If Truth Be Told: A Monk's Memoir

by Om Swami

  Above all, there were the joys I knew within. I had experienced the pleasure of diving into the ocean of meditation. I had felt the rapture of chanting Vedic verses, where each escalating sound would transport me to another world. If there was adrenalin for the soul, if there was an intoxicant of the spirit, for me, it was meditation.

  The next morning, I walked to the bank to start a new account. The bank manager was friendly and greeted me with a big smile. No one jumped the line; the place was well organized but relaxed. In less than thirty minutes, I had a bank account number and a temporary ATM card. On my way back home, I picked up a free local newspaper. It was full of advertisements seeking administrative secretaries, assistants, telemarketers and so on. There were no jobs for programmers, editors or salespeople though. I found out later that only mainstream newspapers advertised the types of jobs I was searching for.

  In the afternoon, I went to my new college. It was just a few rooms occupying one floor in a small building. The principal, Richard Da Silva, was a nice man. I introduced myself and requested him to help me find a job, but he said there was nothing he could do. I asked him if he could help me get work experience without pay, and he promised to try.

  Close to the flat, I found a business centre where I could prepare, print and fax my résumé to companies. I applied for numerous secretarial and administrative jobs. After spending about an hour sending faxes, I rushed home to be close to the phone in case anyone called. I sat by the phone the entire day but it didn’t ring. Day two: I sent out more faxes. Day three: I learned that I had to make follow-up calls to the recruitment consultants at the various companies; they wouldn’t call me.

  Day four: I called home and let them know all was well. It turned out my mother had spoken to her elder brother whose son, Arun Modgil, lived in Sydney. He had suggested I contact my cousin, which I did. Arun told me he would pick me up on the weekend, and I should pack my things for a couple of days with them. I was glad to be spending some time with Arun and his family.

  Day five: I saw not one but two letters in the mail; they had logos printed on them. I was thrilled. Finally, I had got an interview call or maybe even a straight job offer. The first letter turned out to be a polite rejection. It was so courteously worded that I thought they really loved me but couldn’t hire me for some genuine reason. I opened the second letter; it sounded just like the first one. I was disappointed, but still appreciated the communication: someone had cared to write that they didn't want me. Nevertheless, I called the numbers printed on the letters and was told that they would let me know if there were any future opportunities.

  Normally, in India, I would have shared my experience with someone in the family or with Prof. Sharma, but there was no one here to talk to. Suddenly, I felt a great vacuum. It dawned on me for the first time that I was in a totally new country, all alone. I had no backup and had to find a way to survive. I had to study in college, find work, foot my living expenses as well as save enough to pay for my next year’s tuition fees, failing which I could be deported. I went into the bathroom, the only place in Happy’s apartment where I had any privacy. Looking into the mirror, I saw that I was crying. I didn't stop myself but let myself go. This was the first and the only time I cried in Australia.

  Afterwards, my eyes were red and swollen and my face looked tired but I felt fresh and light. Perhaps it had just sunk in that I was on my own here and this acceptance had made me feel lighter. Anyhow, I couldn’t afford to look scruffy because I was going to see Arun in less than an hour's time and didn't want him to know I had been crying. I washed up and waited for him, my bag packed for the weekend.

  He called me from his phone as he approached my flat. I went down quickly. There he was, a handsome man standing beside a sleek Honda Legend. We shook hands and I touched his feet. I had met him only twice earlier, once as a child and another time when he had visited India a few years ago. Sitting beside him as he drove, I was impressed by the car, its squeaky clean, plush leather interiors, automatic transmission and ample leg room.

  Arun wasn’t keen on students coming on a student visa and then struggling to live and study. He had expressed this some years ago when my mother had consulted him about sending my brother overseas for higher education. He held the opinion that it was better to study well in India and then work abroad if one wanted. It was the reason I had not informed him about my coming to Australia.

  'Now that you are here, let’s make it work,' he said after I filled him in on my situation.

  As we drove, I learnt that Arun had recently quit his job and started a new business in shrink-wrap packaging. An engineer by profession and a genius by design, he would later grow his business into a multimillion-dollar enterprise, with operations in more than ten countries.

  Arun lived in Seven Hills, a suburb in the western part of Sydney, quite far from my college. It took us a while to reach his house. When we arrived, he introduced me to his little daughters, Ananta and Ayesha, who were six and three respectively. His wife, Anju, was a certified accountant and worked for a global investment bank. She was at work when I arrived.

  Later that evening, she came home. Walking into the living room where Arun and I sat chatting, she tilted her head to one side, gave me a broad smile and said, 'Hello!' Her warmth suddenly made things very easy. She turned out to be a bright and wonderful person, full of love.

  Even though it had only been a week since I had left India, it felt like an eternity. Within this one week, I had reported at college, got my medical insurance and a new bank account, applied for at least twenty jobs, got two written rejections, scoured the streets of north Sydney, gone for a sales seminar thinking it was an interview call, been interviewed for the job of a chess tutor, applied for work experience at the college and become comfortable with the Australian accent. I was also down by more than two hundred dollars.

  On Saturday, Arun and Anju had some friends over. Unlike the young men earlier, this was a sober crowd. We had an enjoyable dinner and I played a few songs on the Yamaha keyboard I'd brought from India, while everyone sat back and enjoyed the music. The next day, it was time for me to go back. In the morning, Arun came up to me and said, 'We would like it if you stayed with us till you settled down a bit.'

  'I would love it, Bhaiya,' I said, 'but I don’t want to be a burden. Is everyone else in the family okay with it?'

  'Yeah, I’ve discussed it with Anju. In fact, this is her idea.'

  I was deeply touched at this gesture. Arun kindly offered me the use of his phone line, which had a separate fax machine. As I sat down to send out job applications, my mind was flooded with business ideas; I saw opportunities everywhere. Not wanting to waste any time, I even registered a business name called Webcomm Technologies. The Internet was turning into a massive phenomenon, a juggernaut of possibilities, and I didn’t want to miss the boat. The only limitation was that I had no capital to start anything. Having said that, I didn’t require a million dollars or even ten thousand. I just needed someone to say, ’Don’t worry about the five thousand for next year’s college fees and don’t worry about food and living for the next six months,’ and I would have thrown myself into building a business. However, I didn’t have this kind of breathing space at the moment.

  I soon discovered that there weren’t enough software job openings in the local newspapers and no one was prepared to give me work because I had no local experience. To get in touch with more companies, I would pick up the Yellow Pages every day and call fifty potential employers. I would have even called a hundred but Arun had a quota of a certain number of free local calls from his landline, and I didn’t want to exceed that. Once, I called someone who heard me out and said, 'I just felt I was listening to a robot.'

  Robot? I had obviously failed. Here I was, trying my hardest, and the fact that the person at the other end thought I was a robot could only mean I was sounding like a machine. What he said next corrected my view. 'I don’t have any IT requirements, mate,' he said, 'but woul
d you like to come work for me? I need someone who sounds like you over the phone.'

  This was the first compliment I had received from an Australian. I was still hopeful of finding a job in programming, so I politely refused.

  With every passing day, however, I was getting increasingly desperate. A week later, I got a telemarketing job offer and snapped it up. This company was based out of a suburb called Baulkham Hills, and it was literally a ‘home business’: the employer had converted his house into an office. My remuneration was set at $12 an hour plus commission, and I couldn’t resist calculating what I would do with that money; it felt like a lot of money all of a sudden.

  My job was to pitch our services to small businesses. Once the customer was interested, we would fax them an order form and the deal was done if they signed and faxed back with their credit card details. My employer, an elderly man, had a specific process though. You had to make calls from 9 a.m. till 1 p.m., send faxes in the afternoon and follow up on the phone either in the evening or the next day.

  I did not break for lunch or tea. I just called and called. I found out that other telemarketers would manage to get one or two customers interested in the morning. On the very first day, I had over eight such customers in the morning and fourteen in the afternoon session because I made fresh sales calls all day. As soon as I had a customer interested, I ran to the fax machine, sent them a fax and made an immediate follow-up call so I could close the deal. The first day, I bagged six customers. Wow, I thought.

  The boss had a different opinion. He did not appreciate my faxing at unscheduled hours. 'You have to follow the process,' he told me the next day. 'We only send faxes during the lunch hour.' I apologized and went back to making calls at my desk. I had nearly thirty keen customers but no deal closures on the second day. As far as I was concerned, you had to strike when the iron was hot. It was simple, a no-brainer.

  The third day, I sought the help of the operations manager, an older lady who reported to the boss. I explained to her that I could exceed all my targets provided I was allowed to send faxes right away. She took up my request with him while I waited outside his cabin. After a few minutes, he came out with her and said in my presence, 'Tell this idiot to get outta here.'

  I had never been spoken about in this way. I needed money, sure, but I wasn't prepared to be insulted. Like they say, there’s always a first time; this was my first time, and I had been caught off guard.

  'Watch your language, man,' I said.

  'F**k you,' he replied.

  I stood there stunned. The lady hastily asked me to leave as the old man could get quite mad.

  'Are you going to pay me wages and commission for two days or not?' I asked the lady.

  'Get the f**k outta here,' he answered on her behalf.

  'What's wrong with you, man?' I said. Feeling helpless, I tried to match his pitch and authority but couldn’t. I knew I sounded meek and insignificant, even to myself. He shook his head and went back in his cabin. The lady urged me to leave.

  I picked up my bag and walked out. Deeply stressed and lost in thought, I passed the bus stop without realizing and kept walking. Finally, I collapsed on the kerb. For a long time, I just sat there thinking. My tuition fees of $5,000 were due in about ten months. And I needed to move out of my cousin’s house soon. I had to find a way to earn my living.

  Arun was home when I got back. 'You’re back early!' he said affectionately.

  'The man swore at me.'

  'Who swore?’

  'The owner of the company. He swore at me.' I divulged some details.

  'That's unusual. But why? What did you do then?'

  What could I do? It's not like I had a choice, Bhaiya. They asked me to leave.'

  'That's awful, but don’t worry. You’ll find something else,' he said.

  Did they at least pay you for two days of work?'

  'They only paid in insults. No cash. I put my pride aside and asked them for my wages but they refused.'

  'Screw them. Come on, let's have a coffee.'

  He tried to motivate me and make me laugh but I was really dispirited. I didn't feel like doing anything at this point but that wasn’t a luxury I could afford. My survival depended on action. I picked up the Yellow Pages and began calling companies with even greater vigour.

  Six weeks and fifteen hundred calls later, I got my first opportunity with a company called Australian Windows Publishing (AWP). A lady called Margo Plowright called me for an interview for unpaid work experience in software programming. I went to meet her the next day, and found that she ran that business with her husband.

  Unpaid work was not the best offer, of course, as I desperately needed money. But an opportunity to work in the IT industry mattered more to me than a paid opportunity in any other industry. I asked them if I would get to code in C++, a programming language I knew really well, and they indicated I would. The programming language they used was Delphi though, a language I’d never heard of. I wasn’t really keen on working in it because there was no growth or future as a Delphi coder. Still, getting any break right now was good enough for me.

  AWP offered me four weeks of work experience. The entire time, I was simply copying and renaming HTML files. That was my job. Easy, very easy. I wasn’t looking for an easy job though. I had understood quite early in my life that the amount of money you made was directly proportional to the degree of difficulty you could handle. The more stress you could handle, the more money you were paid; easy jobs paid less. Anyhow, I had no choice.

  At the beginning of the fourth week, the couple gave me amazing news. 'We’re very happy with your work. We would be pleased to offer you a one-year contract. Starting next week, we'll pay you $15 an hour for forty hours a week.'

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Finally, I had a job offer. Someone thought what I did had value. Money can make you feel important, and I felt important. I thanked them for their offer though I wasn’t entirely satisfied. One reason was that I wasn’t coding; I was doing something that even a sixth-grader could do. Two, I hadn’t yet told my employers that I was allowed only twenty hours paid work per week as stipulated on my student visa.

  That evening, while I was attending classes at college, my principal called me into his office. 'Congratulations, Amit, I’ve got some good news,' he said. We’ve lined up an interview for you with a software company.'

  'Thank you so much, Richard!'

  'It’s unpaid work experience for two weeks. If they like your work, they may extend it by another two weeks.'

  'Awesome!'

  'Your interview is on Wednesday.'

  On Wednesday, I called in sick at AWP. They didn’t mind; I was doing free work after all. I went for my interview with Trading Technology Australia (TTA). This was a small financial software company based downtown. The directors of the company, Gregory Rostron and Joe Maisano, interviewed me. Greg was a Swiss-German who had moved to Australia a long time ago. Joe was of Italian descent but born and raised in Australia.

  After the interview, they offered me the position of a computer programmer. I double-checked that my work experience was going to be in programming, and was assured it was. I asked if I would get to code in C++, and they said that C++ was what they generally used. Though I wasn’t going to be paid for this work, I was offered a weekly railway pass.

  Now, I was faced with a great dilemma. On the one hand, I had a full-time job offer from AWP and they were ready to pay me, but there was no growth or intellectual challenge. On the other hand, TTA was offering an unpaid opportunity for just two weeks with no guaranteed prospects, but the work was in programming, my area of focus and ambition. If I chose TTA, I could be back to square one in a couple of weeks, calling companies for work experience. With AWP, I could still be copying and pasting files a year later. 'What’s the worst that can happen?' I asked myself.

  5

  $15 To $250,000

  I reported at the Trading Technology Australia office on Monday. After introducing m
e to the small team of developers, Joe gave me my first assignment and asked me to build a contact management software.

  'A contact management software?' I was a little surprised at this instruction because I thought I was going to work on their financial software.

  'Yes, I need an application to manage my list of prospective and existing customers.'

  He took me to a computer. 'We have VB loaded on this machine.'

  'VB?'

  'Yes. Don’t you know Visual Basic?'

  I had made it clear in the interview that I only knew C++.

  'Umm, I don’t, but I can try and learn.'

  That was that. I sat staring at the screen, not knowing what to do. My computer wasn’t connected to the Internet, which meant I couldn’t access any reference material from the web to guide me. I knew that if I couldn’t code the system, I would be shown the door at the end of two weeks, if not earlier.

  The easy job scene at AWP kept intruding into my thoughts, but I was here now, and had to quickly find a solution. I was already down to my last six hundred dollars. At lunchtime, I went out and bought a book on Visual Basic. Four days later, I showed him the full version of my contact management software.

  'This is good, mate,' Joe said. 'How come you said you didn't know VB?'

  'I didn't really.'

  'And you coded this entire software in four days?'

  'Well, yes.'

  'I'd heard Indians are great programmers . Four days! Amazing.'

  'Thanks, Joe. I still need to make many improvements. It's the first version.'

  'Go for it, mate.'

  He looked at Greg, raised four fingers and said, 'Four days!'

  The following Thursday, they extended my work experience for two more weeks.

  By the third week at TTA, Greg and Joe had gained enough confidence in me to assign me their flagship product called Ringer. Designed for the financial markets, Ringer was a highly complex and sophisticated piece of software that allowed bonds, forex and options traders to buy and sell based on market movements. Working with a small team of developers, my task was software maintenance. Towards the end of my month there, they offered me a permanent part-time job at $15 an hour—twenty hours a week as per my visa conditions.