Friday, March 31, 2006

"What is Spirituality?"

Last week I faced a tricky question from my colleague. It was, “What is spirituality?” And even as I was preparing to answer, another question bamboozled me: “Is spirituality Mind?”

During my college years, I have heard enough on spirituality. We had had long discussions on the subject, which included hot debates & sometimes even classroom lectures. But this question did make me think.

‘Spiritual’ comes from ‘spirit’, which means something abstract. What is that abstract? It is the state of mind where one sees same energy flowing in everything around him. He believes that the same life-force runs through everyone of us. This knowledge penetrates into every aspect of his life, & he is no more worried about any untoward incident. He treats everything with equanimity. When such a state of mind is reached, life becomes a game. And one enjoys it. Nothing in life remains to be conquered.

Coming back to the situation, I was still pondering over the question. Then, one of my colleagues who had heard the questions put to me, replied to both of us, “What is not Spirituality?”

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Blessing In Disguise

Last week it was the Birthday of one of my Senior Colleague. We all were set to have a grand lunch in a nearby restaurant, which he had agreed to sponsor. When the lunch-time came we all proceeded towards the decided venue.

Once we all were seated for lunch, I noticed that two members of the Board of Directors had joined us for the lunch. They had come for a meeting, and as it was their lunch-time too, they were invited to join us. This meant that our B'day pal will have to spend some more from his pocket than he would have planned initially. (I had no doubts that he can easily afford it.)

The lunch was in buffet fashion, & we enjoyed ourselves with the multitude of dishes. He was given a gift on behalf of the organization, and all of us sang the traditional B'day song. When it was all over, the bill came. And to surprise of all of us present there, one of the Board Member paid the entire bill, citing it as an additional B’day gift to our colleague.

Many times when we face a problem, we crib about it. We think why we are facing such a problem. What wrong have we done to anybody? We tend to forget that these very problems are the channels through which we utilize our hidden potential. We become stronger. We become tougher, and can face more difficult challenges. When we solve problems at our workplace, they become a reason for our promotion. When we solve problems in life, we overcome our weaknesses & stand tall above others.

One should remember that difficulties are blessings in disguise.... just like the Board Member who joined for the free lunch...........

Monday, March 20, 2006

Making The Right Choice

Recently I met one of our ex-colleague who had recently joined an MNC in Chennai. As we set down to have a meal, we started to ask her about her new job, workplace, colleagues etc. What she told is worth sharing.

Her new job was really exciting. She got a break in the area of her choice. Her salary was much more than she was getting in her last job. The distance between her office and her place of residence was also reduced, to just 15 minutes of walk. All this sounded very good to all of us & we really felt happy for her.

But then she told that she missed something in her new life. She said that she missed all the fun that we used to have. In her new workplace, where she had been working for one month now, she had no friends. She hardly had any rapo with anybody. Employees seem to concentrate only on their work. There is not much interaction between them. The employees who sit near-by her were all at least two years senior to her. They did not interact much with her, and she being new, also hesitated to mix with them. This was the case not only with her, but with the other newly-joined employees too. They were seated in the midst of senior employees, and faced this problem of not knowing anybody else than their respective reporting manager. Even during the lunch-time, our colleague had to eat alone, and go back to her desk to continue her work. What struck us most that this becomes a habit for the new employees too, so when they become a senior employee, they too don't interact much with the freshers.

Next time when you are planning to switch to a new job, think about it. What kind of workplace you prefer? Would you like a place where your colleagues know you, & spend time with you? Or would you prefer a corporate office where you do your job and your co-workers theirs? I don't deny the importance of a better financial prospective. And money is not everything in life.......

Friday, March 17, 2006

"This is Team-work"

I would like to share something which stands out as a good example of what real teamwork is.
I was working on the database of the project (the same which occurred in my previous post). I was working on a trial version of Toad software, an SQL database tool. I had to type in same values in a particular column across multiple rows. To reduce my work, I just entered one word in each cell of the column.
Once I had completed the data entry, I wrote an SQL query to replace the word by the desired phrase. To my surprise, only one of the 18 cells was edited by the query. I tried again & nothing further happened. Confused, I called one of my senior to see into the problem. She has a very good hold on SQL queries. She typed in a complex query. And the result came. A result that none of us neither wanted, nor expected. All the cells in that particular column had changed to zero!!!
I know that the query that was given did not include anything like 'zero', ‘nil’, 'null' etc. But still both of us were staring at the screen bewildered.
Though I had a backup of the data, but copying from the backup to this database will mean that whatever I had done for the last 4 hours will be lost.
As I prepared myself to copy from the backup, my QA team-mate Sowmya Ambiti came to see what has been happening. When I explained the problem, she smiled, told me to relax and take a 30 minutes break. She took upon restoring the data to herself, even without my asking. She copied the data from the backup, in such a smart way that the data loss was minimal. I had not lost entire 4 hours work, but only what I could redo in a few minutes.
Sowmya denied acknowledging any praise for the work that she did. She just told me, “This is team-work”. I had no words to express my feelings…….

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Not Much Workload...........?

A comment from my boss on last Friday made me think.

I was sitting in my chair, working on my system. That day I had to grab some data directly from the internet, and put it in the project database. Now there was something wrong with the internet line and it was very slow. I had to wait for 1 minute to open a normal html page. Sometimes, even more... As my work fully depended on the net, I had nothing to do but watch the progress of the web-page loading on my screen. To remove the boredom, I had plugged in my earphones, listening to soft, instrumentsl music. At that time, my boss passed behind me. He saw me ..sitting idle in the chair, hands away from the keyboard and mouse, simply staring on the monitor, with earphones in my ears. In a juvial tone, he said to one of my colleagues, "Looks like Prashant does not have much workload..." I looked back at him ( I could hear what he said even with earphones plugged in ), and smiled. I protested too, in a friendly manner, and he walked away, smiling.

Then I started thinking about it. I have enough work. Just because I don't frown, complain to anybody, scratch my head, does that mean I have les work load than others? Or do I take it as a compliment, that inspite of the workload, I still remain cool & comfortable, not showing any kind of stress. ( On an average, I spend 11 hours in the office daily, for 5 days, and few more hours on Saturdays, for which we do not get any extra compensation).

Should I not listen to music when the work is dragging & the network is down? Should I complain to everybody regarding the workload that I have inspite of knowing that they work for same time duration in the week? Should I pretend to be stressed out even though I am not? Or should I continue... my way.....till they realise....

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Did You Give Something?

As one travels from one part of Bangalore to another, he can see the changes that have come over years. Once upon a time, Whitefield was considered to be outside the city. It was just 5 years ago. But now, a traffic jam in this area too is considered as normal. The same has been the state of many other parts in the city. Once considered as remote places, these areas are now attracting a lot of traffic, and hub-drub of the city.

And as you are stuck in a traffic-jam, you will definitely feel miserable. The noise around you, the pollution caused by the vehicles, the pot-holes, that you would have encountered on the way, & the ones that you will encounter on the way to your destination, all this will make you wonder as to what has happened to the city that is supposed to be the 'city of gardens'? Did you realize as to how many gardens did you actually see on your way?

What I find most disgusting is the state of the people in Bangalore; especially those who come here with the dream of earning their livlihood and leave the shadows of their cruel past behind.
One can see a lot of low-class workers, busy in thier daily-jobs, everywhere in the city. Be it a fly-over (something that has made a big hue-and-cry in the city), restaurant, railways, construction, you will find many people working here. They jostle into the BMTC buses, in the morning, carrying their lunch in a small tifin-box, and then busying themselves in the work that will provide them their daily bread.

But there is another class of people who cannot afford this. Let's go back to the traffic-jam where you are stuck. Did you notice somebody standing outside your car, extending his/her hand, expecting a coin from you? Or did you see a small girl, doing acrobatics on the footpath, so that her physically-disabled mother can get somethng from you? Or was it an old man who was trying to sell you a packet of ear-buds for a meagre 5 rupees, which will mean something to him, if not to you?

Did you give them something? A small coin, a packet of biscuits, a banana, or similar thing? Or did you ignore him and drove away once the signal turned green, like me?

Journey To North India

Last month I had a chance to visit North India after a gap of two years. I was to attend my sister's wedding. It was 44 hours journey, including 40 hours by train, and 4 hours by bus, thereafter. As it was the month of February, I took enough warm cloths with me. I left Bangalore in only a T-shirt & was expecting a cold morning when I get down at Agra 2 days later. But it was not to be. I found myself sweating as I stepped out of the Agra Cantt. station, looking for an auto-rickshaw to take me to the nearest bus-stand. The journey from Agra to Etawah, my home-town was in a UPSRTC bus. There is a sharp contrast when you compare the bus to KSRTC buses. The bus was quite dirty. It looked like nobody has swept the floor for last one week. There were used water-bottles scattered around, along with groundnut peels. The bus was rickety and made a lot of noise. The journey was not that bad. After moving out of the city, the cool breeze took away my tiredness of the train journey, and I looked out of the bus window. This erupted nostalgic feeling in me. During my childhood I used to see the same scenery out there whenever I used to visit my paternal / maternal village. Those days I used to be very keen in traveling by train. Unfortunately, railway line was kilometers away from my village. I used to feel very sad about this. The last part of those journeys used to be terrible, as we used to travel in private buses, which will be overcrowded by default. Now, the same village was connected by a state highway, and better buses were available (even though I have not visited there for a decade now).

I reached my home in the afternoon. It was a different feeling. The place is a town, and the traffic is definitely different from the city of Bangalore. There is hardly noise and one can feel peaceful even on the road that leads to the railway-station. I had a quite, peaceful walk in the evening. I felt engrossed with peace.


Two days later, I had to get some material for the rituals that had to be performed for the marriage ceremony. I did not take the bike, as I prefer walking. It took me half-an hour to find the right shop. I told the shopkeeper man my requirements, and to my surprise, he gave me the material free of cost. He told that as the material is going to be used for the puja, I won't need a significant amount. And the meager amount that I needed can be given free of cost as it won't affect his business. I came back with the material without spending even a single rupee from my pocket. This was quite an opposite experience from the one I had in Bangalore a few weeks ago. I had shifted to a new house. I do not have any furniture, not even a chair. The house-owner noticed this, and he offered to give me a chair & a table. It was lying idle in his house. I thought that it will be good to have something like that, so I agreed. Immediately he told me the monthly charges that I will have to pay for the set.....!


The main ceremony was to be held in Patna. I went to Patna along with my family and relatives. It was another train journey of 9 hours. The weather was quite different from what I had expected. It was hot.! Thankfully we all were in AC coach.


As we all got down and reached the place where the ceremony was to take place, I realized my mistake of carrying all the warm cloths with me. There was no need for any of them. We were there for three days, and every night we used to switch on fan and sleep. Entire day the room AC had to be on. On the wedding day, I did not even put-on even once, the jacket that I had so lovingly bought in Bangalore to be wore during the ceremony. It would not have been out of place to have an ice-cream or a cool-drink. In fact, ice-cream was a part of the dessert served during the ceremony.....!


My sister went to her in-laws place, and I came back to my home town. It had become slightly hot, with mosquitoes now making there presence felt at night.


Soon it was time for me to leave. As I climbed back into the bus that will take me to Agra, I still thought of the weather, the mindset of the people, and my unused jacket......