Many miles later....

Valentine's day 14 Feb 2005

Was etched among those first wins while in a firangi land where every living being thought that the entire South Indian hemisphere was no more than Madras. Well, being a Madarasi has quite a number of serious merits. I fondly remember my Class VI geography classes now!

Anyhow, on a day which was religiously marked for celebration in one form or the other, I walked into Wipro Spectramind to make a deal. The bustling roads, waves and waves of people and animals alike and the seemingly never ending lines of chaotic motorization all making way to reach one destination or the other was a sight to observe. 'Packed' as saleable as possible I was pondering over how best to make me look the way I needed myself to be looked at.

Contrary to what I thought, Wipro was a cakewalk and that made me more restless and less at ease. I had never expected the chemistry of people analysis to be as easy as it was this. Less than 25 minutes into the interview I was offered a bunch of menacing texted papers intending to ink my loyalty to the organization and detail a date on which I would become 'operational & productive.'

Easy..........you'll hear many many more such terms that would easily sound straight out of Apollo 13. Except here, even Jim Lovell wouldnt have fathomed the depth of these 'strategic' words.
Welcome to the world of Business Process Outsourcing!

Having planted my signatorial identity on the papers, I left Wipro with a deal. A deal to become a part of their Operations. A deal which I surely knew was not cut out for me. Nevertheless, this was a victory of sorts, many sorts I must say.

Miles and Miles away

When Chairman Mao remarked that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step he certainly wasn't talking about the vast expanse of Chinese territory that needed huge doses of progress systematically devastated by the evil force called communism.
Years, or better still, decades later, when not so long ago print advertisements of a famed booze maker etched the very same line as a statement complimenting its brand, I was least surprised.
Anyhow, it's neither Chairman Mao nor the fizz that interests me at the moment but the magnificent line itself that holds more meaning than what it appears to convey.

On 9th of February 2005, I was to take a similar step that saw me transported to a distant land - a land of dreams, desires and doldrums. 48 hours, 2620 odd kilometers and about nineteen hundred Indian rupees later, I stood on the heart of India.
New Delhi had accepted me into its flood of millions milling forward, all in a hurried quest for something I knew not then. Gathering myself, it was still a little uneasy to comprehend the feeling of having put an end to all that I'd been doing (programmed to do) all this long.
Ironically, the last piece of civilized text I read before embarking upon my journey was "Who moved my Cheese"
Now my cheese (or should I say 'paneer') was in this Hindian heartland. And my job was simple - go for it.
It is truly heartening indeed when one is on the verge of getting what one seeks. And to me, who is a person marked with simplicity of thought and action, the real search was for obscurity rather than identity. Strange it may seem to many but not after one realizes that after all, the winner of the rat race is the rat itself.
This blog is my story from that day of February which has purpoted to change my life, Forever.