In Pursuit of Biking

Let me start with an exposure of my lesser known side as opposed to a Technology enabler and KT planner. Like any actor who would have otherwise become a doctor or a collector or a philanthropist, I also had an aspiration as a kid. I wanted to become a truck driver. Yes, you read it right not a doctor/collector/lawyer or all three at the same time. I wanted to keep travelling the length and breadth of the country and wanted someone to pay for my trips. Which other profession would offer that other than a lorry driver? I also feel an above average connection with automobiles than most of the commuters. I firmly believe that it’s just not a way to go from point A to point B.  I feel like I communicate with my vehicle every time I step on the gas pedal.

Before you try to figure out a good name for this mania, let me get on to the subject of this article. As we all would appreciate that “a contended human being” is a myth since the wants keep increasing when one gets fulfilled, my love for automobile matured (rather reversed!!!) towards 2 wheelers. I used to be a contended man with my Cheetah (Mahindra XUV) and few thousand KM on the highways. It all started when I read an article that one can burn more calories just by riding a bike than a car (about 400 calories per hour!!! WoW!!!) Which seemed to be better any day than walking endlessly on a treadmill. And there were added advantages like visiting more places, wind in the hair, sweet smell of highway breeze and of course a reason to escape from monotony (!!!)

Like every other Americanized Indian software professional I started my search with the Harleys. I began making my visits to the Harley showroom in Chennai. The very sight of the bike brought chills to my spine, like they say in all the tamil movies… “Butterflies fluttering in the stomach”; every time I started a Harley, it was A.R Rahman’s music to my ears. Eventually I took a liking to a model named Super Low just because of the beat and the seating posture. Ok I lied… it was the only affordable air-cooled model with a decent seating posture. The moment when I was about to make a final pitch to my wife disaster struck. Harley discontinued that model and were going to launch an upgrade.

Months passed and one fine day Modi Ji came in my dream with a stick in hand and reminded me “Be Indian, Buy Indian”. Suddenly there was an enlightenment, how did I ever miss the only second longest running company in India after the Indian railways, The Royal Enfield. I went for a test ride and it had the best of both worlds, optimum pick-up, a classic beat and great looks. After a short ordeal with Indian customer service and some escalations (Thanks to TWE) I finally got my brown horse.

A biker was born!!! With an Indian legacy and a Royal tag… I did the first thing neo Indians would do. Yes, you guessed it right, forced my wife to take a few pics and posted in Facebook. A milestone reached; with whopping 50+ likes… an achievement at least for me (I wonder how much people would pay to get 200+ likes). I am slowly crawling along with my new born baby bike into biker hood.  Well it’s another 500 KMs of crawling and 2000 KMs of slow walking before it can run on the highways and fly high in the mountains!!

Catch you all soon with more Facebook achievements and milestones…

 

Corporate Virus

My vocabulary has grown quite a bit since I became part of the corporate workforce, off course not literally. I often feel myself infected by the corporate virus on especially in instances when I hear myself telling the waitor at the restaurant, “Can you please fast-track the Chilli Chicken? I have a movie (substitute call/meeting) to get into.” I have become like those teenagers saying “As if!” and “I was like… (fill anything, ‘like’ is used as a universal substitute for anything) using standard phrases in every possible instance. Is this a Boon or a Bane? I often wonder at these over used group of words that can take any form or shape and can fit seamlessly in to any discussion.

“At the end of the day what matters is if you have made your point”, my friend says. Fair enough but isn’t it enough to just say “What matters is if you have made your point?” This disease has corrupted everybody. This morning, my wife was complaining about some domestic issues. I told her to set up some time later on to sort out the issues. She gave me a dirty look. How else do I say “Please get lost for now, I am busy” in a nice diplomatic way. I guess she read between the lines.

The downside of being diplomatic & politically right is that you are reduced to those 57 (or so, I don’t know) phrases. It is slightly amazing that you are able to convey everything using just these. Every industry has its clichés. Watch TV. See how they go on about the chemistry between the lead pair (why not biology or algebra?) and how that particular movie is really different. And we’re supposed to stay tuned to such nonsense till they get right back. How honest and considerate would it be to say “Please feel free to take a toilet break or grab a snack, it is just going to be toilet cleaning commercials, the program will resume in exactly 4 minutes.”

It would be akin to a manager saying “Please feel free to dial in and doze off. You are totally unnecessary to this call and there is nothing that you can use from it. We would generally be summarizing and re-summarizing each other, but we need the minimum quorum as per policy 23: Important & Irrelevant call attendance policy”

Basically it is a matter of being nice, isn’t it? But this daily dose of clichés is taking its toll. I can’t seem to speak like regular people. When I do make a conscious attempt to steer away from these clichés I get stuck groping for words. It shouldn’t be that difficult, it’s not rocket science! When I do say something that is cliché-free it somehow doesn’t seem professional, it feels like facebook comments. The downside is that I can never write a book that will sell. The upside is I have bright prospects in climbing up the corporate ladder. I could write all those snazzy company press releases and make impressive townhall speeches. Thinking out aloud, I might actually enjoy all the importance. At 10 thousand feet isn’t that what matters especially when I am flying business class.

My corporate learning: Take a holistic view. Do not reinvent the wheel. Touch base with your inner self and if possible with managers over tea & coffee. If you have concerns, take it offline and forget about it. The bottom-line is that there’s no substitute for hard work or good PR/networking (not CCNA). The top-line is well above the bottom-line and is critical too. Always revert (please don’t revert back) on time and remember to attach attachments. Diplomacy is the most valued skill at this moment in time (not now, but at this moment in time). Never predict delays in work. Claim lack of bandwidth but offer to still take it up and go all out to complete it. You can always blame downtime, system issues, server problems or Japan’s Tsunami later on. Write plenty of e-mails. They’ll never be collected and published as “The collected letters of one of the resources to his manager” but it reminds people that you’re around and active (at what? doesn’t matter). Be nice to HR but don’t expect the same in return. As part of the same paragraph, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of sustained effort and a paradigm shift from time to time to help build synergies and collaborate seamlessly.

Like all disclaimers this comes at the end. The entire content of this article is fictitious and however closely it resembles the actual scenario it is all purely imaginary.

Bulls Eye in the Dark

Explaining my job to friends is extremely different. They seldom understand. Not that it is nuclear physics (Rocket science has been over-used enough). It is just that it is hard for them to imagine this as work. Work it is and bloody hard work.

I am a mobilizer in AO mobilization Team (AO – Automobile Outsourcing), I make things happen. This ain’t no tagline for shoes. This is my job.

I am the tracker in the team. I track everything – servers, laptops, cables, paper clips, e-mails, people, their coffee breaks, meetings, minutes of meetings, follow-up of minutes of meetings, issues, non-issues & whatever else that can be plunked in an excel sheet. The other day while driving to office I caught myself tracking something I don’t remember now (I should have saved it in an excel file & set a reminder in outlook). It is addictive. I’ve got the Tracker’s urge, an occupational hazard like tennis elbow. So that’s me.

Then there are my fellow mobilizers in the team who also track. If you think tracking is all we do then you’re wrong. We also review, follow-up, co-ordinate and facilitate things. I told you it was hard work. We are the unglamorous heroes – the production managers & casting managers, the closing credits at the end of the movie (right at the end, after “cute dog in the street” and “Shocked old lady”) that no one cares to read.

We have had our times. There was Zoom, one of our path-breaking projects which showed the way for mobilizers to come. It all started one fine Sunday morning at the fish market off Marina beach where our man Billa was out shopping for some organic fish. Billa is one of our top men; he spoke in townhalls, sent important press releases and had a secretary to check mails. He was one of those really important men; you couldn’t find a space on his calendar if you wanted to. Billa happened to meet Padayappa, granite king, business bigwig and popular philanthropist of Chennai. Billa knew a catch when he saw one. He helped Padayappa select the best Seer & Pomfret, cracked some cool fishy jokes and in no time had clinched a whale of a deal. We were to maintain his entire fleet of automobiles – an S-class Mercedes, 5 Skoda Lauras, 3 Maruti swifts, 4 first generation Ambassadors and 2 Hero cycles.

The news travelled like fire and by Monday Sivaji our boss (manager) was already ramping up resources for the project now codenamed “Zoom”. We were an excited lot. We had never worked with a Mercedes before and we couldn’t wait to start. The mailers were out for the best mechanics in town. Raja Bolt was going to be the unit head. He was the experienced veteran in the company. He had been a lorry driver for 5 years, an auto (rickshaw) driver for 6 and had spent the last 5 years as a mechanic. He had won auto races (riskier than formula 1), participated in all lorry strikes and knew by heart all major accident zones on OMR & ECR. Suffice to say he was the in-house SME. We had not inked the deal yet but Raja was already demanding a complete garage with the works – a Mercedes test engine, hydraulic car lift, tool kits, air pump, paint guns , a next-door tea shop and most importantly steel wrenches. The list was endless. Raja was a stickler for authenticity. We were frenetically at work – requesting quotes, creating purchase orders, ordering, re-ordering and generally being on “top of” everything. We had to make a master tracker to track all the trackers that were going around. It was fast and furious. My dreams were 2 dimensional, in rows and columns. Sivaji our boss was relentless. He wanted us to “fast-track” everything. Our overseas vendors couldn’t handle the heat and we couldn’t wait for shipping and clearances. We even ventured into unexplored territory, did some research and recommended the local Pudupet vendors only to be reminded that they weren’t our preferred ones. So wait we did.

Within a month we had most of what Raja had asked for but we hadn’t heard from Padayappa. The unit mechanics sat on benches drinking tea. We checked our mails, updated our trackers and had conference calls every day to discuss the progress.

The bombshell arrived in a mail. We had won the deal to maintain the battered legacy Ambassador cars. We had lost the other cars. We couldn’t believe it. We learnt later that Infopiss and Bye Bye consultancy services won the remaining cars because they were lower cost. Satyameva won the cycles. Bah! They’ll probably get caught up in some corporate governance scandal and people will know then.

Our state of the art workshop with a Mercedes test engine and steel wrenches was waiting for some old obsolete Ambassadors. What a pity. We could have done with a bucket of water and a few rags for there was little else we could do other than wash the things.

We offered to spruce up one of the old Ambassadors with the new Mercedes engine and come up with a one of a kind signature vintage car. But our client would have none of it. We were stuck with the Mercedes engine.

Anyways this was a crisis and it called for a conference call. We set up a damage control call with the unit only to find out that Raja had bolted. This was Double Jeopardy, Armageddon, 2012, The Day after Tomorrow. Raja had moved to greener pastures. In his place was Puncture Pandi, the new unit head. Puncture Pandi dismissed everything we had set up so far, everything except the tea shop. He couldn’t believe we had got steel wrenches.

“Steel wrenches! It is outrageous. I need super-light alloy ones, immediately.”

We scampered back to our seats and got back to work. We had all those requests to be raised, forms to be filled, approvals to be sought, mails to be exchanged, delays and out-of-offices to wait through. Whew! If mobilizing is hard, try re-mobilizing.

It took another month to set up the super-light alloy wrenches but we were finally ready to hand over. It was such a proud occasion when we finally handed over our long months of toil to the unit. It seemed so improbable when I looked back then. We were sharpshooting in the dark. True, we missed a few times. But we’re wiser for it. Next time around we’re not buying anything without a return option.

The Mercedes engine sits in our lobby now; Expensive Engineering like Expensive Art we like to say.

Adventure eating

One of the best meals I ever had was not in a fine-dining, prior reservation required although empty, soft-lighted, wet towel offering, complementary (stomach filler) drink providing, heartlessly priced, baby portions garnished with a parsley sprig kind of place. It was on a dirty little mud-track on the way to Goa.

My mom, dad, brother and I had set out with my cousins and a few aunts and uncles on a family trip to Goa in our cars. It was unplanned, unarranged and totally spontaneous. We had set out at 7 am after having breakfast and in an attempt to cover maximum distance before dark had sped past all hotels, fast-food joints and tea stalls. It was 3 pm in the afternoon and we were in a sleepy little village along the Arabian coast with only one hotel which was closed for the day. We were absolutely ravenous. We strolled through the village market and found some fresh crabs and we decided there that we would cook our own meal. We bought crabs, rice, oil, some spices, a large wok and a vessel and hopped back into our cars. A few miles ahead we stopped at a small bridge where a slow little river joined the sea. We collected pieces of wood, arranged some medium sized rocks to make a stove, placed the wood inside the stove, added a little petrol and finally managed to build a fire. The women then set about cooking the meal while we played along the river bank. We sat down half an hour later to a meal of spicy red crab curry and hot steamed rice. It was the most delicious, heavenly meal I’ve had. I am sure my mom has made better, more perfect crab curries but somehow this crab curry sticks in mind. I don’t know if it was the setting - gurgling water, salty sea breeze and slow setting sun or the company – a famished but happy and wound up group of kids and adults or just plain hunger. But I’ll remember this crab curry for a long time.

The funniest meal I’ve had is courtesy my wife. As newly weds in a new town (Bangalore), we were trying to catch up with all our old friends there. We decided to invite them all for lunch at our place. My wife was a greenhorn at cooking but an ambitious one having just started to cook on a regular basis. The menu for the day was Chicken biryani, hard boiled eggs, Vegetable biryani, Raita, Carrot Halwa and Aloo jeera. Frantic calls were made from Bangalore to Chennai and back as she clarified doubts with her mother and grandma on the exact scientific procedure of boiling eggs. Time was ticking and only Carrot Halwa was ready. We were still mid-way through the biryani when our friends arrived. I tried to distract them by offering some Tropicana juice and my views on the global financial crisis. But they were more interested in the drama unfolding in the kitchen. We toiled on amid their catcalls. It was 3 pm when we sat for lunch. The chicken biryani looked like bisibele bath and the eggs were deformed and out of shape. Our usually greedy friends refused a second helping. But the Carrot Halwa was top-notch. It really was.

I have my favourite restaurants but the best food is almost always in some small little-known place. I had hot steaming momos and sweet tea in a tiny shack in Gangtok and those were some of the best momos I’ve had so far. And then there is this little roadside place in Besant Nagar which makes these amazingly creamy rich kulfis and great tasting paans. Most of these big restaurants and hotels have too much technology to have to make anything fresh. Boutique hotels and specialty cuisine restaurants process and package tastes into standard, un-distinguishable dishes. To taste really good food, step outside and seek out these little known gems. Be adventurous and you shall be rewarded!

Now and Then

I never really liked going to school. I hated waking up in the mornings. The thought of sitting through those long hours of “Fundamental rights and duties” & “Tropical Grasslands” were enough to send me into a coma. I dreaded being pulled up for not answering a question in class. I was a pretty timid kid.

I am still a pretty timid Team lead. I hate Monday mornings. I start moping Sunday evenings and slowly brace myself for the week ahead. The single crucial decision that I make every morning – Work from home or Work? It’s a complex multi-variate analysis that my mind does everyday, my brain grapples with numerous conflicting factors and tries to churn out the most optimum decision – Is my manager coming in today? How many days have I already worked from home this week? Are my teammates going to office today? Do I have presentations/calls today? What do I fancy having for lunch today? In school it was a lot simpler – either fever or stomach ache.

There’s my outlook calendar, my very own little school bell. It warns me of the impending “Process improvement session” and “Budget reconciliation call” (today’s Tropical Grasslands) 15 minutes in advance. I grit my teeth, pop in a mild sedative and bravely forge ahead for the session. Each meeting, each session is a wonderfully meditative experience. Its amazing that we can say something like “It’s important to standardize and benchmark the process in order to effectively leverage information and build synergies” in almost any meeting and get away with it. My geography teacher wasn’t so liberal. She once whacked me with a foot-ruler for making a wild guess about where Digboi was. I still don’t know for sure where it is.

For all the freedom I miss the easy, friendly ways of olden days. Last month I suddenly lost access to the server and somehow logged myself out & I couldn’t log back into the server. I needed help and fast. I called the IVR and punched the Fibonacci series of numbers all through the morning before I reached a human being. I gratefully blurted out my problem only to be told to raise a ticket. Catch-22! I need my system to be set right for me to raise a ticket that my system is not working. Finally it took 4 whole days before I could grab somebody’s attention and then a couple of hours for them to set it right. There are times when I wish I could just run over to the corner store and get an excel upgrade or borrow a mouse from my cube-mate. But you can’t have everything, can you?

At least my appraisal is a lot less discriminatory than my progress report and a lot less embarrassing; I don’t have to show it to my dad – can’t imagine that one!