Amitabh was not built to take these remarks seriously. His major talent lay in the fact that he could selectively ignore remarks and keep solicitising his own thoughts to others which as a matter of fact were as illogical as they could get.
"Mr President, I would like to know" he started and his right hand also started flying about, "why we do not have a life jacket for our projects." The left hand was getting into a nook inside his nose. "I mean considering that they are going live and we are so happy about them, why can't we have a life jacket for them so that they stay live for some time." The left hand was now coming out and the right was getting in. "Ofcourse I dont mean that we are in sea or something, but a life jacket is always better to have. I, for example, always carry a life jacket even if I am travelling on a scooter, becasue you never know when the rain Gods might want to show there wrath on us and completely drown Delhi. Dont you think a life jacket will be good to keep. Nice suggestion, heh!!" Nose flaring, eye brows lifting he ended with a wink.
Now come to think of it it's not such a bad suggestion. But coming from Amitabh it was .....
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
we go live
On the first, our project went live. The whole day having passed without any major hiccup; it was considered reasonably safe to hold a congratulatory meeting on the afternoon of the 2nd.
One of the corporate big shots from the client site had come to address the team. Predictably, the essence of what he said mostly consisted of thanking each and everyone present and absent, for, each of us, it seemed had helped in a very big way towards the success of the project. The golden words of wisdom were interspersed with significant pauses, so that we could clap for all the people named since the last round of clapping.
The speech set the tone for the whole meeting. Almost everyone had to thank everyone else for some tremendous spirit of hard work and dedication, and the rest of us had to clap dutifully in return. And every speech ended with how the speaker would like to thank everybody (again) and how today was a day to rejoice, but there was work left, on which we needed to renew our focus from the morrow.
The big shot had it easy; he had the right to say it first. The second speaker used a different combination of words to convey the same meaning. By the time the fifth speaker took the floor, he realized that the English language, vast though it is, finally offers only so many ways of expressing one thought. So he repeated almost verbatim, what the big shot had said at the starting. Whether it was a an awesome feat of memory, or whether, in trying to be different from the last three speakers he had landed up in the exactly same place as we had started, I will be never able to say with any definite authority. What is known for a fact though, is that none of those who volunteered to speak after that never even bothered to go back that far in the past to borrow from the 3rd- last or 4th-last speaker, they just repeated what the person just before them had said, so that it was a bit of a difficult task to keep a straight face and keep clapping and cheering after every speaker made his significant pause, as if we had received a profound piece of new information about our achievements.
And of course, throughout the meeting we had the Corporate Laughter. Now an important piece of corporate etiquette is not to necessarily crack good jokes on your own, but to make the other person feel that he is the wittiest and most humorous guy that you ever came across. Now the other person also knows the etiquette, so very soon a congratulatory meeting has a tendency of turning into a canned laughter show – consisting entirely of a polite sort of giggle which is somewhat of a cross that you would get when you choked on your bread-n-jam sandwich as a result of someone having tickled you unexpectedly and rather violently. It goes on like “So there you are, Mr. M, the project is now your responsibility” (giggle, giggle)“You are giving me the project, I give u this sweet!” ( ha ha ha ha ha) “The next sweet you will have to get through e-procurement, Mr. M!” (he he he ) “So now your e-procurement solution will give us sweets too ?!” (arf, arf, arf splutter, gurk)
So it went on and on, till Mr. Amitabh Bhattacharya, our confirmed trouble-maker, got up to have his say. Amitabh was renowned for his nuisance value. Highly unpredictable, and almost utterly devoid of common sense, he was one of the biggest challenges to handle for our management, and hence was most often ignored.
Unfortunately, a corporate boss is unaware of the ground realities. Plus he must show his involvement in the concern of each and every employee, the lower down in the hierarchy, the better. A well known management axiom states: It’s difficult to lunch in a canteen with the employees and miss the boardroom lunch, but if this can somehow get into the press then one can avoid visiting the canteen for the next year.
So there was really no way to guess what Amitabh might take in his heart to say, and what Mr. Corporate BigShot would try to infer from it. We waited as the well known words leapt out of Amitabh’s mouth: “ I suggest …”
Here, a piping voice spoke out: “Yes, please suggest, but suggest keeping in mind that we are celebrating today”
This time, the laughter was real.
One of the corporate big shots from the client site had come to address the team. Predictably, the essence of what he said mostly consisted of thanking each and everyone present and absent, for, each of us, it seemed had helped in a very big way towards the success of the project. The golden words of wisdom were interspersed with significant pauses, so that we could clap for all the people named since the last round of clapping.
The speech set the tone for the whole meeting. Almost everyone had to thank everyone else for some tremendous spirit of hard work and dedication, and the rest of us had to clap dutifully in return. And every speech ended with how the speaker would like to thank everybody (again) and how today was a day to rejoice, but there was work left, on which we needed to renew our focus from the morrow.
The big shot had it easy; he had the right to say it first. The second speaker used a different combination of words to convey the same meaning. By the time the fifth speaker took the floor, he realized that the English language, vast though it is, finally offers only so many ways of expressing one thought. So he repeated almost verbatim, what the big shot had said at the starting. Whether it was a an awesome feat of memory, or whether, in trying to be different from the last three speakers he had landed up in the exactly same place as we had started, I will be never able to say with any definite authority. What is known for a fact though, is that none of those who volunteered to speak after that never even bothered to go back that far in the past to borrow from the 3rd- last or 4th-last speaker, they just repeated what the person just before them had said, so that it was a bit of a difficult task to keep a straight face and keep clapping and cheering after every speaker made his significant pause, as if we had received a profound piece of new information about our achievements.
And of course, throughout the meeting we had the Corporate Laughter. Now an important piece of corporate etiquette is not to necessarily crack good jokes on your own, but to make the other person feel that he is the wittiest and most humorous guy that you ever came across. Now the other person also knows the etiquette, so very soon a congratulatory meeting has a tendency of turning into a canned laughter show – consisting entirely of a polite sort of giggle which is somewhat of a cross that you would get when you choked on your bread-n-jam sandwich as a result of someone having tickled you unexpectedly and rather violently. It goes on like “So there you are, Mr. M, the project is now your responsibility” (giggle, giggle)“You are giving me the project, I give u this sweet!” ( ha ha ha ha ha) “The next sweet you will have to get through e-procurement, Mr. M!” (he he he ) “So now your e-procurement solution will give us sweets too ?!” (arf, arf, arf splutter, gurk)
So it went on and on, till Mr. Amitabh Bhattacharya, our confirmed trouble-maker, got up to have his say. Amitabh was renowned for his nuisance value. Highly unpredictable, and almost utterly devoid of common sense, he was one of the biggest challenges to handle for our management, and hence was most often ignored.
Unfortunately, a corporate boss is unaware of the ground realities. Plus he must show his involvement in the concern of each and every employee, the lower down in the hierarchy, the better. A well known management axiom states: It’s difficult to lunch in a canteen with the employees and miss the boardroom lunch, but if this can somehow get into the press then one can avoid visiting the canteen for the next year.
So there was really no way to guess what Amitabh might take in his heart to say, and what Mr. Corporate BigShot would try to infer from it. We waited as the well known words leapt out of Amitabh’s mouth: “ I suggest …”
Here, a piping voice spoke out: “Yes, please suggest, but suggest keeping in mind that we are celebrating today”
This time, the laughter was real.
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