Alvida to people i love

And finally my last day at this project, GE Oil&Gas , at TCS. This was the only project that I was associated with during my almost 3 year long tenure at TCS. The association was long and beautiful, full of exciting days and end less fun. The journey started on 20th November 2006 and today of 30th April 2009, it is going to halt. In this story, I will write names because I want this one to be a transcript of my amazing memories that are attached to this place. I will never forget few things, things like:

20th November: for that being the first day of mine in the project.
Jan 2007- May 2007: for that being the time when I learnt most of the things. Infact that was tougher than my engineering studies at college, but then it was worth it.
New Building, 4E 43: for it being my first working cubicle.
May 2007: for Saikat being released from RTS and Niraj becoming the next module Lead.
June 2007- October 2007: for that being the 2nd most difficult times for me in project. Infinite number of issues, No Saikat, Suyash on Battle with management, Niraj was a functional resource, Anwesha and Abhishek were babies in project. For that being the time when I worked like hell. For that being an amazing learning experience in terms of Client management. For that being the time when I got introduced to Federico and Antonio.
New Building, 4W 59: My 2nd cubicle. Same chair.
November 2007: for that being the time when I absconded from office for the first time for CAT preparations.
December 2007: for that being the time when I was made module leader on federico’s request.
Jan 2008- April 2008: for that being the toughest, toughest to its maximum level, time in my career. Infinite to the power n issues. 14 hours was the average time that I spent in office. Won most number of appreciations. Fede started trusting me. And all this was because I did not crack any b-school exam so I had nothing else to do.
May 2008- October 2008: for that being the transition time when I started transferring work to Anwesha and Abhishek to fulfill my onsite dreams. Twice we didn’t get the OTM project, so 2 missed onsite opportunities.
November 2008: Absconding again from office for CAT. This time they all knew it.
Dec 2008 – Mar 2009: for that being the time when most of time in office was dedicated to studies GK studies and GD/PI preparations. And off course for being the first time when I was all set to go onsite for GECARS project.
April 2009: for that being the last month at work when I felt most liberated. This time around onsite news was not affecting much. I liked everyone around.
Fun@work: for being another team that I led with amazing people in the team. Organized numerous fun sessions at canteen and 2 huge parties at Nicco Super Bowl. I will miss writing those invitation mails.

And now some people:

Ramesh Kumar Kollana: for taking me in this project and trusting me. Helping me all these days. And being a leader to be looked upon.
Sayarnil Banerjee: for being my first guide, for teaching me SSP5, for letting me use his computer when I needed.
Saikat Kumar Das: for him being my first module leader and teaching me the things corporate way, in fact teaching me things in a tougher way. I respect him for all that he has done to me, but I never want a boss like him for myself in future 
Madhumita Ray: for teaching me what not to do at work. For teaching me how to say no to your boss and much more.
Niraj Kumar: for being my second module leader. For him being a functional resource.
Suyash Srivastava: for lots of reasons and to be simply said for just being awesome.
Ankit Sharma: for being the best support all through these days. Even now. For his motivational talks and caring attitude. For being my party buddy. For lots of other things that can not be mentioned here.
Arunava Das Choudhury: for being an ideal senior in project. No attitude. Always a helping hand. Amazing individual.
Debasis Mohanty: for him being the first person whom I know who visited china for a TCS project. For him being a quite person still rocking in parties. For him being a person who was always with us whenever we went out for weekday parties.
Anwesha Bhattacharya: for he being my cubicle mate all through these days. Sweet, caring, no attitude. She was one who always made me feel that I was worth. She is one amazing friend.
Rohit Tirkey: for being my college mate as well as my project mate. Once again a raely party guy.
Harry Zhang: for being the person whom I trusted for ant technical thing and for taking care of things which even I could not understand at times. For him being a china team mate who created trust in the whole china team.
Abhishek Guha: for being my technical support when I needed him the most. Cool headed and soft spoken.
Wasim Alam: for him being the youngest member of sourcing team. Always charged up and kicking. Will go places.
Tushar Pandey: for saving my ass for all those SSP5 issues. At times he came up with things I did not understand but I still trusted him.
Niky: for being a smart talkative girl with whom I share a good range of bandwidth. For being complex to understand at times but a perfect to make fun of at suyash’s cubicle. Will miss her drawer which remains full of chocolates.
Indranil datta: for him being one of those senior members of the project with whom I shared a great relationship. Great speaker and motivation leader. Always supported me during my CAT journey.
Durlabh Mukherjee: for being my college senior and my PL. a true party guy. He initiated most of the fun initiatives and rocked at parties also.
Makrand Tipre: for teaching me how to remain cool in tough times. For teaching me a bit of AP and for being my cubicle neighbor for sometime. His thoughts remain as amazing as he was.
Bikram Dasgupta: for him being my finance counterpart of mine and my competition. Always criticized sourcing and its people when I did the same for finance. Good at heart. Charming personality. I want him to get married, lets see.
Arindam Basu: for him being one of those people who always had a joke to crack, mostly about clients. His sensible talks were real sensible.
Navin Kayan: for him being a person who always had the latest news about TCS and who always interfered my privacy in cubicle by peeking into my computer at all the odd times.
Dipankar Sen: for him being Dipankar Sen. a replica of BB Paul from BIT.
Pallab Dasgupta, Subrata Kundu and Sourav Bose: for being the most closely nit group of the project. For even going to the toilet together.
Subrata Kundu: for being my GB project partner and making sure that it got completed. For always asking for SIPs and Proactive steps for last month when he knew that nothing like that happens in real.
Manish Saurav: for him being the PL of the project in which I was supposed to visit onsite. For hi being the most tortured TCS employee at onsite. For him being a college senior of mine and for him being a chill party.
Pushan Bagchi: for his Satyam stories, “What I believe” statements in meetings (which were like 5 minutes long, without a pause) and ever lasting commitment to JJ and PII users, John is the name I guess.
Debashree, Arun: for being exceptionally supportive during F@W activities and for being good friends. And ya Debashree is the BPO girl, phone always on.
Subhajit Bhattacharjee: for him being the most creative creature on earth making all the official websites in red, orange, yellow and other charismatic colors.
Nishad: for him being the person who maintained the Night Cab Drop excel for 2 years and finally getting released and torturing people around.
Amruta Rao: for her being the one of those RTS people from Mumbai whom I like. She is a more of a friend now than a team mate.
Federico Andres Marini: for being an awesome client IM. Supporting me always and trusting me for whatever I did. At times even moving my code to production without testing them. For being a source of inspiration and for always keeping me on my toes. Great leader and great individual.
Antonio Piseci: for him being that person who loved me and always appreciated my efforts, however small they were. At times he was irritating also but he is just Perfect!!!. And yes I will miss hi “Any News”.
Deborah Tombini: Never worked with her but even then I will remember her for being the nightmare for all the finance guys especially Manish.
Roberta Incerpi: She just loves Suyash.

I must have missed few names and few occasions but then it’s just too much of writing for today. One this is for sure, this project and its people were great, all of them. I had great time working with then. Memories will last for long…..

I hate friend's friend

This was not the first time that I was traveling to Ranchi in an early morning Shatabdi, but like any other time, I was excited. With every bought ticket and every boarding on train or flight, the only thing that I think is that who would be my co-passenger. In long journeys, this thought becomes very important for me because I am not one of those who like reading novels and not also one of those who can remain in mute mode for more than 48 hours. As any other single ready to mingle guy, I always wished that I may end up getting a smart, intelligent and beautiful young lady (Boy!!! don’t laugh, I know few of them who are pretty and intelligent) as my co-passenger and on this day also the wish was same. I booked a chauffer driven Civic to drop me at Howrah station in time. The train was standing at platform 10. My legs were pretty excited to reach the seat and I started walking towards my coach. Ok so there I was. My name was correctly printed against seat no. 52. Being a chair car, 52 was the middle seat in the 3 seater side so this time the probability of having a dream co-passenger was higher, 100% more than same figure had I got the window seat. And then the search began as to who was sitting at seat 51 and 53. Wuff!! What day is today. On 51, Ms ABC, F 22 and on 53, Ms XYZ, F 23 and of course on 52, me, Mr Demanding, M 24. So it was kind of my day. I was more than happy. In fact elated. I went directly to the washroom, prepared myself for the occasion and started walking towards my seat. Man, that was more than what I expected. Untill I was at my seat, there were two young ladies sitting besides me, one at each side. But when I was there on my seat, I had two young, beautiful and smart ladies sitting on either side of mine (intelligence was yet to be checked, but with the looks they had, you would be mad if you are still asking for intelligence). The train took off and so did our chit chat. Both of them were very friendly. One of them was working in an IT Co. while the other one was a student at one of the most famous fashion designing institutes of India. Leaving these credentials apart also, both of them were intelligent. Those were 6 hours of complete fun. We talked on a lot of things. We even shared our numbers with a promise to meet again in kolkata when they are back in a week. In fact one of them almost proposed me. You know the day was real special. We all parted at Ranchi station with a sweet train journey memory in our heads.

Now this was some story. You know these kinds of stories never ever ever happen to me. They never ever happen to you. They at times or never happen to your close. But this always happens to your friend’s friend whom you don’t know. Just ponder over and you will get several instances when your friend had cited such stories saying that you know, one of my friend’s friend, I don’t know him, had this kind of an adventure when he was going to Goa or my friend’s friend met Mukesh Ambani at a Delhi Metro station or my friend’s friend almost killed a lion (hehe, I am sorry for this one, but people cite stories of similar heroic caliber). The point is that all this dream things never happen to you in real but certainly happen, almost everytime, to your friend’s friend (you can extend this pointer to any number counts).

By the way, before I close I must say what happened in my story. I reached Howrah in an Ambassador (Non AC, It was not a taxi, even then it was expensive). Mine was a window seat. And the seat besides me was vacant. The coach was quite noisy but even then I slept all through the journey. And I kept on cursing all my friend’s friend for having such great experiences in their lives.

Shubho Nobo Borsho

A new year, once again. One more of those days which we just celebrate because all the others around us are doing the same. I am neither a Bengali nor do I understand the Bengali culture very much. Robindro Sangeet still remains alien to me. I am yet to understand as to why they pronounce Laxhman as Lakhhan in Bengali. The concept of reading all ‘a’ as ‘o’ is still a mystery. And above all, why do they write my name as Sourav even when I clearly tell them that it is Saurabh and not Sourav as in Sourav Ganguly. But still, I know that today is Bengali New Year. So “Shobho Nobo Borsho” (I hope I maintained the accent well). And all the credit for making me aware of this special day goes to my closest office neighbour who is my cubicle mate and who is one complete Bengali Girl. When I first met her, her Hindi was pathetic. Two years and she has improved a lot. But she still processes Hindi in the same way as she used to do in past. Listen a Hindi word, translate it to Bengali, Prepare the answer in Bengali, Translate it to Hindi and then speak. Generally this process works well. But at the times of crisis when she is under pressure, she mixes it all up. It’s ok. Not a big deal. She is the one who suggested that the Project’s Mid Summer Party should be called “Nobo Borsho Party”. Nothing bad with that name, but come on, we were thinking the names on the lines of “The Bacardi Blast”, “The Summer Splash” etc and she had this to give us. She is one sweet Bengali girl. Anyways the point here is not sketch the picture of a complete Bengali girl but to understand the importance of this new year.
I don’t want this day to pass as just one more new year day. I don’t want this day to be one more resolution day where I promise something to myself and forget it the same day. I don’t want this day to be one more day when I sleep all morning and go out in the evening for a dinner. I want this day to be a day of change. I want this day to be a day of construction and reconstruction. I want this day to be a day of hope. I know that writing a few fancy lines is not a big deal and words like hope, justice etc always fall in place. But my ‘Hope’ is different from the ‘Hope’ that appears in Neta’s speech. My hope is a hope that every common Indian holds that one day I will make my family proud, my friends proud and my country proud. Hope that one day I will be in a position to look beyond my own needs and will fulfil the needs of my family, my society and my people. This hope in itself requires me to develop a lot of courage and strength, and I promise to myself today that I will do it all, whatever it takes, to build myself so that one day all my current hopes turn into reality and I start building newer and bigger hopes.

The ROI factor

Why the youth is not attracted towards politics? Why we always talk about young leaders and end up getting the same old parliament with an average age of 65+? Why the youth participate in the internet protests against terrorist attacks but don’t even come out to vote? Why do we always tend to complain but never care to participate? The simple answer to all these questions is the famous economic jargon called ROI – Return on Investment.
Life of a young aspiring person is mostly driven by this three letter abbreviation called ROI. Almost every action that he performs is first evaluated for its potential ROI. Let us start the analysis with career choices. When we were given an option to choose between science, commerce and arts while going in standard 11th, most of us went for science as the prospects and career opportunities looked better. Yes the ROI at science was better. When we passed 12th and we were asked to choose from engineering, medical or science graduation. Here again we all went to for engineering because medical was hell lot of study and science graduation rarely offered an amazing job. Yes the ROI at engineering was better. I passed my engineering and became IT professional; some of my friends passed medical and became doctors; few others completed graduation in science, arts and commerce and went for jobs. Few years down the line, having worked in corporate India, I am again making a choice, to upgrade myself by doing MBA. I will take loan rather huge loan to sponsor my education. But I am hopeful that the economic situation will improve and I will get a good job. I hope the ROI at MBA remains good. So it total 18 years of formal education and I land up in a situation where I can afford to support my family and lead a happy life. The ROI is education is descent.

Let us now take it other way round. I am person who likes politics very much. I follow what is going on in the country. And thus always tend to think as to what is the ROI of Politics. Education till graduation is a must so I could not plan to participate in politics till then. Taking a hypothetical situation here that I join politics now. ‘Joining’ itself is very vague term here if you are not from a political dynasty. So by joining, I mean that I sign for the primary membership of a party. I will start my work in a small village in Uttar Pradesh. UP because it’s the only place where you can learn politics. I will work for some 5 to six years and then I would be in a position to fight the gram panchayat elections. If things go well, I will be elected. Then 5 more years there and after a huge lobbying I may end up getting an MLA ticket. I may also win. I’ll then start building my image in the party politics and state arena. I may end up getting a MP ticket and win the elections. So finally at the age of some 40+, I will be in parliament. But this situation is as hypothetical as my joining the politics. And having said all that, we also need to keep in mind that before you win any election, its hell lot of investment with no assurance of returns. It’s a situation where you invest some 15-20 years of your life, a lot of money and you might end up becoming just a follower. Take the numbers into consideration and the situation is more horrifying. Just 572 seats in LS (forget RS), the nut seems to be very tough to crack. The ROI figure looks bad, pretty bad.

PS: I am apologetic to you all who intend to join politics for being so pessimistic, but then that is what I feel.

All Men are Dog..

I will start this one off with a note for all the readers. I am neither an anti feminist nor a male chauvinist (I have deliberately removed the third word of this adjective ‘PIG’ as it might go against the elections commissions’ election code of conduct and I don’t want to get booked under NSA). Day before yesterday, I was hanging out with my friends and during the normal course of talk something came up which kind of offended me. One of my very good friends who happens to be a girl came up with one of the most famous feminist adjective for men: ‘All men are dogs’. Even I agreed to it a bit but I was completely against the generalization. There is an exception to almost all the rule in this world and here in this case the volume of exception is larger than the volume of rule itself. Realizing that out of the five of us sitting there three fall in that dog class, she clarified that you guys are not included in that category so don’t take it personally. That was soothing but not healing. I thought a bit and went off to sleep.
The next day we were at Costa café. This time we were four of us. One of the male parties was missing. So the ground was pretty even. Two from the dog class and two from the dog owner class. And this time something came up which was healing, which was so cool that I (any male) started loving to be called a dog. The phrase ‘All men are dogs’ is in itself a complement. After all dogs is the most loyal mammal on this planet. A dog never cares if you are black or white, if you are beautiful or ugly, if you are hindu or muslim. What it really cares is your well being, your safety, your happiness. The dog's visual system is engineered to serve the purposes of a hunter. They have amazing hearing and smelling abilities. Dogs exhibit social intelligence uncommon in other animal class. They take orders, learn things and execute it perfectly. They have been helping police and bomb disposal squads all across the globe saving thousands live every year.
Dog’s fidelity remains unquestioned. And when women convey this same message by saying ‘All men are dogs’, we men get furious. Change yourself guys. Don’t feel offended, take it as a complement. Your female counterpart is actually congratulating you when she says, ‘you are such a dog’. So guys be proud and be a dog.

The Love-Handle

Life becomes lethargic especially when you are working in an IT company and your tummy is growing leaps and bounds. Yes you got it right; I am going through a similar phase. My tummy growth is sinusoidal in nature. While I was in school, I was chubby (I don’t prefer to be called fat). Six packs or for that matter eight packs were not in fashion then, so life was not that tough. I move to college and then the mess food played its role. I lost almost 20% weight and then was in a position to call myself an owner of athletic body. Food was not the only thing to blame. I always kept myself busy in a lot of extra curriculars and sports, thus ended up getting a good body. Once I came out of college, the sinusoid started taking an upward trend. Two and a half years at TCS and I can again boast of having a well rounded tummy. I know the obesity is bad for health but then I am yet to reach that stage (I am yet to become a hamburger eating couch potato American). But still it feels sad at times that I have a tummy and I can not do much to get rid of it.
The emotion to get rid of this tummy was always there but no actions were taken even in this regard. But suddenly something happened and I started feeling proud of my prized possession. A friend of mine came out with a term (Not his invention but discovery for sure) to define the side lobes of this apple shaped structure and the term was LOVE-HANDLE.
A thorough analysis of this term and proposed benefits of this so called love-handle gave us a whole new angle to take our tummies as a boon rather than a bane. love-handle signifies that not only your are earning good but also are busy with your work. At this point of recession when people are losing job and those who are not losing are afraid that they might lose it soon as they do not have any work, this is one great advantage. Besides this the love-handle give you (read your partner) a great grip on you when you are doing some stuff together (don’t shy, you know what I am saying. Yes when you are walking together). I am falling short of space; else I would have written a lot more about the advantages of owning a love-handle.
So guys, if you have tummy, be proud. Boast. Show it off. Make those six packers jealous of the jewel that you own. You lead and the world will follow you.