Chaos to the Cosmos and Back

Trappings of time,
Nostalgia,
Whips from the past,
Aimless from yonder,
The moist morning dew,
The kiss of the raindrops,
The voice in the night,
The endless conversation,
The moments of uncertainity,
The awaited moment,
The sound of the crickets,
The lonely aftermath,
The daily drudgery,
The daily wait,
The long periods of silence,
The longer periods of boredom,
The never ending failure,
The untiring consolation,
The irony,
The hypocrisy,
The endless wonder,
The futile dreams,
The me and the you.

Travails of the Blue Collared Laborer-Chapter 2

So, I ended up meeting the team and putting on my extremely friendly plastic smile. "Hello- Daude', great to be part of the team."

"Hi Daude'- Myself, Prakash Rajan, your new project manager, infact your first project manager if I'm not mistaken, hahahahaha. I'm sure you must be looking forward to take up your work. Arun must have already briefed you about the challenges. I hope he hasn't frightened you too much, hahahahahahha."

It was difficult to get myself to laugh at such frivolty, but the excitement of real work was just too much- the feeling of a high, of doing something important brought to my face a gracious smile as a response. So Prakash took me towards the other members to complete the formal intoroduction rounds. The faces in the begining always go around in a blur. Well most of the faces do, but not if it's the face of Romilla. Now I had seen females at work, but hot ones that too without moustaches was a new experience. "Daude, this is Romilla. She also joined as a fresher last year, and has grasped the product really well. You can go to her anytime for help. She will be glad to help. Won't you Romilla...hehehehe"

My mind had taken off elsewhere "She joined last year as a fresher,hmmmm...so shes elder than me by a year....so what....Sachin Tendulkar got married to someone 5 years older than him...whats age gotta do with love anycase...I mean people usually do say I am more mature than my age actually conveys."

Romilla smiled, "Why not Prakash, I'd be glad to help. I am currently busy, but meet me after lunch Daude and I'll give you some documents to go through."

I was taken to a corner, and caught my first sight of what would be my cubicel- the place where I would waste two entire years of my life. There placed before me was Dell- a black beauty. Prakash pointed out the machine. "Well Daude, this will be your workstation. Here is the list of things you have to get installed in your machine. I hope you know how to get an infrastructure request raised through the intranet. If you need anything else please let me know."

I seated myself immediately and logged on to the intranet to raise the infrastructure request. And here came the whole plethora of complications involved in the 'processes' of the software firm.

Number1- Username/password request -Approver -Centre Head
Number2-SOftware Installation request-Approver-Project Manager
Number3-Hardware Request- Approver-Team Lead
Number4-Admin Rights Request- Approver-Network Admin
Number5-Any other request-Approver-Use your discretion

I finally raised the request for a whole list of softwares and luckily all of them required only my Project Manager's approval. The infra man arrived. He was middle aged, he was cranky, and he was talkative. Venkat opened his mouth and spewed his frustration all over. "I have installed Visual Studio and now it seems you need MSDN too. I do not know why you people trouble me like this. Why can't you just look up MSDN on the net."

Now I forgot to mention that Zymbian had a special internet policy. We were allowed to access the internet only through selected stations known as cyber-stalls. Now this was a very cool name,but it was like waiting in a fuckin cyber cafe. There were innumerable jobless people just waiting to pounce on the cyber stall once it was empty. Anyways lets get back to Venkat.

"But Venkat you know the limited net access that we have. And you know Zeo-Fin is Windows based. We definitely need MSDN don't we. Infact Prakash insisted on MSDN."

Cranky people always have their way of getting things to avoid work. "Well I do not think I can install MSDN. Technically MSDN is not a software but a downloadable collection of files. I am sorry but you have to raise an 'Internet Request'.''

Later after spending more months in Zymbian and after more meaningless discussions with Venkat, I learnt his father worked in the Municipal Corporation and retired 5 years ago. Well it so happens that bureaucracy is also genetic. But for now the threat of another request was looming.

"Well Venkat who is my approver for the Internet Request?"

"Just use your discretion Daude'....you will be desgining software soon....you should know discretion."

Travelled through the dusts of time,
Looked for any signs of life,
In pursuit for the tavern,
To quench what was dry and fill the damp.

Finally reaching the place,
I stared into the space before,
There was all I could drink,
All that was meant for me.

I walked right in,
Looked across the room,
Roared aloud, begging a drink,
When it did come...I wasn't thirsty anymore.

Thirst not quenched,
But left dry and parched with no desire,
Left sore and numb,
My throat lay barren.

And so the rain of shit continues....and so I stand waiting.

Travails of the Blue Collared Laborer-Chapter 1

The feeling was funny, but I was ready to take on the world. To compete with every Goddamn employee and beat them at their own game. I had been doing this all my life- competing with idiots and deriving immense satisfaction in beating them. College was fun, but I was so looking forward to working. I thought I would find some meaning in life. I would find a way to reach closer to my dream of world dominion(ok this is not an exageration, I did dream of world dominion). Well, so training period passed and the starry eyed dreams persisted and then something hit me.....it hit me hard on the head and it was called "Project Allocation".

Arun Chindolkar greeted me with a warm smile and my faith in the effervescent Indian Software industry was reaffirmed with what he had to say. I had expected Arun (Zymbian Tech was following the norm of every other tech co....we adress even the chairman on a first name basis...how cool after the years of adressing pieces of poop as sir....now we could adress pieces of poop with their first name...though my fantasy of actually calling them dog dung has still not been satisfied...okay enough of the long unending bracket) to be a 34 year old careworn employee who had grown with time to his present position of Account Manager. On the contrary he was 27 and had earnt the position of Account Manager over a period of just 6 years. I was not at all surprised, afterall it was well known that you get rewarded for hard work and come up in life with sincerity(stop laughing....I did sincerely believe in all this crap).

"Welcome to Zymbian Ramesh. I am Arun Chindolkar and I handle the Unitech account. We currently handle have 3 projects in this account. Well the project you have been allocated to is Zeo-FIN 3.2." I was all ears listening to every word and noticing that exuberent smile and sincere face that Arun held. Though the lines seemed rehearsed they had that incredible element of sincerity and genuineness. "See Ramesh, this project is really challenging and the learning potential for a fresh graduate is tremendous. You have been handpicked for this project precisely for this reason. We observed your academic record and performance during training and realised that we needed someone competent and resposible for such a crucial and complex project." I was listening to a Beethoven symphony and couldn't have enough of it. "You will be given a huge amount of resonsibility and over a period of time you may have to even start leading a team of 2-3 people under you. So I just wanted to get you in tune with what is in store coz I'm sure your upto every challeneg that will be thrown at you out here. We in Zymbian choose only the best and Zeo-FIN over the last 3 years that has established itself as a project where only the fittest of the fit survive. I think we should get down to business straight away. I'll intorduce you to the team and you could probably go through some of the project documentation then. Come along then."

We started walking from the room into the large cluster of the software dungeons-the cubicles, but I had to say something to Arun first. "Arun just one thing. Well in college I was called by my last name - Daude'....and I do prefer to be called that way if you really don't mind.So when you do intorduce me to the team..."
"No issues(I was to soon find out "No issues" was a phrase managers were most adept at using...it actually meant "I hate your fuckin guts for sayin what you just did,but professionally I have nothing against it"...so even if a subordinate were to tell a manager that he was sleeping with his wife, the manager would be trained to just turn and reassuringly say "No issues"). From today you will be called Daude' if thats how you want it to be. Chalo abhi Daude." The last remark was a joke and he did gesture with his eyes that it was time to laugh. So I laughed at the non-existent wit and humor in the remark. I was already used to the laughs in college created by punning on my last name and it ceased to stir any particular emotion in me now. So we both laughed for a good 30 seconds, and I artifically produced a slight tear of laughter as well from my eye. That was sure to impress him a great deal. A subordinate with a good sense of humor and the ability to take jokes on him sportingly is well treated. This notion I still hold to this day although bear in mind...no jokes on superiors are taken well even if it results in them laughing. They are just faking like any of us and the only actual result is a comment on the appraisal which reads as follows "Does his work satsifactorily, though he is not performing to his full potential. His present quality of deliverables is excellent and he could extend it by proacively shouldering more responsibility." Subtle isn't it. Makes you wonder how you don't get much of a raise even though the manager has showered such praises on you. Ah the simple pleasures managers derive on our grave. But it did take quite a while before I came across all this. A whole 3 weeks.
I now expect entrants to realize in 1. Well thats just me, I do set high expectations on fresh entrants when I see such great potential and zeal in them.