Life down memory lane – Part 1

I am feeling sad or to say worse. My last day in one of the longest serving accounts. I have learnt a lot from people whom I have worked with. I worked hard, had fun, was boundless, had met different kinds of people and learnt the art of professionalism here. Above all, I conquered fear and understood the true meaning of accountability.

Even so, I always wanted to compete against human brains and not some lifeless machine that does exactly what I say. Hence, I am not going to talk more about my working patterns here. It’s time to retrospect my life @ DuPont.

I could hardly remember the date, but it was sometime around October that I got transferred to Chennai from Hyderabad, courtesy Subodh Kumar Kallem, my previous RM in Hyderabad. He was a very gentle person and a good manager who completely understood his subordinate needs. I was asked to report to someone whose name I could not remember at the CPG office in Chennai. I did and to my surprise, he asked me “Why are you reporting to me? I didn’t have any prior news on you”. I was taken aback. I told him that the FLCL at Hyd suggested his name. He pointed to a system and asked me to use that as long as I was there. It was the first time ever I used an LCD monitor. I had no work to do for the next 2 months and hence kept attending few trainings and had even started my first novel. I had also skipped many days to office and stayed at home during my bench life.

And one day, there was a call from the RCC head asking for my resume. She also asked me to report to her at the CSC office. Luckily, I was attending a training program on “Cognos Planning” and hence told her that I would report once that training was over. She said “OK”. The training continued for two more days. During an afternoon in the middle of a session, I got a call from an RM in the DuPont project account. He too was working from the same location, CPG. I met him and he introduced himself as Srini. That was the beginning of a valued relationship. He asked me a few questions on Informatica. I could still remember one question “Difference between a Router and a Filter transformation?” With a total of just 3 or 4 questions he inducted me into his team. I was surprised. I did not have a clue on what I was going to work on. He introduced me to a team called Run and Maintain which had two members at that time. I was actually called for the replacement of one of the resources. Her name was Prashanti and she was expecting. The other one was the swanky Venkatesh.

I had my KT going on for a few days, which I found difficult at the start. I slowly picked up. Till date, it was my biggest challenge. It was Production support and I firmly believe that such a project is the mother of all projects.

I did not have a lot of work in the initial months or as long as Prashanti was there. It was one of my lonely periods in Satyam as well. I would come at 9 in the morning by office bus and leave by 6, the time when onsite guys or precisely gals would come online and the actual work would start. During the mornings, I used to browse like hell and had started my first blog. People would slowly come by at around 10 and the buzz would start. I would go for lunch at around 1 lonely and come back at 1 30. I could remember well the PIP and PMPS teams during my initial days. They always looked busy. I hadn’t bonded well with the teams at that time. It was boring and dull. The bus ride too was a long one and by the time I reached home, I would be very tired.

It was time for Prashanti to move out of the company. I believe she was a contract employee. My real struggle started. I had to look after some part of the project with the help of Venkatesh. When I was lonely in the mornings, a guy from some other team named Subramaniam Jeevanandam would come to me and talk about some Zycus loads. It was entirely foreign to me. I had no clue on what he was talking about and would just nod at him.

It was time to shift from CPG to CMS, a newly constructed office, some 5 kms from Perungudi. The CPG had one of the worst work environments. With my experiences in STC, Hyd the likes of CPG had definitely made me uncomfortable. The newly constructed one was like heaven with good facilities. I liked it very much and a spacious work station was allotted for me.

It was the time I was in union with the team and its activities. There were no more strangers at least within the R and M team. With CMS boasting of good facilities, Srini used the opportunity excellently to bring other ETL teams together. I had never seen anyone in my lifetime who took so much effort to bring all teams under one roof so that we worked like one family. On personal front, the team guys would go out frequently. It was always Srini who made sure that the weekends were spent worthily.  The only guy who missed most part of the outings was me. The reason was Sundays. Sundays were special to me because I used to play cricket for most part of that day. I declined a lot of invitations from Srini because of that. But occasionally, I would skip my game and join d team in the ECR outings. There were a lot of memorable outings during that period.

I should also talk about my stint in the R and M project with Venkatesh. Being a production support project, R&M was challenging till I got used to it completely. I used to load some files wrongly and at times Venkatesh would call me and plead to be careful. I tried my best and in spite of that occasional errors happened and the same advice followed. I should also talk more about him here. He is one guy who I think could never live without his mobile phone. Though gradually his dependence on it had decreased, the usage time is still fairly high. Srini used to poke fun at him at every possible opportunity and he was the scape goat for us. We sometimes even drove him mad. But 99% of the time, he was cool and would laugh with us. His love acts were popular among us. All things apart, he was the most dependable guy in the account. He continues to be the same.

Coming to other team members, oh….they were all workaholics. I can remember most of them. Srikanta, Lakshmi, Sasikala, Alka, Anly, Jothi, Raghav, Maadhangi, Bala Bhaskar, Venkatesan Govindan, Vamsi and other team leads. CET was the talk of the ODC, since it was touted as one of the most difficult projects at that time. People would work like hell from 9 to 9. Srini would drop most of us by his car daily.

It was some six months and life was cool without much problems. Venki was in his late 20’s and it was marriage time. He gotta get smart and look good. He was suggested branded apparel in the first cause and he continues well with that these days. The second cause was more fun. It was PS time. Beer thrice a week at PS made venky a thick guy. From bones to flesh in quick time. I wondered how beer could transform someone so quickly. But the credit should go to other items as well at the PS. Groundnuts, imported CASHEW, supremely tasty salads and BINGO.

I shall write down the second part of this RETROSPECTION soon.