The Parallel Lines

Recently I had a chance to spend most of my day’s time with some of the most energetic minds and souls of the country at some engineering college. My life was uncertain like a ship without the rudder left alone amidst sea storms in the middle of an ocean at the whim of the waves. But the energy showed by the people around me kept me driving.

After re-orienting my life to some other goal, I came across lots of people of my age making money, travelling around the world and getting everything I deemed of.  I at my own switched off the supply of money to my life and halved it with lots of uncertainty as an additive interest. There were moments which pierced me deep and hard; made me think to push the reverse button of my life. I revolted. It had been a couple of times I had been treading the same path and watching the power struggle between satisfaction and delight.

I think I have blown enough of my trumpet and thrown some personal metaphors around. Story Time…

The Parallel Lines: : Satisfaction and Delight:

I was passing through a road that was under construction. There was a group of workers pushing hard for their daily wages. They were in an abject state of poverty and working in a highly unsafe environment. I ordered tea and sat on the ‘tapri table’ near to them. Suddenly I heard a child’s cry, who was sleeping in a ‘make-shift’ arranged swing near the road roller. His mother threw the basket containing aggregates and cuddled him, but in vain.

10 Minutes later…

I saw one of the male workers rushing to the nearest ice-cream parlor and buying a chocolate bar worth Rs.10/- The child was over the moon. It was ‘Delight’ for him and his parents saw the scene dipped in ‘Satisfaction’. A ten rupee note bought delight and satisfaction and made the parallel lines intersect.

However these things are least evident or applicable in so called ‘corporate’ life we live in. Most of my friends working in some of the leading MNCs crib about money, job location, job profile, job culture and even loneliness.  I used to crib about my job profile and now I crib over money and uncertainty. Parallel Lines.

 But there are some moments when and where these parallel lines intersect. Rare though. Some of them are: a boy reciting his deceased father’s poetry, an old priest offering his first prayers, a young girl making some street child write ABC, a young boy giving his first salary to his mother and lots more around you, with you…!

Lastly, one of my life’s moments when the parallel lines meet is the time when I write something, share and ‘You’ smile at the end after reading it. We live in a weird and wonderful world. Isn’t it?

It’s about to rain. Now listening to a track from 21^st Century Breakdown by GreenDay:

Hey Gloria, are you standing close to the edge?

Look out to the setting sun, the brink of your vision...

Eternal youth is a landscape of a lie

The cracks of my skin can prove, as the years will testify...

Amit Purohit 

The Lone Soldier

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Clearance Ki Kahaani...Balls to 'Sayonara'

Characters:

GET : X (Graduate Engineering Trainee Resigning as Senior Project Executive)

Manager Y (Eating, Doing Nothing and managing GET X)

HR Z (Helpless Rascal @ the Human Resource)

Note: Trying to avoid being harsh

Warning: No resemblance with real world. If you find any, have beer and chill because none gets to bother.

16 Jan 2012

It was the 89^th day of the three month notice period at a company called Lallu & Tappu Ltd (La&Ta). My brain was bleeding as I was the only one around going home instead of going to some MNCs who pay like pigs. And adding pressure to the pumping blood was the Manager Y who was not clearing off my handover dues. Actually speaking, he didn’t know what I was handing over as he never worked till it came to brim.

The HR Z was any other person who was least bothered who was leaving; knowing the reasons might be his dream job that he used to actually do while snoring at 2 pm after the hefty lunch.

I was to leave at 17^th Jan and it was already 4:30 pm. It was getting tougher to nail Manager Y.

He only had to tick on a clearance form in his mail and like any day he wasn’t bothered when it came to work.

10 minutes of Creative Planning by GET X passed by.

To Retaliate Is Human Nature...

Manager Y: So why are you exactly leaving?

GET X: Does it make sense on the 89^th day of my 3 month notice period?

Manager Y (Stunned): What does it mean when you question a query?

GET X: It means I am not interested to entertain the query and the beholder.

Manager Y: Tell me which company are you joining?

GET X: I am getting out of this company business. It adds no value to my thoughts.

Manager Y: The world is small. We will be informed where you are heading.

GET X: Please clear off my dues, just by clicking a simple icon in your mail box.

Manager Y: No, I won’t till you let me know.

Nonsense heated argument follows.

GET X watches the clock. It was 4:50 pm. He knew Manager Y will run to the punching machine at 5:15 pm and drive home. At 5 pm all he wanted the subsidized tea offered at the labor canteen.

He wanted the tick as it was HR Z’s turn tomorrow.

Manager Y (provoking): He will be a Master (professor in derogatory sense) one day and then he thinks he can add value to his thoughts.

GET X (keeping his cool): Sir G, its 4:55 pm. (Actually the clock showed 5 pm). I am going for tea.

Manager Y: Oh! Where I have to tick for clearing your dues?

GET X (thinking prey had come to daddy): Here, over here sir…

Manager Y: Is there any provision for partial clearance?

Manager Y actually didn’t know what he was handling and still he wanted GET X to be trapped.

GET X: Sir G, its 5 pm (Clock actually showing 5:15 pm) we will miss the tea.

Manager Y: Here is the password of my mail box. Get it done.

GET X: (enters the password like a ninja): Click..! Bang you go…!!

Manager Y: Let’s go to tea.

GET X: Its 5:18pm.

Manager Y (Astonished): What?

GET X: So you finally come to know that is the way you get to work…! Good Bye.

Manager Y:  (Now knew the trick) If you wish you can share your personal contact details.

GET X: Good Bye.

17 Jan 2012.

HR Z: Have you ticked all departments in the form?

HR Z never knew what kind of intellectual capital the company had and the least he knew about the loss to company when most of them were leaving the company.

GET X: Yes

HR Z: Get your dues cleared by the Finance department know.

The official time to leave was 5 pm. But as I had received clearance from all departments I could have been relieved earlier. Every one applied Murphy’s Law.

I requested HR Z to relieve me by 3 pm. I asked him to at least hand over my documents against the I-card I had submitted. He said a cold NO.

He did every procedural works at 5 pm. I kicked the door.

17 Feb 2012

I am still waiting for my salary. Manager Y wants me back.

I got my clearance done over a Rs.3/- tea.

I left love and opened the doors of uncertainty in my life…!!!

 Amit Purohit The Lone Soldier

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The So Called Planning Engineer (Sounds Itself Spooky Hah..!!!)

For All the Engineers who plan…

(To be read in a lighter mood)

Sad, but true...! ! !

When I was studying my Electronics textbook I used to deem myself of engineering some stuff which generates current or drives an LED. But they say that truth is stranger than fiction and so it goes. The strangest part of it was the job of a planning engineering I did for a living. I came across the planning part of engineering in one of the most gigantic engineering firms. An engineer who does engineering in the document part of it is what I can best and most fairly coin out of a planning engineer. Putting in this way, a guy who fuels in the flow of things on paper would be better. 

To make out something out of nothing and adding lot of logic part of it is what a planning engineer does. He rolls his stress in the reports and jets in the ever changing list of packing lists with some dubious codes he knows and feels would best fit in. The one who is supposed to know the process and seems to add value out of nothing into it with papers and files is the planning stream of engineering demands. 

The three vital components of this stream are Excel Sheets, Excel Sheets and Excel sheets. The size, gravity and the text keeps on changing like the components of a circuitry but the PCB remains the same: Excel Sheet.

The funnier part of it is the placement of a planning engineer in a firm. A fresh guy from college who neither knows the objective nor the functional part of papers is made to engineer the papyrus deluge. I find them everywhere around. When you hear a guy getting bullied by someone who seems to engineer the things which are actually to be planned by the one who knows only the neonate part of it is undisputedly the planning engineer of the project you are looking at. The best part is the mistakes he does often out of innocence and dodges more bullish behavior. And, when it comes to knowing what actually happened as per plan things would have gone the way they occur. He ropes in serious troubles when the plan fails which is destined to fail. But the fun of the game lies in the clientele’s attitude of sticking to the plan he submits. This in turn gives every one run of their lives as the carrot hung before the rabbit is not to eat but to make it run till he lives.

It may sound a little bit raunchy, but the regular kick he receives makes him reach to his ultimate goal: Resignation. We all know engineers are filled with lots of stuff they are bamboozled with in a more than 1000 day course. And all of the mixed crude actually shells out and leaves him nowhere. It actually kicks chucking out the crammed formulae and graphs. And the thing that kicks more is the process of chucking it out i.e via all the papers he rambles through and makes him more or less an administrative person what we proudly spell as a planning engineer.

One interesting thing that he turns out to be is a perfect answer telling cum excuse making machine. The questions can vary a lot. They swing from the progress part of the project to the profit part of it. Often the men and the material he works with come in the game but none bothers as it is the money and the glittering reports that count. Glittering reports come out of bargaining with the scope of work and money with the so called tactful negotiation with the one who drives the money wagon into it.

The planned death of an engineer in a guy is actually what planning engineer lefts with if he continues till the end of the execution of his so called engineered plan…

Amit Purohit

The Lone Soldier

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GET/PGET The Kaam Wali mode (Humour)

GET/PGET The KaamWali Mode…


(Pun Intended, To be read in a lighter mode, No personal experiences, Mere observations)

      In an organization with more than 40,000 employees and over scores of sub units you may find a diversified set of personalities and diversified ways of executing various jobs coming one’s way. The nature of jobs is so varied that the approach to it needs to be branched out so as to complete it in an engineered way. Diversification helps as well as hurts sometimes. This story is not about praising or condemning a diversified company neither it is to give ‘fundas’ over it. Diversification leads to involvement of people from various disciplines as well as various backgrounds. This leads to inter exchange of tips and tricks of making things move over the roll. Interesting psychologies build up, clash and sometimes converts into procedures (SOPs). In a cluster of some 300 odd people with a mammoth job at hand you can have more than psychologies than the head count. One such interesting psychology or one can say brain pattern we are going to discuss in a lighter vein is the GET/PGET psychology. GET/PGET is basically an abbreviation for the newly joined Graduate/Post Graduate Engineer Trainees.

    He is a new contestant to the cycle. He moves around following all the rules of the company and in the process comes to know how to evade the system and get things done forgetting the rules. He is the one who is authorized to do all the tasks over the phone but not on paper. Hence in the jugglery he never gets credit to the things he does and at the end he gets sarcasm from the top notches saying that the training he received since a year is futile. This in turn created a feeling of vengeance in many of the GETs/PGETs. Some of them run for MBA/M.tech, while others go for a job change. Rest clash day in and out with their respective bosses and keep forwarding mails, applying for online IPOs. The word training is basically an apocryphal for him as he never attains it. Even he does, he gets it on the subjects he had never listened to. Needless to say this lands in waiting for tea breaks, enjoying siesta and carry a face saying he was more interested than the facilitator. In PSUs the scene is more interesting. The fellow life in the classrooms for years never meets his seniors and sees his GM once in a blue moon. The world becomes a circle for him a complete circle where he thinks he is at the same level where he was. The only difference in now and then is the money and the follow ups. Follow ups more or less remain the same but the latter is now from strangers in a stringent way.

      The reader might be frustrated because he came here to read about the kaamwali mode which is still not discussed. A gold medalist from an esteemed university comes at the block. He copies and files everything that comes his way. More or less there are unrealistic miniscule projects in his hand which gets delayed due to reasons he can’t even deem of. Moreover, some of the people around add music to his party and he feels like listening Linkin Park/Metallica in the morning. People, more of situations around him make him enter the so called kaamwali mode. He is made to follow people more than to do his work. And the person he follows hates anyone following him. The more or less of the people he follows feels xenophobic when he is around. Days pass. These days makes him enter the kaamwali mode. And the brain pattern of taking decisions begins resembling to that of a kaamwali. We all are in the same mode but all of us are not at the same levels. Let me elaborate on this.

      The calendar just witnessed the dates of Holi. The holiday for Holi was on Monday. A GET/PGET takes holiday on Saturday packs his bag and drives to Daman to hang out. The gang of GETs promises their respective boses to come back on Tuesday and clear the pending work. They never return on Monday. The scene continues till Thursday. Kaamwali mode activated. This made me think and resemble them to my kaamwali who was fired when she did the same the third time. The levels to this mode increase as the GET/PGETs cruise their journey to their so called training to its zenith. Few days before the completion of training and prior to his stake being confirmed, he outbursts the tsunami of emotions in him. He catches his so called boss he never reports to and increases his adrenaline saying he will be leaving forever. My ailing grandma’s personal maid used to say this when she needed some of her old clothes or increment in her wages. The extreme mode of kaamwali activated…! Sometimes there are technical issues in the office and the boss never knows how to shoot such problems but he knows the one who can shoot it. He just offloads the contract and things get done. The mail around roves with he being in the BCC. This lets him down all the way. . . He goes back to the pathetic accommodation provided by the company and calls the one who he needs to talk daily and can’t help around. They too fight over the phone and worse are the mess when her mother’s call is in the waiting mode at the same nick. He takes the first piece of roti with his ailing mother discussing about the food there. His father inquires about his detoriating health.

      He disconnects the call, lights a cigarette sleeps under the towering sky with stars in his eyes and dreaming what he coveted to be and what he landed in…?! He powers the radio and the song it plays goes like this:

“Papa kehte hai bada naam karega, beta humara aisa kaam karega..!”

He covers his face with the blanket in a way that can stifle him, tries to forget the day and fine tunes his alarm clock.

A day comes in his life when he gets confirmed and a new GET/PGET enters the gang. The kaamwali mode never gets disengaged it gets shifted and the new kid on the block now faces the music. You are in the same mode reading this and trying to shift yourself from your regular monotonous Excel sheets…Isn’t it?!

(Pun Intended, To be read in a lighter mode, No personal experiences, Mere observations)

Amit Purohit The Lone Soldier