NH8). Midway through the journey I switched places with Bansal and teamed up with Sudeep. 

The drive was nice, trouble free, and the road was very, very scenic. However, it got interesting as soon as we joined the NH8. There was a lot of traffic and we (Sudeep) did a lot of high octane driving with lot of inputs from the wingman (read me).

We reached Gurgaon at 10 and after dumping off our luggage at home, headed to Rred (stupid numerology) Hot Cafe for food. The food was good and we were all happy about coming for it.

Now that I look back at it, the whole trip seems so crazy. However, I thoroughly enjoyed every damn moment of it. Here is to the journey and many more like this, with less breakdowns though

And here are the places we visited.

Google Maps

Update on the post below. 

Ashish held along overdue  townhall yesterday, and truth be told, he was at his best ever. He made no apologies. There was no MBA mumbo jumbo. No bullshit. Just the plain truth. He appeared sincere and gave straight answers. Loved it.

And that helped. It calmed a lot of nerves and cleared up a lot of confusion. People know that times are bad, but to hear from the management that things will get better and that they are thinking of us helps.

Just wish he had had the townhall a week earlier.

There are times when everything is going great. Everything is looking bright and shiny. And you can’t seem to make a mistake. Like Ponting leading the Aussies with Warne, McGrath, and Hayden in it. Or Lehman Brothers being place to be. Those are also the times you do not need to much leadership. 

However, those times are long gone. Lehman doesn’t exist anymore. Aussies no longer dominate cricket. The world economy is in a worse state than Pakistan’s security. And people are getting laid off everywhere. And these are times when a leader is required. These are the times when the men distinguish themselves from the boys. They don’t run for cover but face the heat along with everyone else.

But most importantly, they speak to their people. Calm their nerves. Tell them that everything is gonna be alright. Everybody knows that we are going through some of the roughest times ever. However, it would have been comforting to hear, from the people supposed to lead us, that everything would become better again. That bad times would tide, and good times would be back.

There was a round of layoff at work today and a lot of reorg. Some folks I knew, some I didn’t. All day long today I watched people queue up at the HR bay to complete some or the other formalities. I could feel the tension in our bays. I could see a lot of eyes asking some very pointed questions, to which I had no answers. There was a palpable fear and uncertainity in a lot of people.

A couple of folks I knew, who were being let go, came up to me and congratulated me on the ISB admit, and I had no damn clue how to react. I have never been so lost for words.

I was angry and hurt. Why did not someone explain this in a townhall?? Or at least an email. You guys could have done it better. Hell, you could have done a lot better actually!!

Be warned: This is one long post!!

The adventure started on Thursday evening with a flat tyre. We had picked Jeete from the airport, and proceeded to pick Sudeep from Nizamuddin. After fighting through the intense traffic, we picked him up and headed to Flaming Mustard in Vasant Kunj for dinner. The dinner was good, and fun was had. When we walked out, we realized that we had to ourselves a flat tyre and a flat spare. We quickly called Tk and Bharathi, and they readily gave us their spare. What we did not realize, however, was that this was the beginning of a series of delays that would hit us.

Next morning we picked up Ankit, a new spare, and headed off to Jhunjhunu in an Alto and an i10, accompanied by Kanika, Raheem, Aditi, and Pari in a Santro. The first quarter of the journey was pretty nice and we were driving along nicely when we had to stop at a railway crossing. Jeete and Bansal were in the i10, while me, Ankit, and Sudeep were in the Alto. Jeete got out to see what was up with the crossing while Bansal headed out to chit-chat with us. When the crossing opened, we realized to our utter horror, that the keys were inside and the car. Further, the Hyundai car can’t be opened as easily as the Maruti ones can. Anyway, after trying for an hour, we called the Hyundai dealership in Rewari. The chap arrived in an hour and half, and we started off in another half an hour.

Since we were behind schedule, and tried to cover some time on the Narnaul-Chirawa stretch, which we were successful in. Just when it seemed that we might get to Dundlod (which is where Misra’s wedding party had halted), we lost transmission on the i10 and came to a slow halt. It was like a huge blow. Plus the knowledge that there was no Hyundai service station within a 100 kms. We started towing the i10 using the Alto, no minor task for newbies. After snapping the tug rope twice, we finally used our engineering heads, and used a thrown piece of tire tube to reduce the stress on the rope and reached Jhunjhunu at around 7:30PM in the evening. A drive that should have taken 5 hours had taken more than 8!!

We started packing the gifts, and getting ready for the main event. It was funny to watch Misra in the sherwani, and that is when we realized (at least I did) that STAR-PLUS was a man down!! It was the wedding of two of my closest friends, and I like a smart guy, quickly jumped on the “ladke wale” bandwagon The rest of the evening was spent having a lot of fun. We danced a lot in the baaraat and tried to get everyone involved. But since we were slightly behind schedule, we had to let the baarat proceed without too much dancing. The customary Joey dance, the clothes washing, and cricket dance were still accomodated.

Me and Joy, decided to lift Misra right before the varmala and poor Parul (who looked amazing) had no chance at the garland game till we had pity. I must mention here that she played hard ball and decided not even to try till we did not reduce Misra’s elevation to a competitive level. After that it was snap time. Parul had no difficulty in mantaining the Colgate smile, while Misra looked a little bored. Misra played the spoil sport and did not pose for even a single wedding snap. Parul was much more game – oh, and did I mention that she looked gorgeous We spent a lot of time pulling their legs and chatting with them up on the stage.

The food, to use Sudeep’s word, was “AWESOME”. It was a combination of good food, and Sudeep’s stay in US that the word was uttered with such regularity that we wondered if he was somehow related to Barney Stinson!!

The pheras were fun, and there were a lot of comments when the pundit was explaining the meaning of the various vows exchanged invoked a lot of interest from old timers. It seems that you need to disclose all your earnings to your wife – there goes the entire confidentiality of salary thingie!! Another point to note here was that Parul seemed to be in a lot of hurry and was walking very quickly (through the evening), while Misra limbered on in his usual style.

Anyhoo. After the wedding we headed back to Shalimar hotel and slept peacefully till eight in the morning. I was chatting with Misra, and Jeete and Bansal headed out to get the i10 fixed. It was then that Jeete and Bansal realized that the i10 needed to be sent to Sikar, 80 kms away, to be fixed. Misra by then had to go for the vidaai and we decided to skip it, mainly because we were too sleepy. Meanwhile, we also made a quick trip to Rani Sati temple in Jhunjhunu. Bansal asked the dealer to send a tow van, and headed off to Pilani with Kanika and company, while Jeete, Sudeep, Ankit and I stayed back.

… To be continued …