CHAPTER 2 - Wind Beneath My Wings

Wind Beneath My Wings

Call it Destiny or Fate that had worked its magic or a reasonable flaunting of his still-unfinished academic credentials, which was inclusive of a year of practical experience euphemistically called Professional Practice, Arinvan Maliek was fortunately bailed out from this daunting business of “experience first” crap: courtesy NISE. A year of mentor-monitored Professional Practice at an indigenous software development firm in Banjara Hills had worked in his favour and solved the nagging problem of ‘experience’, once and for all.

Getting a job through the campus placement was made out to be the only available option for Arinvan, and thank God for it. He figured, despite being slightly avaricious on his part, that a job placement his academy is going to help him with does have the necessary wherewithal to provide an ‘escape hatch’, an egress out which you go. Not having to bother on his own in a cut-throat world outside: a world that neither forgives nor pardons was blissfully relaxing! Otherwise, fresh out of college and having no valid ‘experience’ beforehand is really atrocious; it gnaws at most IT aspirants’ minds even if they had bothered doing some dummy projects in the college computer lab! So how does one solve the problem of real-time ‘experience’, ‘getting a job’ and keeping it too? Simple: Fetch Professional Practice for yourselves folks and live to die another day!

Must say, diligent job assistance provided by NISE academy came as a great leveler of things to find an apt job for me. As a matter of fact, the HR guys themselves never stopped appreciating the candidates concerned that “it was ‘you’ who have succeeded not us, for our job was meant to channelize your aspirations to the next level”. That’s a nicer version of saying: “We tolerated you for 3 long years, now go on…get this… and gettaouttahere!” Modesty, plain modesty!

Eternally thankful though I was to NISE, I still had had to, at a personal level, learn the ropes of saying yes to Life’s ‘working and earning a living’ ballgame. Or else what? Well, you can take a guess. Consequences, my dear, consequences.

And before long, Arinvan landed a job at one of the best IT companies this part of the world has ever seen or heard before.

∞

Indeed, Arinvan’s life at Satyam was much more gratifying than a mere significance of ‘experience’ could entice him to make him ‘jump’ for something somewhere. Over five long years at the helm was not entirely, I confess, good enough an experience. Like they say every cloud has a silver lining, mine too had one. Perhaps it was inevitable to be there and one couldn’t get far enough away from it.

Whenever was it possible for folks like me to escape from an aberration of Destiny? The ruthless assertion of its, sort of, cold bittersweet subtlety makes for a bigger problem in itself than the prospect of a mere ‘gratifying’ job you may have; you just couldn’t miss feeling its weirdness and peculiarity – an invitation to its deepest darkest abysses. It is ever so aloof, distant, and infinitely eternal. There’s no escaping one’s Destiny or Fate, is there? Destiny is permanent; your acceptance of it is the key to living a better life. Can’t outdo, outrun or outsmart it; it’s impossible, it’s unthinkable even. Accept your Destiny or else be forever prepared to bite the dust of ill luck. Destiny is the DNA of life; you cannot change its course, it's right of way that it forever seeks to accentuate your personal life with whatever is in store for you in the larger scheme of things of the Gods. Am I being overly philosophical here? Maybe I am. That’s what Arinvan had learned from his own share of fussy, nit-picky Destiny.

Besides, I had wanted to ‘extricate’ Satyam out of me but it fell through; as always has been the case: my heart claimed its superiority over my head. I could never do that again. But trust me, back in the year 2008, I had had that kind of feeling prowling around somewhere in the recesses of my mind again when I first read in the papers that Satyam’s Fate had been left hanging in the balance, and just a day later its carefully-crafted world-famous reputation was further reduced to tatters!

It seemed as if: all those glorious Satyam stories had been made null and void, annulled, deleted. Moral of the story: If greed is a virus that settles in your brain then no amount of common sense can save your company’s ass from a guaranteed disaster!

Out of the total of over five years at Satyam, the first three were unbelievably extraordinary but the remaining two came to be of, surprisingly, no use at all. That’s because, in the early 2000s, colleagues who mattered to me had already begun their exodus from the company. In this way, one by one, the soul of Satyam was being slowly emptied out of its creative juices, leaving the core open to all kinds of upstarts and fair-weather individuals breaking in left, right, and center. (Not to speak of the appalling tragedy that befell upon once-great Satyam in the year 2008. By which time, of course, some of us were long gone.)

Moreover, it was a shitty matter of shame, disgrace, and ultimate humiliation on the part of the so-called ‘High-Command’ – foolishly greedy as they were and not to mention their ludicrous ways of thinking like as if they were the ‘Masters of the Universe’ to play along with their hideous game of managing ‘their’ roly-poly company! – resorting to cooking up, year on year, the miserable financial performance of the company to get to be in the good books of the globalized business world!

No wonder, some of these blokes are cooling their heels in the gallows; some of them have perished never to appear in public life again, while the residual others have deservingly brought upon their puny little asses some of the most horrible medical problems, hurting them right to their bloody kidneys!

Coming back to the point: While our beloved associates went on to explore the whole wide world spread outside and considered prospective avenues of diverse interests and possibilities, I was finding myself mournfully tensed and decided to stay put at the company, which I have come to feel excited about to the point of being an adoring type. This was much before the infamous scandal that Satyam brought upon itself! It was really hard for me to accept as true the fact that one should be ready to watch out or lookout for something new when the opportune time comes.

Being bold was the new beautiful.

That’s how most software professionals channelize their necessary skills to fetch themselves not just a new job but to go out look for fresher pastures. How dumb can one be when one doesn’t know how to be aware of the ‘opportune time’ when it comes? I just don’t know why I was such inflexible in matters of one’s own selfish professional leanings. But of course, I had no heart to seek out other possibilities or take my chances like all others who were really stressed upon doing so, and not surprisingly they all did it right, to my jealous admiration, without even a glitch like as if it were magic; and their urgent willingness to step into the Future was really an incredible thing to behold. Good on you folks, wherever you are!

In the company of colleagues, mentors, managers, and most importantly people like Manpreet ‘HeartLove’ Singh, Dévee Prachad (‘Sexy Dévee’) and ‘Truck Driver’ Suraj, who were more than just friends, Arinvan Maliek had turned a new leaf in the book of his newfound professional life; a life that aspired to become more valuable and meaningful than he could ever dream of during those hallowed years of learning and longing in the superb atmosphere of Satyam Computers located at the Tesser Towers.

Yes, the cup of life was so full up to its brim in the wonderful world of Satyam: where our jobs took flight with the wind beneath our wings!

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.