The roads of the town were broad and empty and soulless, they just went on and on without thinking and without any meaning, night lamps posted on the either side of the road gave away a dim orange hue, here and there I saw people lying on roads, shrouded by the blanket of dreams. I wondered what they see, do they dream like we do? Of a better life, of a life full of things, of a life of chasing mirages? Or they just see an endless reign of darkness, live their lives without any expectations or hopes or disappointments. And do I need envy them?
"Have you informed the REC that we were coming?" M2 broke the silence, M2 was a worrisome guy, a true copy of tension, although a distant second.
"I updated them yesterday only" Amar said. Amar was a sort of hands-on guy among us who always led the charge, he was our COO, Sharma used to say.
The campus was located in the place called ex-focity, a lonely deserted place at outskirts of the city, it was enclosed area marked with a definitive boundary wall, and complete with a huge iron gate. A joke went around that it was a laboratory of Umbrella Corporation – a land of the dead. On the left direction of the entrance there was a small row house kind of thing, and apart from that there was nothing inside, absolutely nothing, just open spaces and the wild grasses growing on them un-purposefully.
Our company had a big campus, just like it had everywhere, with my eyes I could only see a small part of it but with his vision he could see the whole of it, the whole of everything, every campus out there, what a man. The guard checked our ids one by one, ids were okay but still the guy looked little discontent, something was nagging him, he then discovered that there were unusual amount of passengers holed up, and he asked us to come out. I, Amar, M2 got down and took on the road, a km of a road went straight to the REC, there was a turn around the big cafeteria, opposite to which was cricket ground, a cricket ground which was actually a cricket ground, not like some makeshift playground, where you find a dozen of pitches parallel to each other, and each one hosting its own game. There was only one pitch here and a long marked boundary around it. The grass in the ground seemed quite superior and well trimmed. The structure of REC was quite remarkable, the shape mimicked a hull of the ship, and then there was a small pool of water around it, to complete the look.
Sharma and I were paired together in the double room, the lights of the room lit up as soon as we put in the key in the door, that was some serious technology, I gorged upon the packet of snacks which were neatly placed on the table between the two beds, there was a coffee pouch and milk powder and kettle to boil the coffee too. I was so tired that I took off my shoes and just threw myself on the bed, I slept almost instantly. Sharma however took his time, he took a hot shower changed into night dress, took out his game pad, and I don't remember after that, I was in deep sleep already.
I was running fever the next day I got up, it was mild so I decided to ignore it and continue with the day's program. We went to our HR, Yashashree who sat in one of the client area – a round bellied middle aged woman, she welcomed us and gave us all a token gift - a dark brown coffee mug, with the name of the corporation written on it. We happily moved to the coffee machine (one of those CCDex machine), it was then I came to know that Amar didn’t drink coffee, he put in his mug pressing the tea button, milk came out which he took, Sharma didn’t have any cup so I guess he just had no preference, or he preferred not to drink anything, I sensed that he was somewhat what we call a prurient by heart.
Somewhere around after lunch we met our DM, he was our assigned manager until we find a project. He asked us in his cabin and asked us about the kind of work we would like to do, or our expectations from the organization. Most of the people said some big words, like dream and dedication, seeking a challenging role and stuff but when my turn came up I just said I wanted a 9-5 kind of work, I didn’t like pressuring myself, so anything non-stressful would be fine with me. I imagined what I would do after office hours, I would go running in the vicinity complete with track pants and running shoes, and stroll in the park watch the kids play with the setting sun, climb up the hill nearby and sit at the porch of the temple, taking in long breaths and trying to absorb the tranquility. And on Friday perhaps I'd go to a local bar, not that I am interesting in getting drunk, but just you know to set the weekend mood, or I would go to a disc and shake my legs till the midnight.
He smiled at me, maybe he liked what I just said, I was honest at least, little did I knew at that time how deluded I was, honesty in a work place doesn’t work, you have to be selfish with your intentions, clever with your words, and shrewd in your actions. He took out a pen and a paper and asked my name again, I told him it’s ... He noted it down carefully and put the paper in his drawer.
We reached the REC little early at around 6 pm, we wanted to take a tour so we quickly changed ourselves into a comfortable gym attire and went on. Gym was decent, not as big as Mysore but still respectable, we got introduced to the trainer who was a very thin and small man, I wondered who made him the trainer, what would he train other guys when he himself didn’t look trained. After that we went to the sports room, it was pretty big, it housed four badminton courts and around six TT tables, the game that would bind us together for the more difficult time to come, three pool table, and one squash room. It was the same area that formed the hull of the titanic, the company was a giant titanic indeed.
I chose a desk such that people passing-by couldn't see what I was doing, it was critical as I was working on ultra top secret project and had to be very discreet about it, no not really, I was just chatting away most of my time, or surfing the net at random, and the only eye that I was concerned about was our DM, for he had told us specifically to be productive and creative and not waste time in idle activities. And I always told myself that I should something, something useful, and then I’d think I’d start tomorrow or after lunch or something and so went the days, thinking.
Around after wasting couple of weeks, I got the project finally. Few of them were placed in ML (Mary Linch), Amar was taken into this account itself so he didn't have to move from his desk, he was unhappy though because he was asked to work on excel sheets and do some data entry sort of work that no engineer in right mind would like to do. I imagined the gruesome four years of college, night long cramming sessions, struggle in the labs and then what did all that come to... this? Sharma was assigned to some product development work and seated in the same floor, it didn’t make an iota of difference to him, he was above it all, Sharma and I were sent to some investment bank account in the nearby building, we were to work on different assignments.
Sharma was a programmer, a C programmer since college time, and an impressive one and probably so he got a project on mainframes (in the name of flexibility). The project that he was assigned to curtailed no such thing as programming, he had to monitor jobs and had to make sure that everything was running okay, that's all, if something went wrong he had to report to his senior team-member. Well my project wasn't a great bit technical too, I had to generate reports, and do so some occasion fixes. And the platform was Unix and Perl, it was when I appreciated the importance of the nice GUI of windows, in Unix it was so difficult even to go from one directory to the other.
My other two team members were cool guys though, they encouraged me and gave me something or other challenge. one was well really good on vi editor and programmed his stuff on that only, he taught me that, but then I found this way where I wrote my programs on notepad and then copied it to vi editor, it was less stressful that way. I am serious, anybody's blood pressure can go up if they are made to work on the combo of Unix and vi.
Then there was a town hall that was held, we the bunch of fresher were asked to give an introduction with an additional line stating what we like to do or what our interests are. Everyone was same and boring except a few who were funny, M2 said he liked working hard – the team leads made special note of that; Amar said his hobby is bird watching, which too was hard to digest and was queer, only a few gifted ones could un
derstand the insight behind his statement; Sharma said he liked beaches and is looking forward to go Puri somebody from the crowd shouted don't bother it's a religious beach, you won’t get to see much there.
From the first full salary I bought small gifts for people I knew and gave away the rest to my sister (remember the promise), for myself I got a cell phone - a Nokia 6630 which I own till date.
#
I was that guy
To tell you the truth I was not always like this, you know what I mean, the absolute don’t give a fuck kind, - I was that guy. This new avatar was an evil undoing of the system – the system in which the good is grinded into either corrupt or is turned into nothingness. I was so full of it the day I was inducted in my first project, I was like I will do this, I will do that. Even in the college days I was kind of perfectionist, I had to do all the assignment and that too by myself - referring to several books and several articles. My boss and I started on a very sweet note, he was suspiciously kind for a boss. He asked me about my aspirations and inspiration, I am not kind of guy who open up very easily but I thought it was very important to start the relationship on the right foot. He appeared very assuring, very thoughtful in his words, he said I had a great potential – my training record was impeccable and the senior manager under which I was placed put in lot of good words. It wasn’t anything big for which I was awarded the employee of the month award – the first one in the entire account and in-fact the entire Vizag DC in his very first month of the job. I mean wow, I was humbled when my name was announced, I was not even paying attention - I was composing an email to one onsite manager guy explaining how to use the new excel plug-in I had created. It was the same excel plug-in for which I was being rewarded, I hate to brag but that one plug-in made the monthly performance analysis of the unit so damn easy, the managers could see beautiful graphics – charts and all; a great help in the presentation too.
I didn’t get the work that somebody would be really excited about – I wouldn’t bore you with much details but to give you the idea – the job was insipidly uninspiring to say the least. But hey who am I to complaint, I was getting paid – look for something else my manager would say to me later when I told him in the quarterly one-to-one. But an idealist, I saw the silver lining in the hour of despairs – the idea came to me when I was talking to maintenance guys who generated those reports that those big shots read. I purposed that he would treat me with seven course meal at Hilton if I fix the tedious job the guy. Happily agreed we shook the hands and took it to our manager, who smiled and then frowned and then acted as if he was thinking – and then finally gave his nod. I was on job again – something I loved, I immediately began hammering to reality that perfect isolate that I had in my mind. In the initial trial run the generated reports were 77% accurate and were executed with just one click of button!
Five thousand line of codes, yes sir I wrote five damn thousand lines – and that too in Pearl!, tested it, ran it, ate over it, slept over it and what not. I was pretty excited about it, and particularly about the upcoming meeting with the client manager. So this client guy Chaco was a new comer to the project just like me. So, the idea of the meeting he purposed was to put faces to names –nothing wrong in that I guess. Anyway, so the point is my manager was pressurizing me as he wanted to make a good impression on this guy so that he talk him in to getting more projects – you know what I mean, there’s not anything these manager types wouldn’t do. Last one week before the meeting was like Kurukshetra where I was all the paanch Pandava raging war against the evil forces of bugger Kauravas. So, to cut the chase this one man army fixed everything and came out the shining application which every budding developer would be proud of. “I love it” I was kind of expecting him to say but all that came out of his mouth was sulking oohs. He said, he was not sure would present it to the Chaco guy, and I was like flabbergasted – flabbergasted that’s not even the heaviest way to describe my feeling. That night was a sleepless night, a night of disappointment, little did I know a hell storm was waiting ahead for me. Something that made me say – I was that guy.
The next day manager came to my desk and said that I really worked hard for last one week or so and now that I should take a leave or two. And to be honest I did not mind taking a break, specially because my interest in the meeting had dipped below zero for there wasn’t going to be any demo.
So, I went out on a three day holiday to my favorite place, somewhere I really wanted to go for long time, I took off in the toy train – okay the details are irrelevant. The point is there I was holidaying, relaxing and there my manager, yes the lovely guy was giving the demo of my application. My friend from reporting told me how flamboyantly he presented to own the application, right from ideation to delivery part he did it all by himself. I swear that guy would start shaking if he was asked to explain about the pearl programming part. But nobody would I knew. There’s isn’t anything these manager types wouldn’t stoop to. I couldn’t forget that old jackal’s face, and I could never forget his name - Vishwas.
This time I was neither flabbergasted nor disappointed, I just stuck to my job while at the same time I waited for a chance to get out of this all. But that didn’t happen all that soon.
The whole system was rotten I was finally certain.
Pune
Being homeless
The end of the July was coming and I was hunting for a flat rigorously, I had to move out by the end of the month but I didn’t have find any place yet, I was scanning through the bulletin board posts when I found one which probably suited me, or so I thought - A roommate was required in a two bedroom flat in a single occupancy room, the other room was shared by two person already living there. So, I called up the no. but nobody picked up, I tried again after sometime but it was disconnected from the other end, in a second I received the message ‘in a meeting, will call later’ I waited till evening but nobody replied, so I decided to visit the place directly, how bad it’d be I said to myself.
It was a stormy rainy evening, I got in the company bus which was going to kothrud and dropped myself at the nearest landmark - the more store - I had address written on the face of my palm I kept asking people for the directions and kept going. It was difficult as it drizzling and there were pot holes everywhere on the road, I was trying hard to avoid my shoes getting soaked in the muddy water. After about fifteen-twenty minute of frenzy hunting I finally arrived at the apartment, it was a quite an old building, it looked like one from medieval era or something built by some mogul empire for it’s people, it was a stupid thought, I shook my head and stepped on the lift, I pushed fourth floor and I tried couple of times but it didn’t bulge, I wondered if I was overweight or if it required some kind of personal access (like a code given to residents only) to start. Just as I stepped out a man went in, closed the doors behind him and went straight up, I just watched him go in wonder. Unable to figure out, I walked up to the fourth floor apartment and hit the door bell, a girl opened up, it really caught me unaware, I was surprised, and then it occurred to me that it’d be somebody’s sister or friend or something, she welcomed me and showed me inside, my suspicion went up.
She introduced herself as Surekha. The other roommate who was not home at the moment was Anushree. They were best friends since college she told me, they had pretty nosy last roommates and it was why they wanted a change, and they wanted a male roommate. She said that she promises there won’t be any ‘mix up’, they will just say to the society chairman they had their cousin living with them, that’s perfectly alright I guess, she said. I okayed the place, it was messy no doubt from outside, but the apartment itself was squeaky clean, the place was small and cozy, it had a big sofa set in the living room which watched over to a color tv set, cooking gas and the kitchen setup was there, the new room was also good, an attached cupboard of decent space, a small balcony to have a relaxed evening tea in (if only you could reach home in time). For a minute I wonder whether I should take it, I thought about the possibiliti
es, and then I thought about the consequences of those possibilities and I dismissed the whole idea. What am I thinking? It can’t work.
While getting back I was stuck, stuck bad in the torrential rain, I had no umbrella, no raincoat, and instead of worrying sick about catching fever or a flu I was wondering why that lift did not work when I tried, I continued to stand on the highway waiting for a shared cab or a six-seater but nothing came by, I walked ahead and went to a place where I was in better position to get picked up, I waited for about half an hour before I actually got something to sit, it was a cab that dropped me till Wakad Bridge, and from Wakad Bridge luckily I caught company’s 08:15 bus which dropped me straight to my place at Pimple Saudagar. People eyed me as I stepped in, I was cold and tired, I looked around but nobody felt like making space for a guy with horns, I just stood there in silence.
I could hardly get any sleep that night, partly because of the strong coffee that I took and mostly because something was eating from inside, I was worried, although it was difficult to fathom why should I be worried. I wondered if getting stuck in the heavy rain was some kind of sign, and then top it with being rescued by something familiar. I looked for interpretations as I dissembled every small detail. After hours of mental wrestle I finally gave up, it was incredibly stupid. I went thoughtless for some time, counting sheeps as went in the barn one by one. But then my imagination took fancy again, suppose it happened to some guy, what would he think it as?
For the whole next week I looked in the bulletin board, I looked into the old posting almost about a months old posting, but couldn’t find quite like it, in fact after seeing that place I wasn’t able to bring myself to like any other place or to look anything seriously. After lunch I saw an email from the girl that if I was still interested in the room, if not she would look further, but she argued that she liked and she kind of thought that I was a decent person. The extra polite tone of her mail made me wonder if I move in they were to cut me into pieces and throw away in the garbage bin.
Zero Defect: An autobiography of a software engineer Page 9