On popular demand.. I finally resigned!!

(So I recently resigned from the job and as all newly jobless people do, I too wrote a farewell email. Trust me, it made me more popular in the company than I could ever become in the four years preceding that. Just in case I am getting carried away, it probably was just an indictment of the pathetic work I did there and nothing more. Nevertheless, since there is nothing confidential in it, I am posting it here. So, there.. ) 
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Respected Sirs and Madams,

Some of you know that it is my last day today.

And now that all of you know this, I hope you are relieved and will remember me by this final act of making you happy.

As much as I would like to say that I am leaving for personal and professional challenges, reality is that I am an utter failure at managing finances and am presently rather broke. So the choices for future were between getting married, for which my Dad would have paid or going for higher education for which the bank will pay. Considering interest, mortgages etc the latter seems a much cheaper option at present.

It has been four years, five departments and learnings and lessons which cannot be measured by numbers. Hopefully I also managed to give something back to the company but the truth is I (with 3 others) was hired as a GET and company has stopped hiring GETs ever since. So please send me happy mails about how I made myself useful here. In the dark days ahead, they will be much helpful. Advanced apologies to all those college students who would have stood a chance if it were not for us.

Special thanks to Alok Sir for getting me to this place, for being my first boss and being the answer to password security question at multiple places; Sarsij Sir for endlessly bearing with my silly questions ; Rao Sir for giving me a chance to work in an entirely different setup which was most fulfilling and Neeraj Sir from whom I have learnt so many things about being an efficient manager. Also thank you for the coffee, biscuits, unlimited soft drinks (from 2011-2013), for the gate punching system which kept no record of entry and leaving timings and the IT department which didn’t block Facebook.

But above all I will ever remain thankful for the love and affection showered on me here. The receding hairline notwithstanding, I have been “The Kid” here. That was a privilege. A privilege, I am unlikely to get anywhere else in my lifetime.

So, again, thank you all for everything. First companies are like first crushes. Everywhere I go, I will carry a bit of this place with me.

So keep in touch. As long as you do, we can keep playing these four years again and again.

Did you see I invented the time machine here? Where is my Nobel prize now?

Please use the details below for bouquets, brickbats, wedding invitations, wedding proposals, visa applications etc.

Your colleague for the next couple of hours

Sumit Kr Das

My Boss

He strolled up to me,

In a careful chaotic walk,

I quickly closed the other things,

Looked at him, afraid we might talk.

It’s been months now,

Without any project assigned.

Not that I have been jobless,

But work-less in my mind.

He comes to me ,

Looks in my computer.

The useless book I have opened

Doesn't fool him, no matter.

Embarrassed, I ask him about projects coming up,

He laughs and looks away.

Embarrassment, thy word is even,

I too laughed, as he strolled away.

Replug

As I relentlessly hammered in my last post that I was in the organising team of the Annual Get-together of my firm and I did nothing, this post is all about the work I did for that. These posters and the write up at the end for some magazine I have no idea about.

The design was not by me, only the words were.

This was entirely done by me.

This was also done by me

The name was suggested by a colleague.

The background was contributed by a colleague, the rest by me. Though the original lines went something like these

“ We still snarl ‘kutte’ to our friends at times,

That hot girl is still ‘Chamiya’ for us,

People with “Thakur” as surnames are still asked for their hands at times.

And still more jokes are made on Sholay that on our politicians.”

And then followed all that is written on the poster. But it all was edited out.

And the write up is

“The evening began with poise and ended with exuberance. In an nutshell, that was the ambience, tone and the general spirit at the annual family night “Spandan’ we had on 26^th of November.

 From buffets to drinks, from dancing troupes to employee dance performances, from casino to karaoke, from lucky draw to fashion shows ,  from musical shows to couple games and from kid games to childhood picture games, we tried to incorporate all. The fact that there was fantastic enthusiasm and participation shown from the employees and their families obviously spiced it all up.

  There was a mesmerizing semi classical Indian dance performance by the daughter of one our colleague while another of our colleague chose to partner his son on “Tabla” an Indian percussion instrument to result in an utterly mellifluous ballad. A tiny tot’s dance performance completely belied her age and some of our colleagues who tried to copy her steps are still recovering from cramps!! While a senior colleague chose to remind us of his splendid skills with harmonica, the innovative couple games involved such twists and turns that the participating couples were left exercising those muscles and bones of their bodies they never knew existed.

 A family event that it was, it never could have been complete without the involvement of the newest addition to our CH2M HILL family- The Halcrow Group. Several Halcrow employees were also present and delighted us all with their active participation. One of them actually won First Prize in the Fashion Show event. Well Done Sir.

 A memorable night was rendered truly momentous with the verve of participation from one and all. It really was a night to dance, jive and feel alive.”

Any creative media agency reading this post and liking it ? Anyone?? 

Bored Ruminations

It has been four months since I have been employed. And the only thing I have learnt apart form the fact that you actually wish your colleagues “Happy Weekend” on Fridays is to unlearn the theory that you have to work a lot while you are being employed while I was in college. Well, another thing I have learnt of course is that your supervisor will come to look for you to fill timesheets, to tell you about some non-technical training, asking you about the coming get-together, hand you your termination letter at the exact time on which you will not be present at your “work”place. Ok, he didn’t come to hand me my termination letter, but maybe he did come and didn’t find me anywhere. But Murphy taught us all this years back. Didn’t he? So there goes my chance to “learn” anything  because just learnt that before I should have learnt that. Frankly, why are you still reading this post??

And even more frankly, I don’t know why I am writing this post.  May be plain boredom at work. F act that I was in the organising team of our Annual Get-together, fiction that I actually helped in that organising. Fact that Internet has now marked my blogspot blog URl as a phishing address, fiction that I actually harboured fishes there. I even deleted the widget “Feed these Fishes”, but to no avail. Fact that I am thinking of buying a personal domain, fiction that I will actually do so. Fact that I am writing something meant to be a blogpost, fiction that I will actually post it. Ok, did you just say that it is not fiction that I will post this as you can read this blogpost. You too are damned bored right now, aren’t you?

So, if you are still with me you may have read that I was in the organising team of the Annual get-together of my firm. Forgive me if I make that sound like organising of Olympics, but still there were lessons to learn it. Like how to shop with ladies. “Shopping”, “Ladies” and “Men” have difficulty in existing together. I knew that beforehand, but I learnt it now. Then naming an event is the most difficult part and you have to start with that. Or that lucky numbers are not really lucky. Actually we had a lucky draw prize based on the coupon numbers allotted with the invitations to employees. Now as the organisers , some of has had first access to the coupons and selected numbers like 123, 111, 013, 007 or like in order to get lucky. But the numbers which won were 072, 078 and we realised that the numbers we thought were lucky were actually only good looking numbers. On second thoughts, 13 x 6 = 78. Now did you tell me to shut up?

Another lesson I learnt was that while expats got to know about the timing of event , 5.30 pm that is  by looking at the invitation card and arrive at that time , we Indians never require the invitation card to know about the timing. Like we Indians all arrived at 7.30 and that was the time the event started. Telepathy, anyone?

Also, recently we had a Rewards and Recognition felicitation at our office which is held to reward the outstanding performers of the last 3 months. Only, this time it was a little different. Instead of rewarding people with outstanding work in the last 3 months, the management decided to award everybody who worked in the last 3 months. And the awardees were in total 5 in number.

And at last, as the year draws to a close, it reminds of the number of great people we lost this year. Along with Shammi Kapoor and Dev Anand , the person whose work I liked the most was Shrilal Shukl. And,

मैं श्रीलाल शुक्ल के बारे में कुछ नहीं लिखना चाहूँगा 

क्योंकि वो शब्द सूरज को ना सिर्फ दीया, बल्कि माचिस दिखाने के जैसा

होगा, वो भी बुझी हुई माचिस ।

And to conclude , I must admit that I have not seen many movies of either Shammi Kapoor Or Dev Anand, but of all the old songs I love and they are far greater in number than the new ones, I realised few days back that 90% of them star either Shammi Kapoor or Dev Anand. RIP All.

Pehli Salary

“Pehli salary badi kamini cheez hoti hai" 

It makes you happy. It is beyond anything you have ever experienced. You suddenly want to buy things. Anything. Just go buy it. In my case the day I got my first salary, I wanted to buy even those shirts on the footpath which you get at the rate of 1 for 100 bucks. But that is the story of only the first day. Very soon you realise that you can you have more than peanuts in your pocket and you can actually afford a shirt which costs 1 for 1000 bucks. And then gradually you come to know that not only that, you can also afford a gamepad which cost 1500 though earlier the one costing 150 used to be good enough. And then you aspire for a Xbox itself. Then may be a bike , the aspiration of which will soon turn into the one for a car. And all this khyali pulao takes place within two to three days of receiving your first salary. Just deep within you know that you can actually have all those aspirations.  And then before you know , all the money is spent. It just vanishes. And then the wish gets changed.  The wish becomes a wait. Wait for the next salary.  In other words you start aspiring for money. That is why , “ Pehli salary badi kamini cheez hoti hai.” 

It makes you  love money and disrespect it at the same time. You want to buy the world with it and yet want to lock it in a case and throw the key in a pond. It suddenly makes you aware of the capabilities of money. And that is worse than a lot of bad things you can ever think of. That is why , “ Pehli salary badi kamini cheez hoti hai.”