Little Angels on Earth

(Repost)

Two and a half years have passed by since I was first in the campus of Ashraya and even now, when I go there every week, it seems to be a new experience. As I walked to the campus yesterday, I was wondering how quickly time moves. It was not the first time that I was in such a place but it was a very special experience to be with kids around you who are not just special but very talented as well. During the initial days, I was with a GE Volunteers team and had volunteered to teach these kids, mathematics, origami, and lots of fun-making activities. Most of the kids at Ashraya are normal from a physical point of view, but not so from the emotional point of view - I would term them para-normal! They are a bit more mature than their age, which varied between 3 to 13 years. Ashraya has a number of infant orphans as well but we were not interacting with them. This place was unlike the Helen Keller Institute at Vashi, Mumbai where was dealing with special kids with visual and hearing challenges. You need a different level of patience while interacting with these little angels.

They have a garden with swings, slides and see-saws to play with. I used to hold them in my arms and rotate fast - they enjoyed these rides and you should just see the expression on their faces. We were not supposed to take photographs, but over the years, I have taken snaps of the work done by the kids, such as in their coloring books. Last year, for Christmas, I got an idea which was quickly accepted by the other team members - we gifted them gifts which we helped them to make. Let me explain that a bit: We taught them how to make Santa Claus masks, cone caps with bells, and paper toys. Then few of them became Santa and all of them played a game where you have to sing for Santa and get your gifts! There were many sessions when we showed them animated movies - they loved Ice Age 2! They loved Winnie the Pooh so much that it took them no time to learn when I taught them how to draw and later paint, huge Winnie posters.

We have Rakum school for the blind at Indiranagar, Bangalore where I live. This is another place which I frequently visit since I have been in Bangalore. Initially, many of my visits were anonymous, and I felt good that I am able to contribute to the education of such special kids - they needed our time and understanding more than monetary contributions. As per Mr Rakum, there are many folks who contribute money, but the number of persons who contribtue their time is very less. It is a different kind of realization and an expansion of the awareness of your existence, when you are with these kids.

At Rourkela, I used to go to a place called 'Home and Hope', which was on the way to my school (Saint Paul's Rourkela). I used to observe these boys and girls, (I was of their age those days: this is around fifteen years ago) and was amazed at the patience of the caretakers in looking after mentally challenged kids. I continued interacting with these folks even after school, and during my engineering, I visited a similar school at Anushaktinagar, BARC Mumbai. I was gifted a Diwali card made by a mentally challenged 11 year old - you could find more beauty and imagination in the design than any other card you have seen and you will be perplexed when you meet the kid who created it. At 'Asha Niketan' in Koramangala, Bangalore, I met a 15 year old special boy, who asked me if I liked his drawings and would like to buy some. The bigger surprise came to me later when he shared, "I like A R Rahman's music - if you buy few of my drawings, I'll get enough money to get few more of his DVDs". I was dumbfounded to hear this and was really wondering whether he is mentally challenged or the rest of the world is - how come we ignore such talents in our day to day lives of mindless hurry.

Even after I got married, I continued my visits to Ashraya, Rakum School and the Spastics Society of Karnataka in Indiranagar, Bangalore. My significant half, Pallavi, is always with me in all such visits. It has been so many years that I have been visiting such places, and still everyday teaches me something new about life, something really novel. I have had very busy schedules in life, but I have tried not to miss these visits.

At GE India, and later at Mercedes Benz India, I organized some personal visits by volunteers who want to look beyond their problems in life and look at little angles struggling to make meaning out of their existence. We also organized a tree plantation program and 'Teach me Hindi' program for the kids. It was an emotional reconnection with their school days, for many of the volunteers. At times, we organized these events personally (not through the office) so that folks from various companies can join us - we had friends from SAP, Tesco, Yahoo India, HP India, and Infosys to name a few. For us, contributing our bit was closer to heart and meant much more than just logging hours for community service on the company portal.

Life teaches you a lot of things indirectly and it depends on our observation abilities, how much we learn from it. There is a unique humility that you develop with such events and it has a great effect on your management skills. You have a much wider outlook on life. We need to realize how fortunate we are, even in our deficiencies, and how we can still make a difference to brighten someone's smile someday. :-)

Powered by ScribeFire.

The B-Part of things

The B-part? Best part? Business aspect? The Bigger Picture? The Bold perspective? The Broader perspective? The Bubbly part? Behind the scenes? Branding!?

When I had to decide between a campus placement offer from Infosys, and a Research Associate offer from IIT Bombay (with less than one third the compensation than the Infosys offer), I was weighing the options to know the better one of the two offers. For me, B was the Better part. And over the years, I have tried to understand, what comprises the better part of things in life.

Rourkela as a city, has people from all parts of India. It is different in many ways: we had kids from all states, religions, languages in India (including German and Zambian kids!) during school. This showed me some aspects of life that gets missed when you grow up in a more localized city or town. I moved on to study at the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, which again had students from all states in India. Diversity as a word, became more of my nature than my habit and showed me a broader arena. Then came a stint at IIT Bombay - my interactions with individuals from all over the world was similar from the bigger perspective of humanity. To me, almost everyone looked the same from the fundamentals of human nature, and at the same time, everyone was unique! Apart from Orissa, I have resided in West Bengal, Assam, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. I have observed people in all walks of life, and for me, every time, B stands for something new - and Beautiful!

After two years at IIT Bombay, I have spent time at TVS Motor, General Electric and Mercedes Benz. Although most of the work was as an individual contributor in the team, there have been numerous instances when I had to lead a team. Whether it was setting up the IC Engines Lab at the Mechanical Engineering department of IIT Bombay, or going for on-road tests of bikes while I was with TVS Motor, knowing people and the variety of behavior that they have, has been very useful. The audience has been different each time - and so was the learning. I have advanced technically ahead enough for challenging roles and emotionally high enough for mentally gainsaying situations. The B part that I have always tried to understand in my life has taken various forms in diverse situations but all amalgamted under the better aspect of things.

When I observe my colleagues, I find them extremely good at the things that are assigned to do. But, rarely does one find people looking at bigger pictures. When someone designs a hybrid engine controller in my lab, very few are the ones who can envisage the controller's features ten years ahead of time. Not sure whether outsourcing is the culprit, I have found many people excelling at what they have been told to do. When you look at the bigger picture, you can think better and design far better. You might argue that the management is the agency whose job is to look at the bigger picture. Well, if you have the habit of having a broader perspective than just the work assigned to you, it is far better than what the management can ever imagine. A management body basically works as an entity with quantifiable faith on the guidance provided by the field folks.  It is a decision making authority - the vision part is still in the mind of the individual contributor. Like many others, I initially did not like Project Management related activities - 'we are techies, PM is for managers' was the mantra. But it was PM and related work that helped me look beyond implementation techniques. Your vision tends to grow.  

When I organized the first team offsite after joining GE India, we went to Eagleton Resorts on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. Right from the decision about games till the choice of food and entertainment, it was extremely well-planned .  I contacted various vendors before deciding the resort we went to (with team poll), made out lists of gifts to be given to team folks, negotiated  with suppliers for offers on mass buying of items and carried out tens of other such actions at  both the micro as well as macro level. In fact, I risked delaying a deliverable by sometime because my team got stuck in bureaucratic issue and as a lead volunteer for the team offsite, I thought it okay for something else to wait! (You have to learn taking such calls in life!) If the event had not gone the way it did, I might had had to hear verses from my manager! But that was a calculated risk and the whole of my team was with me. Life gives you choices and you have to make one. I felt (this was corroborated after discussing with everyone) that the only way to have a really memorable team event was to forget the previous ones and look at the broader perspective of the intention behind it - for the team members, it had to be a fun-filled event while for the management, it had to showcase team-building activities in a relaxed, away-from-office environment.  The moment you lose focus of the bigger picture, you might remain stuck in just the fact that the food got colder! or the transport arrived late by five minutes (which is reason enough, funnily, for both your manager as well as teammates to start disliking you!)

I have already narrated some experiences from the days when I was the students' secretary of my hostel. You can have a look at it here. Life was bubbly, beautiful, bold and bigger!

The 'B' in business is something that needs some thought. Without this aspect, we are almost totally handicapped in achieving bigger aims. In the conventional manner, it all boils down to profit, and in the wider window of a business vision, it shows us new avenues to explore and exceed with ou skills. I had written a post about business as a social solution (click here). Entangled closely with money and benefits, you can never ignore this 'b' in life! I was reading about the expectations of an engineer doing an MBA - and I understood how important it is to look behind the scenes, why a product is made in the first place, and why/how is it branded!!

Many a times, I feel that I dream bigger than my colleagues, and am insanely passionate about achieving my visions: Dreams, broader than individuals at my level of career growth and more beautiful as well. Let's see huge visions in every aspect of our work, without forgetting that the smallest details keep the key to the biggest achievements.

One of my managers in the past, used to repeat the words 'look at the whole scenario', in every sentence of his talk. Although it was quite irritating to hear the same words being repeated so many times, there still remains a lot of truth in his words. 

Powered by ScribeFire.

Little Angels on Earth

Two and a half years have passed by since I was first in the campus of Ashraya and even now, when I go there every week, it seems to be a new experience. As I walked to the campus yesterday, I was wondering how quickly time moves. It was not the first time that I was in such a place but it was a very special experience to be with kids around you who are not just special but very talented as well. During the initial days, I was with a GE Volunteers team and had volunteered to teach these kids, mathematics, origami, and lots of fun-making activities. Most of the kids at Ashraya are normal from a physical point of view, but not so from the emotional point of view - I would term them para-normal! They are a bit more mature than their age, which varied between 3 to 13 years. Ashraya has a number of infant orphans as well but we were not interacting with them. This place was unlike the Helen Keller Institute at Vashi, Mumbai where was dealing with special kids with visual and hearing challenges. You need a different level of patience while interacting with these little angels.

                                                       

They have a garden with swings, slides and see-saws to play with. I used to hold them in my arms and rotate fast - they enjoyed these rides and you should just see the expression on their faces. We were not supposed to take photographs, but over the years, I have taken snaps of the work done by the kids, such as in their coloring books. Last year, for Christmas, I got an idea which was quickly accepted by the other team members - we gifted them gifts which we helped them to make. Let me explain that a bit: We taught them how to make Santa Claus masks, cone caps with bells, and paper toys. Then few of them became Santa and all of them played a game where you have to sing for Santa and get your gifts! There were many sessions when we showed them animated movies - they loved Ice Age 2! They loved Winnie the Pooh so much that it took them no time to learn when I taught them how to draw and later paint, huge Winnie posters.

           

We have Rakum school for the blind at Indiranagar, Bangalore where I live. This is another place which I frequently visit since I have been in Bangalore. Initially, many of my visits were anonymous, and I felt good that I am able to contribute to the education of such special kids - they needed our time and understanding more than monetary contributions. As per Mr Rakum, there are many folks who contribute money, but the number of persons who contribtue their time is very less. It is a different kind of realization and an expansion of the awareness of your existence, when you are with these kids.

At Rourkela, I used to go to a place called 'Home and Hope', which was on the way to my school (Saint Paul's Rourkela). I used to observe these boys and girls, (I was of their age those days: this is around fifteen years ago) and was amazed at the patience of the caretakers in looking after mentally challenged kids. I continued interacting with these folks even after school, and during my engineering, I visited a similar school at Anushaktinagar, BARC Mumbai. I was gifted a Diwali card made by a mentally challenged 11 year old - you could find more beauty and imagination in the design than any other card you have seen and you will be perplexed when you meet the kid who created it. At 'Asha Niketan' in Koramangala, Bangalore, I met a 15 year old special boy, who asked me if I liked his drawings and would like to buy some. The bigger surprise came to me later when he shared, "I like A R Rahman's music - if you buy few of my drawings, I'll get enough money to get few more of his DVDs". I was dumbfounded to hear this and was really wondering whether he is mentally challenged or the rest of the world is - how come we ignore such talents in our day to day lives of mindless hurry.

                         

Even after I got married, I continued my visits to Ashraya, Rakum School and the Spastics Society of Karnataka in Indiranagar, Bangalore. My significant half, Pallavi, is always with me in all such visits. It has been so many years that I have been visiting such places, and still everyday teaches me something new about life, something really novel. I have had very busy schedules in life, but I have tried not to miss these visits.

At GE India, and later at Mercedes Benz India, I organized some personal visits by volunteers who want to look beyond their problems in life and look at little angles struggling to make meaning out of their existence. We also organized a tree plantation program and 'Teach me Hindi' program for the kids. It was an emotional reconnection with their school days, for many of the volunteers. At times, we organized these events personally (not through the office) so that folks from various companies can join us - we had friends from SAP, Tesco, Yahoo India, HP India, and Infosys to name a few. For us, contributing our bit was closer to heart and meant much more than just logging hours for community service on the company portal.

Life teaches you a lot of things indirectly and it depends on our observation abilities, how much we learn from it. There is a unique humility that you develop with such events and it has a great effect on your management skills. You have a much wider outlook on life. We need to realize how fortunate we are, even in our deficiencies, and how we can still make a difference to brighten someone's smile someday. :-)

Powered by ScribeFire.

H6 G-Sec

What do you do when your team member has done a blunder and you are forced to defend him? Or when you have to handle an unofficial beer party with official guests?

From the middle of the third year of engineering to that of the fourth year, it was a mix of many such experiences when I was the General Secretary of my hostel. Before I got elected as the General Secretary (G-Sec, as they say) I had no idea that I would be contesting for such a post ever in my life. H6 expands to 'Hall of Residence 6'. At NIT Rourkela, you had six 'Halls of Residence' for men and two for the ladies. (NIT stands for National Institute of Technology. There are around 17 such universities in India.)

I had my own share of friends and enemies during my college days. But I had this habit of being in touch, and knowing details about almost everybody on the campus, including the smaller folks like security guards or the cafeteria staff. Sanjay Dutt's Kaante was released the year before we stood for election. I remember the room-to-room campaigning, printing posters with catchy phrases, raising slogans in front of the university on improvement issues, late night partying, answering people through text messages during lecture hours, and still maintaining some level of performance in the academics - I do not know how it all fitted together. We used to sing 'Jaane kya hoga raama re' on the building corridoors in the middle of the nights! We were four folks who sat together to make a strategy that no one could break - we all were elected to the board of management of the hostel. We had a cultural secretary, a sports secretary, a kitchen secretary and myself as the general secretary. As for me, there was just one more candidate who stood against me in the election - we had a good handshake once I was announced as selected.

Life changed in many ways. We used a number of discussions, both public as well as within our group, to formulate plans for improvements in H6. After years, we were most punctual in organizing the 'Independence Day' celebrations. We organized groups discussions for folks who were preparing for MBA entrance exams. There were a lot of enthusiasm generated for team outings - it was fun to handle everything from logistics to entertainment to feedback.

Being a G-Sec exposed me to newer arenas. I was able to look at the working of an education institution and a residential building with around 200 inmates. I saw the various rules made ages ago and work to revamp them with more relevant ones. There was change all around in the air. There was a change in the menu of the cafeteria, and we put a feedback system in place for folks. There was a change in the visitors policy as well, and for the first time, we had female students visit the hostel - this was banned earlier due to some archaic laws. This change was motivated by what the public felt about themselves being mature students of an university which ranked third amongst all the NITs in India and stood first for branch-specific rankings.

There was also a change in the inmate categories in the hostel - let me explain that a bit. We had residents in H6 who mostly comprised of MCA and lateral entry students. MCA stands for Master in Computer Applications and the lateral entry students were the ones who joined in the second year of engineering after completing their technical diplomas. Apart from this, we had a number of students who were 'back logged', that is they could not complete a year's course in the given time. Unlike the other hostels, there was a lack of a proper mix of students from all branches and streams in the university. This was changed when we were in. We brought in an exchange between the inmates of the various hostels and ensured that the student profile was diversified and that we had more interaction amongst students of all streams.

The cafeteria menu included 'Pakhaala' for the first time in the history of the institute. Pakhaala is a special food made in Orissa during summers - it is made by soaking boiled rice in water, and adding salt and spices. NITs have students from all over India and this was an experience that all students from outside of the state of Orissa had for the first time in their lives, and they did love it during the scorching heat of the summers.

Almost every other day of our tenure, we had some issue flare up - it was not all that peaceful. As I mentioned in the very first sentence of this write-up, there was a quarrel between one of my team mates, the kitchen secretary and one of the cooks. The food was pathetic that day and the fellow ended up getting pinned against the wall and receiving boxing shots from the students. I had to interfere in between to stop this hungama and within few minutes, someone had informed the hostel warden. While I was trying to settle things in the kitchen itself, my mobile rang with the warden on the call.

One hour of drama and then a short-lived peace - the warden took stock of the situation and put a show-cause notice to the student, asking why he should not expel him. Being expelled meant that he will lose all of his engineering career and has to start over again - something he had not thought before hitting the cook. It also meant that there will be a police record of the situation, which meant a big blur on his career graph. I could not support him for what he did and could not let the warden ruin his career as well. It was a heated discussion for two hours after which he was pardoned on the condition that he will do social work for the university and never repeat such an act. (There were a string of clauses before he was let off, including public apology to the cook.) I also advised that the cook be shifted to the adjoining hostel and replaced by the other cook there.

Another time there was a public outcry when one of the inmates hit a girl on the road while riding a bike, and both of them were in the intensive care unit of the largest hospital in the city. It was a mad crowd at the hospital gates, with people shouting slogans against the students. Well, we handled it properly, with adequate medical attention to both the patients and adequate attention to the public as well. My friends helped me a lot when I was standing in front of the mob - I just didn't want to be 'mobbed' by them!

One new thing I understood was the profile of poor students on government scholarships - my signature was required before waiving of their hostel fees and I could understand the amount of struggle these folks put in to come from stark poverty and going to become future technocrats of the world. One of such persons is still in contact with me even after six years of these events and I know he works for one of the biggest MNCs of the globe. Being in NIT, where students from all states of India are proporta

My daily work also involved coordinating with the hostel staff, security fellows, maintenance guys, contractors and suppliers. It showed the aspects of society where bribing was a way of life and I was not at all for it. It also allowed me to educate such people on how they could leverage themselves without resorting to under-the-table methods. One of the best lessons I learned was about 'when to kiss and when to kick' people. There were, at times, trade offs between what I thought and what others thought.

This way, acceptability is another thing that I learned as a G-Sec. It is not always that your ideas get accepted, but if you believe in the idea, you should know how to put it forth. As they say in Deutsch 'Der Tone macht der Musik' - it is the tone that makes the music. Another part of acceptability is to be aware and agree to others' perspectives. Seriously there's some art to it.

Each of the lessons learned during this stint was helpful in some or the other aspect of my professional life later. I could relate a lot of the characteristics of human behavior that I had observed those days, to those of my colleagues and managers. It also instilled in me, an approach to look at the bigger picture during any decision making. Managing people and their attitude is an art. It also reduces the amount of unnecessary frustration that many freshers have, at their workplace. Multi-tasking and emotion management are amongst more more things that I learned. Till date, I have organized five team outings for my colleagues at various companies and each of them has been a memorable one. Life teaches.. !

It was a mix of good and learning stuff those days - During a Governing Body meeting, I remember talking with the warden of the ladies hostel when he mentioned a funny incident: There was this girl who left the ladies' hostel mentioning that she's going to the library, and the warden spotted her kissing her boyfriend under some tree. The warden scribbled on the security logbook, right next to the entry made by the girl '..... was found in 'love' and not in the library'!

Powered by ScribeFire.