Monday, February 05, 2007

All in the game – part II

The next day as soon as he logged on to the system, he saw couple of other defects logged. He had barely scratched the surface of the first one.

Just half an hour after he had been working he could feel panic setting around him. Peter looked as if he had committed some heinous crime and was seen running around as if he was trying to escape from police. After a while he was seen discussing something very seriously with the PM. Anil tried to stand up and have a quick peek at the PM’s cubicle to try to find out what was going on.

He could see that Peter was furiously arguing something and turned to Anil’s cubicle with a finger pointed to him. Anil dropped to his chair. A chill ran through him.

“The most active goose is the one which will be shot by the hunter first” Imran.

Anil ignored him.

After a while, he could see his PM and Peter walking towards him. Anil’s PM was a very busy man. At a given point of time he had an average of 10000 worries. So he never worried about any, lest he missed out on other worries. And he always required a quick KT from his immediate subordinates if he were to deal with any issue, as he had no knowledge of the happenings. As you might have guessed he had too many things happening under him, so he didn’t want to risk missing any happening by remembering the other ones!

He came straight to Anil’s cubicle and beckoned Anil and Imran to the nearby meeting room.

After entering into the room and getting seated, his PM asked.

“So how are you guys doing???”

Anil wasn’t sure what to answer. He had a strong feeling that he was going to be thrashed no matter what the response was.

“How we do depends on what we do and what we do depends on how we do” It was Imran again. PM looked at him with a puzzled expression, as he could not fully understand the meaning of the statement just like everybody else.

“Anyway, I heard from Peter that there is some small problem in onsite for your project”, PM continued.

Peter looked at him as if he done something blasphemous.

“Iam afraid it is by no means small Sir”

So saying he turned towards Anil and Imran.

“Folks! You might be knowing that there was a problem with the code that was deployed recently in production” he paused for just a moment to note the change in expression in the faces of both of them, then he continued.” this meeting is not about that”

Anil heaved a sigh of relief.

“This is a bigger problem than that”

Anil couldn’t guess!! What else could possibly be bigger than this?

At this instant Anil looked at the PM for which he replied. “Show them”

Peter carefully removed a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and gave to Imran. As Imran looked at it Anil peeked into with curiosity. It was handwritten by Sekar,the onsite coordinator and it read.

“God save this project. Me escape – Sekar”

Peter continued with his inimitable tone,”So now you know what is wrong!! We got this through fax from the onsite manager. He found this in Sekar’s desk. Sekar is missing from yesterday night. He was searched everywhere, but not found”

Anil couldn’t believe it!!

“This is totally unbelievable. How could experienced software professional like Sekar do such a thing? This statement looks grammatically incorrect. It even looks incomplete”

“I think the correct usage would be ‘I escape’” remarked the PM, who prides himself for following the “The perfect English” series!!! “I ran a grammar check on this and there were no other grammatical inconsistencies found”!!

“But that’s not the point!!!!!!” Peter intervened with an irritated tone.

“We need to find someone to replace Sekar and we need to find fast!!” he continued.

Now Anil looked very deeply in thought as if he was trying to find a solution for this problem. He had always wanted to go onsite. At least to satisfy the curious oldies who had asked frustrating questions in public gatherings! His wish turned into a raging fire when one aunty with heavy make up humiliated him on one occasion by asking “Why aren’t you in onsite yet?? Aren’t you doing any project work?” But this is too fast and also situation was too dicey.

“And we have identified the suitable resource for that” Peter said and after a brief pause the PM continued.

“You both shall leave in the next available flight and shall manage operations together. As you might know, the climate is not very smooth but we have confident in your abilities and we are sure you will do your best. The future course shall be charted based on the developments.”

Anil stood there virtually stumped. One day he was at the bottom of his career and the next day, he is going onsite.

Life is crazy. He thought.

That was just the beginning.

To be continued…….


· All in the Game - part I

· All in the game – part II

· All in the game – part IV

· All in the Game – part V

· All in the Game – part VI

· All in the Game – part VII

· All in the Game – part VIII

· All in the Game – part IX

· All in the game – part X

· All in the game – part XI

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