The Foot-In-Mouth Chronicles - Part 3

(Originally posted July 2009)

Another three months have whooshed past. Yet, it looks like it was yesterday that I'd put up Part 2. Seems like space travel to me.

October 2008.

So I run into this gentleman at the cafeteria on the first floor for breakfast.

And my head goes - Hey, you've seen this guy before. Where? Of course, back on campus. What's his name? Ah yes. (But no, I am not taking names here. We'll call him Vats. You'll see why.)

Being quite the professional socialite (which in hindsight, I realise was an innocent mistake by a fresher at work), I decide to introduce myself to him.

"Hello, Prof Vats, this is a BITSian. How're you doing?"

He shakes my hand with an air of one out to crush the phalanges to calcium powder. Very well, he says. Preliminary introductions follow. I get my plate of idlis and we take a table together.

"So you're a Computer Science engineer? And you're in a biotech company?"

"Yes, sir. Up on the third floor."

"Yeah yeah, I know your Manager pretty well. He was in my junior batch."

"Ahan. Yes, loads of BITSians everywhere, sir. Your wife was one too, right?"

"No. She's just a Math Prof."

Yeah I remember, I was registered to her for Math 1 in my 1st year." (which was a bluff. I know, anything to keep a conversation going)

"Oh you were?"

"Yeah. Vidya ma'm's ad-cal classes were pretty engrossing."

"Her name's not Vidya. It's Padma."

Strike 1. Ouch. I bite my lip. Of course, her name wasn't Vidya, it was something else. The person I ended up quoting accidentally was a delectable senior who was TA in my Data Structures lab in 3rd year. Between silly algorithms and agreeable tutors, you know what (rather, who) gets in the pipeline first.

"I am sorry, my mistake. Nevertheless, it's been 4 years of good fun, and now it's over to a completely new world, shouldering a bit more responsibility!" (Lord, I really need to hide my face somewhere)

"Hmm."

2 minutes silence. Think of something else wiseguy, goes the brain. My hands aren't idle in the meantime. They've worked away on transporting the idlis to their rightful abode, and in double quick time on this occasion, considering this was the best way I could tackle an embarrassing moment. I finish my meal, and note he has more than half of his Pongal to go. Dining table etiquette demands that you wait for your companion to finish. I decide to resume the half baked conversation.

"So how's your work here? How different are you finding work here, as opposed to BITS?"

"Oh it's great. I'm still doing research, so that way it's not much of a difference, but then this is the industry, so there's a bit more pressure, as you may have realized."

And then the foot-in-mouth moment you've all been hoping for.

"So what does your company do?"

"We manufacture a lot of pharma products. Specifically, condoms. We cater to the needs of over 40% of the world's population. Durex and Kohinoor, they're both our brands."

I stare. This is like Strike 2 and 3 rolled into one. It felt like he'd pounded my head with a mallet. Let's face it, you may call it fortuitous to get to hear about the birds and the bees through someone who's no less than a professor, but I was stumped for a reply. I marvelled at the attempt to keep a straight face. My attempt, of course. By now, he'd probably described his job description enough times already.

"Oh."

And I nod my head. Couldn't do anything else, the tongue seemed to have twisted itself into a helix.

As he finished his pongal and bade goodbye, I was left wishing that I'd let a little of the sambar remain. To drown my ruddy face into.

Credits: The plate of idlis, which was the only point of that brilliant morning.

PS: If you still haven't got the Vats funda, you shouldn't be here. This post carries an Over-18 rating. Kids, shoo!

Atrocity in Madras City

An old Mountain Dew ad emphasized what would go on to become a popular quote on TV: "Cheetah bhi peeta hai". Now, what do you know. The fact that you'd join a firm and start working too, talking about company prosperity, project deadlines, client-server applications and related technical know-how could be thought of in the same vein as Ganguly playing international cricket for India. Both cases are classic examples of a tragedy, but true, nonetheless.

On the first day, like all South Indian men gaining entry into their first jobs, you arrived at your workplace an hour and a quarter ahead of the scheduled reporting time adhering to standing instructions from home (what with the Rahu Kaal and the likes creeping in). You checked your watch every ten minutes, and wiped traces of sweat trickling down your forehead. There was a slight bout of tension coupled with excitement, but you knew the sweat had more to do with an external factor - a painful one at that - being Madras city's climate. Man, you'd seen the hot deserts of Rajasthan and even withstood the 51º Pilani summer, but Pilani kinda went easy on the H-word. The humidity in Madras, alongside the sweltering heat was sufficient to make a camel pant, your sources had informed you. As you ran the kerchief down your temple for the twelfth time in as many minutes, you had not the slightest doubt in their judgments.

Your to-be colleagues did not observe superstitious sentiments, for they arrived on the dot at 9.30. After the obligatory round of introductions, they made you fill numerous forms, including those that involved you nominating a person to receive your funds in case you suddenly kicked it, bringing to your memory a blog post that you'd read sometime back.


Work culture in your company was something that you started to appreciate, as the week panned out. The easiest way to a man's heart is through his stomach - it seems like your companyfolk knew this funda too. Maybe that was why they treated you to a pizza lunch on the very first day, following it up with a get-together at Το Πάρκο* (refer Footnote). That was where the MD got the new recruits to break their shell of shyness by way of cajoling them into singing or doing a jig. With all due respect to your colleagues, the feeling that your rendition of Hotel California was received with much more gusto than the few Tamizh numbers or more importantly, the Gult numbers that went on display, ended your day on a high. And of course, speaking of highs, the 16 bottles of red and white wine that were shipped in came to your mind. You'd even gotten a phone call during the course of the get-together, where you had belligerently claimed in a rather shaky tone that you held a wine glass in your right hand, sporting brown coloured liquid right from the stem up to the brim. That the brown liquid was Coke, and that it had nothing to do with wine escaped the caller's imagination.

If you'd thought the parties ended right there, you were in for a surprise - which was another party, this time at Ο ψαράς της ορμίσκος** (refer Footnote again) - a place you considered retiring to after you'd seen enough moolah in life. A game of beach cricket later, four more imposter drinks later, more maniacal dancing moves from the MD later, you returned home well past eleven, when you looked back at the week that passed. Sadly, this was just the first week, and the actual business started the following week.

At work, your discovery of a few subtle yet significant points taught you a thing or two with regard to interacting/socializing with your colleagues. Initiating a conversation with colleagues could be uncomfortable, less awkward for a newbie. So the most common initiator would be to enquire after the area they resided in, the current state of their project, and the likes. But asking a colleague what he was working on at the moment could be embarrassing to both sides if the two of you were in the restroom, beside each other...you get the drift. Lesson to be learnt: Never open your mouth in the restroom. No, don't even look at people. Go, do, leave. No questions asked.

You also tried to draw parallels between life at college and at work.

At college, bucket parties (bucket = vodka + champagne + soda + etc) happened well past midnight, unbeknownst to higher authorities in your college.

At work, bucket parties happened well before midnight, amidst higher authorities in your company. And invariably, it was the higher authorities that acted cranky at the end of it all, and behaved the next day like they could never stand nonsensical behaviour from anyone.

In college projects, you can get away with copied code. No sweat.

In company projects, you can't get away, even if your code is original. Efficiency issues matter. Sweat.

At college, your presentations are attended by experts in your field who will screw you no matter how brilliantly you've explained your implementation of the Bellman-Ford algorithm.

At work, your presentations are attended by colleagues who'd rather get on with their projects than listen to your presentation, bringing down the population of flies in the process.

And finally, at college, you'd rather discuss who's seeing who, who just ditched who, and that cute girl you spotted in your Data Structures lecture.

At work, you're forced to discuss the G8 summit, the India-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline, the 123 deal and the role of the communists in Bengal, and that cute girl....wait a minute...cute girl who?

So that's the work drill. And it goes on.


Footnote:

* - Language changed for privacy.

** - Language changed again, for privacy.