Today, I thought would be just another normal day working at onsite. It’s been almost 4 months since I came to UK. At the end of the day, I really keep thinking, “How wrong could I have been?”
The day started with a call from my PM saying there was an issue with the deployment we had done yesterday. This was at 5:55 am in the morning. Life seemed to be all a turmoil from then on.
It seemed that some of the sites were down and we were being held responsible for it. There are sometimes when the meaning of self-confidence seems to make no sense. Here were client mails, client operations guys and our own company folks questioning if I had done something wrong. Ultimately, I was sitting and wondering, “Did I really screw-up this time? Is the tiny voice that seems to be making a last ditch effort all wrong? Should I just strangle and stifle that voice so that it shall stop tormenting me? Should I accept that I am one big mess?” All this and some more thoughts passed through my mind. I felt like the lousiest being on earth.
There were calls from here to India, India to US, US to UK and all around again. Somehow, I was not supposed to attend it. It seemed like a discussion by a jury, before it came out, looked at the pathetic soul which they now ruled and pronounced, “Guilty!” “Am I?” Somewhere a flickering doubt remained and kept pestering me.
By evening, the problem seemed to have evaporated. People were all friendly and “Happy Weekend to you” wishes were flying around. After day when my very being was put to test, these folks carried on like nothing happened at all. My manager simply said, “Welcome to the client-facing role”. That statement was made after handling many clients and multiple such issues. I wondered, what will it be like at his position? For after one day of this tribulation, I felt like a loser. For a person to answer these things, day-in and day-out, what must it be like? I could not imagine. My manager simply said, “These things happen. Concentrate on your daily work and things will work out fine.”
Yes, things will work out fine. But, the unsullied soul of mine is now ragged and stained. Will it ever get repaired? Probably not. Yes, I’ll become harder. The virginal innocence seems to have been raped at the hard-doors of reality. But yes, I’ll survive. Maybe, over a period of time, I’ll not even look back on such things. But, today, it was a day of absolute dismay, a day when everything I do was questioned.
Well, if you have read till here, and still willing to come onsite, please do. Just remember, on one day, you too shall face such a situation and maybe, I’ll be around and tell you, “Don’t worry. These things happen.”
Friday, January 27, 2006
Monday, January 09, 2006
My color is Blue!
Took a quiz on this site.
And this was the result:
You're the color blue. You have the three c's in
life--you're cool, caring and confident.
Trustworthy and honest, people are naturally
attracted to you. You're unusually optimistic,
but that makes life all the better. You're an
imaginative person who loves sleeping and
dreaming. Hard-working and determined, you
excell in school. You're everybody's favorite,
and this is because you have this undefined
richness in your personality and attitude.
Mild-tempered and stable. Not to mention very
intelligent. Along with the fact that you're
conservative, you're worried about the
environment. So basically, you're a generous,
dependable and devoted--just the kind of person
everybody needs. Wouldn't it be great if
everybody in the world were like you?
What color are you? (Amazingly detailed & accurate--with pics!)
brought to you by Quizilla
And this was the result:
You're the color blue. You have the three c's in
life--you're cool, caring and confident.
Trustworthy and honest, people are naturally
attracted to you. You're unusually optimistic,
but that makes life all the better. You're an
imaginative person who loves sleeping and
dreaming. Hard-working and determined, you
excell in school. You're everybody's favorite,
and this is because you have this undefined
richness in your personality and attitude.
Mild-tempered and stable. Not to mention very
intelligent. Along with the fact that you're
conservative, you're worried about the
environment. So basically, you're a generous,
dependable and devoted--just the kind of person
everybody needs. Wouldn't it be great if
everybody in the world were like you?
What color are you? (Amazingly detailed & accurate--with pics!)
brought to you by Quizilla
Saturday, January 07, 2006
World is Flat - My thoughts
Last week, I read a book titled, World is Flat. It was a very good work by Thomas L Friedman, trying to explain the globalization that we are living in. He has attributed most of the knowledge to Nandan Nilekhani and Vivek Paul. Infosys and Wipro seem to be present in every other page and Bangalore seems to be there all around. It was quite a change to read about India, as such an attractive place, rather than the usual stuff about corruption, poverty and communalism.
Some things in the book were really worth mentioning. First thing is, where the author describes the method to identify if a country is going to prosper or not. He says, before investing, you need to ask this: “Are the people living in this country dreaming about a future or are they recollecting its past greatness?” When it is the latter, he says, the heydays of the country have ended and it is time that the people living their dreams take over. Think about it. For people like me, growing up in India from the time markets opened up in 1990, the nation has looks like an entirely different one. Politics aside, the India Shining campaign was a huge success. Why? Instead of telling about Gandhi, Nehru and all, it said, what we can do and what we are doing. It did not try to tell us about the greatness of freedom fighters and the sacrifices they made.
Come to think of it: Did Gandhi, Nehru, et. all sacrifice so much to see a country that would honor them for 50 years, or did they do it so that they could drive the nation to the league of developed ones? Somehow, this point seemed to have lost out for half a century and we were living in the larger than life shadows of figures from history rather than honoring those who were continuously propelling India to her destiny of greatness.
Another point that was worth nothing was on the issue of openness: Friedman tells this small tale: There is this person whose family was split during the partition and his part of family ended up in Pakistan while another severed part ended in Mumbai, India. Friendman questioned him about the fact that India seemed to be developing into an IT giant, while Pakistan seemed to be getting world coverage for all the wrong reasons. So, this person replied, something like this: In India, when my relative sees a rich business man sitting in a plush home in Mumbai, he’ll turn to his dad and say, “Someday, I’ll be like him.” In Pakistan, the small kid, seeing a rich businessman will say, “Someday, I’ll kill him!”
Come to thing of it: Despite the rampart corruption, stifling reservation and anachronistic legislation, India is powered by a stifling competition. More importantly, there is a free press and the fundamental right of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Thought is not censured.
In the same week that I read the book, something else strange happened: I was sitting at the client location in UK and the client PM was talking about his trip to India. He was definitely pleased. In fact, he is handling two projects: One from our company, an Indian IT service provider and another one being handled by the client’s own IT department. It seems the second project was over-running the budget and the deadlines seemed like a joke. At one point he said something like this: Maybe we should have given this to you guys itself.
That statement summarized the change in perception: India is not a cheap destination. India and Indians are now seen as an epitome of quality and delivery capabilities. What we promise, we deliver. And this perception is for delivering extremely complicated 24/7/365 enterprise solutions and web solutions being accessed by millions of people, generating billions of dollars in revenue. Howz that metamorphosis for a country that was known for only its elephants, snake charmers and />
Still, like the debate over India Shining campaign, there are problems that we need to address. The rampart corruption, the illiteracy, the caste system and all are going to be issues that the government and the people of the country have to solve. I guess it is time now that the quality of life issues is addresses like a typical business problem for an IT organization. With detailed plans, timelines and budget, I am quite sure that a country that handles the sites like eBay and Yahoo can definitely solve the so called Third World Problems.
But one thing is clear: Behold, India is now awakening and staking her claim to greatness that she always deserved!
Some things in the book were really worth mentioning. First thing is, where the author describes the method to identify if a country is going to prosper or not. He says, before investing, you need to ask this: “Are the people living in this country dreaming about a future or are they recollecting its past greatness?” When it is the latter, he says, the heydays of the country have ended and it is time that the people living their dreams take over. Think about it. For people like me, growing up in India from the time markets opened up in 1990, the nation has looks like an entirely different one. Politics aside, the India Shining campaign was a huge success. Why? Instead of telling about Gandhi, Nehru and all, it said, what we can do and what we are doing. It did not try to tell us about the greatness of freedom fighters and the sacrifices they made.
Come to think of it: Did Gandhi, Nehru, et. all sacrifice so much to see a country that would honor them for 50 years, or did they do it so that they could drive the nation to the league of developed ones? Somehow, this point seemed to have lost out for half a century and we were living in the larger than life shadows of figures from history rather than honoring those who were continuously propelling India to her destiny of greatness.
Another point that was worth nothing was on the issue of openness: Friedman tells this small tale: There is this person whose family was split during the partition and his part of family ended up in Pakistan while another severed part ended in Mumbai, India. Friendman questioned him about the fact that India seemed to be developing into an IT giant, while Pakistan seemed to be getting world coverage for all the wrong reasons. So, this person replied, something like this: In India, when my relative sees a rich business man sitting in a plush home in Mumbai, he’ll turn to his dad and say, “Someday, I’ll be like him.” In Pakistan, the small kid, seeing a rich businessman will say, “Someday, I’ll kill him!”
Come to thing of it: Despite the rampart corruption, stifling reservation and anachronistic legislation, India is powered by a stifling competition. More importantly, there is a free press and the fundamental right of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Thought is not censured.
In the same week that I read the book, something else strange happened: I was sitting at the client location in UK and the client PM was talking about his trip to India. He was definitely pleased. In fact, he is handling two projects: One from our company, an Indian IT service provider and another one being handled by the client’s own IT department. It seems the second project was over-running the budget and the deadlines seemed like a joke. At one point he said something like this: Maybe we should have given this to you guys itself.
That statement summarized the change in perception: India is not a cheap destination. India and Indians are now seen as an epitome of quality and delivery capabilities. What we promise, we deliver. And this perception is for delivering extremely complicated 24/7/365 enterprise solutions and web solutions being accessed by millions of people, generating billions of dollars in revenue. Howz that metamorphosis for a country that was known for only its elephants, snake charmers and />
Still, like the debate over India Shining campaign, there are problems that we need to address. The rampart corruption, the illiteracy, the caste system and all are going to be issues that the government and the people of the country have to solve. I guess it is time now that the quality of life issues is addresses like a typical business problem for an IT organization. With detailed plans, timelines and budget, I am quite sure that a country that handles the sites like eBay and Yahoo can definitely solve the so called Third World Problems.
But one thing is clear: Behold, India is now awakening and staking her claim to greatness that she always deserved!
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