my daily mirror

Did I Leave my first Company ?

June 5, 2009 at 02:39 (Uncategorized)

I remember, in our school  our English teacher shared with us lot of terminologies from the world of “movie making “( possibly he had fascination or an unfulfilled dream). “Cuts and Jumps” was something we found very interesting and used abundantly in our story writing sessions… so much so that some even used the technique to leave the entire plot at the mercy of the reader’s imagination and from no where they jumped into writing the climax. Our teacher used to call their efforts ” cut ..killed … jumped and ran away “

Anyways ..I didn’t sit on the keyboard today to write an essay on movie making techniques . It is just that I’ll take the liberty of using a “cut and jump ” to fly past my school and engineering days to perch on my workingdays. I must say , for all the hardships that I had faced in moving into IT (from my Electrical Engineering stream) and my stay with HCL , I have some wonderful memories to warm the cockles of my heart, even this day.
It was May 2004 , my fifth eventful year in HCL. When Vizag in its routine summer cycle was getting rosted every inch of its length and breadth. Vizag is one such city that has managed to hold on to its many names with rare elan. Be it “Waltair ” from the early Raj days , to its cosmopolitan “Vizag” and finally the soil’s call to rechristen it to “Visakhapatnam” .. you’ll find a fair mix and mention of each of these names in and around the city proper. It is a laid back city in every sense … with its sprawling beaches, winding wide Ghat roads and perpendicular residential avenues providing many a hang out and rendezvous for people of all ages.
For those of you who do not know about my early career , I joined HCL from my college campus and was sent to the picturesque sleepy lill townish city of Visakhapatnam. I started with the decoration of a “Customer Engineer” but in essence it was a hardware engineer’s job, who at times was even called as “Computer Mechanic” ( phonetics ” Kam-poo-trr  Mek-nik    ).
That the job was tough was to say the least, it sapped us and left us like squeezed sponges at the end of the day.
Hindustan Petroleum was one account, I was entrusted to take care from my very early days. By takingcare, my Manager meant taking almost any and every care and chore of HPCL’stop management, including visit to their homes to set right issues with their home computers.
With time I moved from an hands on engineer’s role to more of a marketingengineer( a limbo I soon realized ), who would participate in Bids on systems , solutions and almost anything under the sky that could be sold with HCL’s logo on it.
Coming back to that summer afternoon of May 2004, I was busy putting the finishing touches to an important bid for HPCL. We were asked to quote the best price for supplying 500 systems in a sealed tender . HCL’s Pondicherry Manufacturing unit for some reason used to wait until the very last hour, before emailing the best price that we could offer. The cut off time for receipt of tender was put at 2 PM on that day. As has happened few times, I received the price at 12:30 PM and had to rush through the last minute formalities. Lunch was never a priority while at HCL , so by 1:00 PM I had checked and rechecked our papers against the given checklist. I was all set to start on the 17 kms course to HPCL’s Visakh Refinery.

I had bought a Bajaj Boxer bike during my early days in HCL, as Conveyance Claims and bachelor’s pride were both given a  mighty boost by it. As I walked down the stairs, helmet in hand and the toolkit round my shoulder, I realized, for all my engagement in the tender I had barely noticed that the heavens have opened. Vizag never had a well defined  rainy season, which meant you could expect a sudden downpour much before the Met office had announced the arrival of monsoon.  It indeed was raining heavily and my blue raincoat suddenly found relevance as I pulled the curled roll from inside my toolkit. I ensured, I tucked the tender inside my toolkit and to protect the whole thing from the rain, I put my raincoat over and around the bag.

I trudged carefully through the many pot holes and the haze in front , to reach a treacherous stretch of road near the Naval Dockyard. This stretch of road had heavy vehicles moving in and out of the Navy and Petroleum Terminals  , resultingin lot of oil sleek on the road. Rain and oil on a road awash, with hidden pot holes were a bike rider’s nightmare. The clock was running out for me and the 18 kmscourse had suddenly doubled itself. I stopped a few times , to wipe the rain off my helmet visor only to have the haze return. I rode down the newly constructed flyover and sped along the stretch of road makingway to Navy. I hit a small pothole , and while I tried to keep the bike in balance , the little twitch in my shoulder swiveled the heavy toolkit from my back to the side . This swayed my balance , as the bike hit a slippery patch of the road. I knew I was losingcontrol on the bike and as it skid away from between my legs. I ensured, I allowed it to go the other way as I fell on my hands and chest to the left. Dragged a few good feet , I was lying on my hands and chest … the bike gave a huge groan and turned off. Mud splurged on my face through the visor … and as I slowly got myself on the knees and back to my feet , I knew my palms were peeled off. The trouser was tattered near the knee and the mud water on the bruise was telling. As I pulled myself up slowly ,  I noticed there wasn’t a person anywhere to give me a hand. Rain and salt water rolled down my face , as I wiped my wrist watch to take a look at the time. It was 1:40 PM and I still had to travel 6 odd kilometers. In such moments your physical pain easily takes the backseat.

I limped to my bike , pulled up the fallen beast and kicked to start it once more. Amongst all my misfortunes on that fateful afternoon , it was almost a miracle that the poor machine roared again. I rode fairly fast and reached the gates of the  HPCL Refinery with about couple of minutes left to 2 PM. The adventure would expectedly have ended there, except that I had to travel another couple of kilometers inside the refinery to reach the Purchase Department and submit the Bid. I knew, I couldn’t make it for all sane miracles in the world.

To go inside the Refinery Offices, I had to take a Gate Pass from the security. I picked the phone at the gate and called the Manager , Purchase. I knew he was a tough nut , as most Corporate Managers who deal with vendors normally are. After introducing myself briefly , I said I wanted to come in to submit the bid. A cold voice replied from the other end …” But young man , do you think you can make it to the Bid Box before 2 PM ? I knew it was slipping away from me … a lump formed near my throat  and a foreboding sense of loss gripped me. I made a fervent plea ..” Sir, I have put in a lot to reach until the gate , please please ,don’t disallow our tender. This bid means a lot for me “
There was a long pause ( a few seconds was like eternity then ) on the other side. Mr Raghavendrachar, asked me to give the phone to the security officer. The security officer spoke over the phone , kept looking at me and threw a meaningful smile at the end of the chat.
He took his pen and wrote over the tender envelope ” submitted at 1:55 PM at Security Gate ” and put the official stamp. He looked at me and gently said , your Tender is being accepted as the Tender did not have a mention of the specific place within the Refinery where the bid was to be submitted by 2 PM. Since you have reached the gate by 2 , we are accepting yours.

Cut and Jump … A month later, bids were opened and HCLwas awarded the deal worth about 2 crores. Mr Raghavendrachar, the tough Purchase Manager whom I had by that time met a few times, patted me on the back and with a wide grin told my boss , “you must take care of your engineer, he has great passion for his work”.

Cut and Jump … another month on, it was the July Quarterly conference of HCL at Hyderabad. The serious and rather unwanted dissection of achievements, targets and other mundane matters were over by afternoon. It was evening, the lawn of one of this many Hyderabad resorts was brimming with young hearts who by now had tottering legs and wobbly eyes. Some of my HCL colleagues, admittedly waited only for this evening through their four good months of hard grind. Drinks were the order of the evening and people had the luxury of choosing. Being a teetotaler, I had very few for company and there was very less to enjoy than the spectacle of drunken Managers and inebriated Engineers. On such days you get to see the otherwise reticent , obedient engineers giving vent to their long nurtured anguish, courtesy Ehtyl Alcohol. I still remember, how one of my ever shy colleague … came up to our Manager once in a party( by that time both had more alcohol than blood in their brain )  and calmly asked ” Akbar , what the f*** do you think you have done in this quarter ? I f***ing can claim with all my honesty, that I am worth the pay that HCL gives me at the end of the month , can you B****y claim the same ?
You had to see the expression on my Manager’s obese face on that day to believe. I must say , I laughed more than I ever had that day on my bed and later came to know congratulatory calls were not looking to stop the next day on my colleague’s phone .
But on this day , there wasn’t any such amusement. I was caught up by our Accounts Manager in the lawn , and he was trying to impress upon me the good sides of drinking( as if there were many that were not known ). As usual I was givinghim a ” I knew it ” kind of admiring look, when my Manager stopped by us. The Accounts Manager, looked up , glanced at him and as if he had remembered a long forgotten Accounts figure , asked him with a wry smile … “so how much of the 50K sales commission for the HPCL Order, did you share with Anir ? ” .

Some facts are so brute, that even in intoxication you cannot hide from their impact. The already dark face of my Manager turned darker … and he pulled the Accounts Manager to the side.
For a moment, I wished I too was intoxicated, for good. I looked at my open palms , the marks of the bruise had long gone … the mud on my raincoat had been washed away to perfection and I had tucked away the torn pair of trousers into a corner. But the indelible mark in pain, that the evening etched on my heart, remained for years to come. I remembered , how I had read in an Article in the Economic times on the morning of that day, ” 80% of employees do not leave their company, they leave their immediate Manager ” . Prophetic … ehh

July 30th , 2004 : I completed 5 years in HCL

July 31st 2004 : After five long years I parted ways with my first company.

PS : HCLoffered sales commission/profit sharing amounts, to Account Managers and Engineers for clinching large and profitable deals from their customers. Until my stay in HCL , it used to be handed over to the Engineer’s immediate Manager for sharing.