Gatekeeper

After eight weeks of induction training, our batch of forty new employees at HCL set off to various cities across India where we would be posted for a few years.I was posted to Lucknow and two other freshmen along with me would make up the front-line sales team, lead by a senior executive and a branch manager.

It was September 1986, just after the induction training, about six of us were asked to stay back at the corporate office in New Delhi for two days to help with “grunt work” for the impending Busybee II (an Intel 80286 based PC) launch. The task at hand was simple - put together several hundred binders of technical and sales material for the launch. It was mostly photocopying, punching and binding. But there was a lot of it. We worked nonstop for twenty four hours, racing against time. The launch was set for the 8th and the binders had to reach all sales offices across the country, so sales teams could be trained prior to the launch.

Half way through the grind, a couple of us decided to get some food from a nearby food truck. It was past 11:00 pm. We took the rickety elevator down five floors, only to find the exit doors locked, but thankfully there were a couple of watchmen sitting on a cot nearby and one of then let us out. We were back in about 15 minutes with Chow Mien and Chicken Manchurian. We could see that the door had been locked again, so we jovially asked the watchmen to let us in. There was silence from the bunch, but only for a few seconds, then a heavy guttural voice said in a Haryanavi accent - What is going on here? Why are you guys working at this time? The owner of the guttural voice was laying on the cot and must have weighed over a hundred and fifty kilograms. He was rustic, huge and menacing. Our explanations about ‘launch’ and ‘computer’ etc. in hinglish, all fell on deaf ears. He was not interested in what we were saying. After several attempts in vain we gave up trying to convince him. Self-doubt set in  - we were supposed to be ‘salesmen’ and had failed miserably at convincing the hulk to let us into the building. Everything went quiet again, there was an impasse. A minute later the junior watchman looked at me and signaled me to get closer to his boss and sit on the cot. Weird and scary thoughts crossed my mind but I complied meekly. I sat at the edge of the cot where junior had pointed. It was the foot of the cot. Then junior said in an authoritative voice - "massage the bosses legs"! - I complied meekly. After a few minutes I found myself massaging his other leg too. Then his back, arms and shoulders. What an ordeal. By contrast photocopying, punching and binding was really cushy upstairs. After about fifteen minutes, my buddy mustered up some courage to plead again to let us into the building, miraculously, the hulk relented, turned on his side, expelled a high decibel flatus and waved at his deputy to open the door and let us go. By this time I needed a massage - of body and self esteem.

When morning broke , the general manager of marketing, came in early to work and was pleased with the progress we had made. He picked up one binder and started leafing through it and abruptly stopped. He flipped a few pages back and forward and then very calmly said - ‘guys stop’. A couple of chapters were out of sequence and would have to be redone. The next twenty fours were back-breaking. We were not going chow mien shopping tonight. Thankfully, the GM arranged for catered food for the rest of the day. After forty eight hours of nonstop work and no sleep, we were half dead and ready to hit the sack.

But there was one small wrinkle, we were now one day behind schedule and I was randomly picked from the group to get onto a flight and carry four large boxes of binders with me as personal baggage and get to Bangalore as soon as possible, the training was starting that morning in Bangalore. The GM had left the previous evening. There were a couple of other minor hurdles to cross, I would have to buy a ticket in cash at the airport and pay for the “excess baggage” and of course I had no money. A resourceful office manager arranged for an employee in the accounting department to meet me at the airport at 5 am with enough cash for the flight ticket and the baggage. I landed in Bangalore and hired a taxi but had no money for the fare. The training event was at a fancy hotel, I gently cracked open the door into the large convention room, The GM was already on stage. He noticed the interruption, recognized me and waved me in. I entered the room , the four large boxes on a trolley being pushed by a bell-boy, we unloaded thee boxes at the front of the room, I went up the stage and quietly whispered to him - " I have no money for the taxi or hotel or return flight". He smiled, a few minutes later I was being accompanied by a staffer, the taxi-driver was instructed to take me to a nearby hotel, I was given enough money to pay the fare. Later that morning, someone form the Bangalore office showed up at the hotel with my return ticket, some cash and with a hand-written note - "get some rest and enjoy Bangalore for the next two days".

A few months later - when we were laughing about the whole experience, the GM said - "when you walked into the room at Bangalore, everyone thought you were the "Blue Dart" courier guy and your blue shirt added to the persona"

There were many firsts for me in this episode - "first time flying", "first paid vacation" "first time - courier" and not to forget "first time being a masseuse" 

Gatekeepers are an unavoidable irritant in life, to get past them, you have to be skilled at massaging their ego and sometimes their backs!

Bugged Again

Bugs - They have a special affinity to me. 

This has got to be my craziest adventure, If you cannot handle a gory story, stop now! and don't click the link to the picture further down in the story.

About three years back, I had to make a a two day business trip to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I would be getting onto an early morning flight. I was up at 4 AM. I took our boxer dog for a short walk and left for the airport an hour later after packing and getting ready.

It was summer and pretty hot and muggy. I was upgraded to first class on my outbound flight, so I was able to catch up on my sleep. As I settled into a nap, I was woken up by a slight itch at the back of my right leg, just behind my knee. I ignored it and went back to sleep. I had flown into Baltimore because of lower fares to that airport and rented a car to get to Harrisburg. The itch came and went, I ignored it. The trip was largely routine and uneventful. The next day, one of my meetings got canceled, so I finished my work early and was able to get onto an earlier flight back to Atlanta. I was home at 4 pm. the itch had come back a few times during my trip and I  had ignored it. Now, when I was back home, and was relaxing with a cup of tea, my mind went to the itch, I asked my wife to take a look. She put on her glasses and checked it out. She was behind me, so I could not see her expression, but there was an eerie silence from her. “There is a weird bump and it has a strange pattern on it”. I heard a hint of alarm in her voice. Let me take a picture with my phone she said, the alarm still there in her voice. As she focused on the bump and started to take the picture, she “freaked out “ - it’s a bug and it has latched on to your skin. I asked her to just yank it off. I can’t!, it has burrowed into your skin, it’s half in and half out. Now it was my turn to be alarmed but I must confess, I was amused as well, mostly with dis-belief. She showed me the picture, and my alarm level climbed a couple of notches. 

We didn't waste any time heading to our friendly family doctor who accepted walk-in patients without an appointment. It was already closing time, Dr. Singh was on vacation that day. His standby Dr. Kumar was also heading out of the door but agreed to see me after my wife explained the situation and showed her the picture. The doctor was intrigued and I think excited in a sick way, she had never seen anything like that. She agreed with my wife that it was a bug, probably a maggot that was drilling into me. I was directed to the inspection table , belly down so she could look at it. Since it was past closing time, the rest of the staff had left and there was only a front-desk admin assistant besides Dr. Kumar. My wife was quickly enlisted as a nurse assistant by the doctor. Her job was to shine some light on the intruder with her phone flashlight. The scalpels came out and Dr. Kumar went to work. After a few pokes and  prods, she triumphantly said , "it is what we thought it was and it is alive!" Fifteen minutes later, the ad-hoc surgery was completed, I was cleaned, bandaged, injected with antibiotics and was handed the prized remains of the now murdered bug by Dr. Kumar. 

The bug had led a privileged life the last couple of days. It had a personal escort on its flight to Harrisburg, had a comfortable car ride and slept at a decent hotel and a flight back to Atlanta. It even flew un-ticketed, including first class on one segment. It was well fed on my flesh. But now the bugs two day sojourn had come to a bloody end. My wife asked Dr. Kumar - did you get all of it out? I hope so, she said. Keep an eye on the area for a few days , it you see anything unusual or if your husband develops a fever, get back in touch with us.

On the way back home, my wife finally asked me the most important question- how did it get there in the first place? I had no clue! After a couple of hours of speculation we settled on what seemed to be a logical explanation - when I took our dog for a walk in the dark that morning, I was wearing shorts and when Rocky went into the bushes for his business, the bug took a leap of faith onto the human leg nearby and latched on.

This episode left me scarred and with a question in my mind, I am still searching for an answer - Should one pay attention to minor irritants in life?

This is my second bug story - please read my first "bug" blog post titled  Doctor, Chef Or Archaeologist? Bug Off here.

Can I get a ride? Or three?

Another "first job" story. While at  HCL, I extensively traveled eastern Uttar Pradesh - the largest state in India. PC's were just starting to make their way into large cities, Universities and Corporations. Small businesses and individuals were also dipping their toes into the digital world. 

This particular trip started with an uneventful overnight train ride from Lucknow to Varanasi, where I spent two days. Next stop was a coal mining township - Singrauli. The only way to get there was by road. A six-hour trip. The last bus for the day had left and the next bus was in the morning which would mean losing half the day. A well informed local let me in on another option. I could potentially get a ride in a newspaper delivery Jeep that would leave around midnight and drop me about 10 miles away from Singrauli. After a late dinner. I headed to the rendezvous point and to my horror the driver informed me that all the three seats were sold. I was desperate, I had to be on this Jeep and was willing to pay him a few extra bucks. Soon we were on our way, the driver and three passengers in the front, I was at the back lying flat on top of a stack of newspapers. The crawl space barely ten inches high, just enough to get my plump self on top with not an inch to spare. It was a soft top Jeep and the back flap was tattered and torn.

The Jeep would be making three stops en-route and dropping off bundles of newspaper at each stop - the roads were bumpy, dusty and with every bump my face would hit the soft top roof and very soon I was chewing sand and dirt. One of the stops was an Aluminum plant in Renukoot owned by Hindalco. A large bundle of newspapers delivered here finally gave me some breathing room on top of the heap. Fast forward to 4:30 am, the Jeep stopped at a fork on the state highway, this was my drop-off point. Total wilderness and pitch dark, not a soul around, no habitation, no nothing around. no light, no water, no nothing!  My final destination - Singrauli was about 10 miles away and a local bus would come by at around 5:30 am. This was turning out to be a bad idea, a real bad idea! I did not blame myself, I cursed the guy who gave me this great idea.  

The one-hour wait was an eternity, scary, cold, dark. At every sound in the darkness, I jumped out of my skin. I set my briefcase down on the shoulder of the road and sat on it, waiting. In that one hour, not one vehicle came by, not one! And then a distant sound - growing louder gradually, and a faint light in the distance. A vehicle approached, rattling along, I hoped it was the bus. It seemed like a bus, the rattling really loud as it approached me, I stuck my hand out and waived, Yes! It was the bus, sharp 5:30 am. I boarded the bus, there were no lights inside, I felt my way to the nearest seat and sat down. Ouch! the seat was just a plank of wood, no cushion, the bus was a relic! Ouch! Thank God for the bus! I was the only passenger on it, we set off on the road to Singrauli. I was so tired and sleepy, I dozed off within a couple of minutes and was suddenly woken up by the loud crowing of a rooster....and oh the Rooster was on the bus, three rows from me, his owner had him in a cane-basket sitting next to him on a seat. It was now light, and I could see stuff around, I looked around the bus, there was one more person standing in the rear with two large milk cans. The bus carried on at barely 10 miles an hour, bumping and rattling on the single lane road. The rooster-man and the milk-man had boarded at a bus-stop when I was fast asleep. Next stop, yup you guessed it, a farmer and his wife with two goats! The goats refused to board the bus, so the man carried them up one at a time. It was one happy family now - A computer salesman, a rooster-man, a milkman and a farming couple with two goats, all in a rickety bus with no cushioned seats and broken windows, headed on the trip of my life! The Jeep ride by contrast was a piece of cake.

I got to the guest-house, freshened up and started preparing for my meeting with the EDP manager (Now known as the CIO) which was scheduled just after lunch. My senior colleague would be arriving directly from Lucknow, in time for the meeting. The meeting was a moderate success, we had a decent chance of securing the upcoming bid the client would be putting out to buy a host of computer systems. We had dinner with the EDP manager at the company guest house. He had arranged for a company vehicle to drop us about 40 miles away at a small rural railway station. From there, we could get a train at 2:00 am to a city called Allahabad, a 5 hour train journey. 

1:00 A.M, we got dropped at this small rail station, just another trivial fact - we were out of money. We were unable to get a tour advance when we started the trip because the branch office was out of money. Credit cards had not yet arrived in India. We had embarked on the trip with whatever we each had in our banks, which was fairly insignificant, given that we were at the beginning of our careers. The train arrived, we decided we decided not to buy tickets, we were dressed appropriately to be traveling in first class, so we confidently boarded the first-class coach, peeped into a cabin which we found empty, climbed on to the two upper berths, and using our briefcases as pillows, we settled down for a comfortable few hours in first-class, Ticket-less! We had barely traveled an hour when the train suddenly stopped, and we could hear a lot of commotion on the platform. We jumped down from our berths, stepped out of the cabin and peeked through the window, horror - a surprise check for ticket-less travel, how did they know we were traveling ticket-less? The inspectors were headed towards our coach and would be upon us in a minute. In a flash both of us grabbed our briefcases and jumped off the train on the other side. The train started moving, the 'unreserved' coach was six coaches ahead of us, we ran like crazy on the large pebbles that are laid all along the rail tracks in India, the train was picking up speed, we were trying desperately to run faster, finally we got to the "unreserved" coach, my colleague got on to the foot board first and tried the door, it was locked, he handed me his briefcase and started banging the door. The coach was packed like sardines and the sardines would not open the door. The train was now going faster, the banging on the door was getting louder, the cursing even louder. I was running now for my life, with two briefcases, formal shoes, dress pants, running on pebbles! Mercy, the door suddenly opened, my colleague squeezed his way in, grabbed one briefcase from me and then gave me a hand up. Panting, breathless, home! There was standing room only, sweaty, stinky, colored fluid flowing on the floor from the lavatory at the end of the coach. What is that fluid? Don't pay any attention to it shouted my colleague! - just do not look that way, just do not breathe if you don't have to!

We stood for the next two hours, we were sardines too, stinky, sweaty, tired - when miraculously at a stop about thirty people got off the train and no one got on. what a relief! There was no sitting room as yet but we could walk around the coach freely now. The other end of the coach was dry, our morning newspaper became our bed-sheets, which we laid out in the passageway, our trusted briefcases once again became the pillow. When you are exhausted, you can sleep anywhere, even on a stone floor in a train with a sheet of newspaper as your bed-sheet and an occasional passenger tripping on or kicking you!

7:00 AM Allahabad, no money, feeling yuckier and filthier. Fortunately, another colleagues' father was the Director at an Engineering College here and they had a bungalow on campus, our colleague was also going to be in Allahabad that day. We hired a rickshaw and headed over, we had just enough to pay the rickshaw.  Warm bath, home food, some rest, human again.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, we borrowed money from our colleagues' dad and after a day of work in Allahabad went back to Lucknow the next day.

#varanasi #allahabad #trainjourney #renukoot #busride

Be a part of the solution!

On my first job at HCL (Then - Hindustan Computers, Ltd.), my travels frequently took me to Varanasi (also known as - Benares) in eastern Uttar Pradesh - the most populous state in India. On one of my initial trips , I made a sales call at the Electrical Engineering department of Benares Hindu University or BHU. The EE department was an existing customer and owned six personal computers they had purchased from HCL a couple of years prior to my visit.

They were now looking to buy three additional PC’s and had sent us a sales enquiry. The enquiry had made its way to us in Lucknow via our head office in New Delhi. The Lucknow branch had been established only a few weeks back, most customers were unaware of this and continued to correspond with the head office. The head of the EE department (I forget his name now) pleasantly greeted me in his lab and after the initial courtesies, we got into a discussion on what they were looking to purchase, prices and delivery schedule etc. He was a satisfied customer and predisposed to purchasing the additional hardware from HCL. That would qualify as a dream sales call for any sales engineer. I was moving in fast for the close, quickly pulling out company stationary from my brief case and preparing a hand-written proposal complete with detailed specifications, payment and warranty terms , delivery schedule, post warranty maintenance details etc. I signed the proposal with a flourish and pushed the original across the desk to him and retained the carbon copy for our records. The professor went over it with a magnifying glass and after a few minutes looked up at me seemingly satisfied with everything. I expectantly looked at him, in anticipation of next steps to secure the order or at least a commitment of the order. There would be a formal 'tender' process to consummate the purchase but all I needed was a nod, a handshake, a commitment.

The curve ball he threw at me at this moment caught me completely by surprise. He said, 'I would like to give you a commitment for this order, but there is one thing you need to take care of' - I braced myself and all kinds of thoughts crossed my mind - is he looking for a deeper discount or additionally favorable terms or could it something more nefarious like an under the table bribe. The suspense did not last long. He stated in a firm but non threatening voice, 'You know we are a satisfied existing customer, but the fact is that three of the six existing computers we own are inoperable and we have been waiting for the last two months for your company to send a service engineer to attend to the PC’s'. My palms were beginning to sweat a bit, the thought of the order slipping away was scary, I quickly recovered my composure - and promised to move ‘heaven and earth’ to get the problem addressed with the highest priority. Soon, we had a deal - if I did move ‘heaven and earth’, he would buy from me.

I rushed to the train station to get back to Lucknow. This was a successful visit. All I needed to do is go into my bosses office first thing next morning, show him the copy of the proposal and let him move ‘heaven and earth’ - that was his job. He had been my boss merely two months and while I could not profess that I knew all about him, his reputation for making things happen preceded him.

My boss, R K Bachus came to the office promptly the next morning at his regular time, I had been waiting anxiously for the past one hour. My desk was right across his walled office and he could see me from his desk. When he settled down, he looked across and caught me staring expectantly in his direction. He shouted - “Khurana” and made a hand gesture to come into his office. I shot out from my chair like a bullet and promptly placed the proposal copy on his desk even before he could ask me a question. I went onto explain that this was the order that the customer wanted to place with us but was contingent upon his outstanding service issue being resolved expeditiously. Mr. Bachus, I have promised to move ‘heaven and earth’ and I am counting on you. He looked at me and asked me a simple question - What is wrong with their computers? I quickly replied - “they are inoperable”. He repeated his question- What is wrong with their computers? I understood his question the second time- ‘I don’t know’ I replied in a voice that was meant to imply - why are you asking me this question? I am a sales guy , not a service engineer. He pushed his chair back a little and reached for the bottom most drawer of his desk, he retrieved whatever he was looking for very quickly and pushed it across the desk to me. It was a toolkit with spanners and screw-drivers. He paused slightly and then stated very "matter of factly" - take the evening train back to Benares, figure out what exactly is wrong with the PC’s and then I will be willing to move ‘heaven and earth’. 

That was my first ‘professional’ life lesson - ‘don’t be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution ‘. A lesson learnt and cherished to this day, more than three decades later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucknow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banaras_Hindu_University
#bhu #benaras #beneres #varanasi