Intern at AmEx-I dont know what I did this summers!!!

Two weeks more to go and here i am in office writing this piece. Well it all began on 7th april 2008.My first day in Amex.After boring induction ppts and guidelines about security and blah blah am called in my department.The guys seemed cool.. my OG and his senior the Diro. My first impression about them..well chilled out guys!!! That just set the mood of my intern.Infact thats the culture here...."Little work and more play"..its fundoo to have such a life when u r 30 and have accepted the terms and conditions of life.

Did i like the work or not..its not about whether its interesting or not they say...its about whether its important or not!!! point taken....bt how long can you sustain,what drives you-money,work life balance!! watever....as my diro told me the first day "Its only 10% of the learning that you will have from your project and for the rest 90% keep your eyes and ears open" well said again.

I took the advice literally and henceforth words juz started beating my ear drums helter and skelter. Ohhs and Aahs of gals meeting in office..."hey u look great in this dress"...."wow u have got idlis today"..."look at my wedding snaps"..the constant chit chats while working......man there are all the varities there.

The swashbuckling sophisticated, the smart guys, the doods, Mrs.India runners up(circa. 1976)...nd all.In the end it was mostly about Googling,shortcuts of excel,ctrl C,ctrl V,Ctrl Page up,Ctrl Page sown,Alt Tab,Alt D,Alt V nd on nd on. Good thing i got hands on excel,attended the Board meetings..infact dat was great..and Gyan sessions with my manager and Diro.Hats off to these Guys.

How can i forget to mention the hour and half long lunch breaks followed by another hour long Coffee breaks. The experience was a paid Summer vacations with brief spells of work and loads of vellapanti!!! The D day awaits when i'll present my googling and ctrl c.. ctrl v skills.But u missed it again...there's more to it than meets the eye.. A very apt remark by the diro" u get hired because you are smart,you get paid because you can tell stories and you are paid even better if you make other people around also tell stories"!! hmm..food for thought.

So it wont be a plane jane ppt bt it will have a story..a scoop ..filled with pretensions and claims of doing great work :) I guess my first brush with corporate life has taught me that there are three types of people in an office:

One who are happy with the work

One who are not happy

One who dont care

which one is you??

Teachers- More than that (To Mam with love...)

I dunno how many of you who read this will identify with it.But it's been an important aspect of my life. My teachers right from my alma mater have always been more than that to me.

I have had the luck of being in the good books of my teachers especially during the school days :) My LKG teacher Miss.Lilly still remembered me and i used to meet her till i was in 8th std in that school.She had got a novel for three of us who were in touch with her ,only that i was too shy then to accept a gift from her . Miss.Mini my class V teacher threatened to stop teaching the class for making a lot of noise and i being the class monitor almost had tears!!

We had planned to decorate the class for teachers day as a surprise in class IV. In evening the 5 or 6 of us i dun remem the names exactly except for a gal Ashima ( i remem dat cause my cousins teased me a lot with her name!!) gathered in skool and did the classroom. It was a pleasant surprise for Miss.Perpetua and she loved it. Only for once in my life i had acted when I had participated in a shadow play was playin freedom fighter in it. This was in 6th std.Our show had to begin and we were all standing outside the curtain in the room.Philomina Mam who was directing us she just entered the room and was furious at the sight.She just slapped somebody without seeing the face in the dark room. It was me!! I got stunned for a while and after a moment cried and howled!! Man she consoled me so hard. Even till the day she left the school finally for Kerala she treated my like her younger brother.When i last went to meet her she said she was sorry for that slap...i remember it so vividly,wonder how some things just stay with you.

I think its simply great to share a camaraderie with your teachers outside the class room interactions. This is about when i was in class XI and I had a special chemistry with my chemistry teacher.I think there's a thing about Chemistry teachers!! She was truly a friend ,philosopher and guide. I dunno somehow but she had come to know of my ongoing fling in school and my whole chemistry viva was based on that!! She gently warned me not to lose focus on studies and handle things maturely.Anjali Mam ,my chemistry teacher I was in touch with her for a long time after I finished my school. I used to phone her on her Birthdays every year..but am having difficulty now remembering since when did i lose touch with her... When i met with my only accident in class IX and had broken my caller bone after being hit by a geep ,it was my teachers callin my mom and consoling her not to worry.

I have not taken all the names here Mrs.Maina,Mrs.Deepti,Mrs.Rita,Mrs.Shakuntala....and many more...i feel its a great feeling to be loved by your teachers and we can not deny that almost everybody has had their slip of tongues in calling the teachers "mummy" rather than "miss" in kindergarten..i thought it would be just an occasion to remember our second moms on mothers day today!!

An inspiring one-How suddenly a drive in an auto can inspire you!!

I just could not resist the thoughts that this should make an ideal opening of my blog...How I percieve life to be..nd how small things like this tell you that life is so meaningful....

It just so happened that I missed my company cab to return home on Friday night and had to hitch hike with a friend upto a point and took an auto from there. It was a usual day with a bit of extra work and as usual i was contemplating about a lot of stuff while sitting in auto with all the mad rush of weekend on the roads out there..

With no incoming calls and no messages on my cell..just started the conversation with the Auto Driver.I just asked him about his where abouts. The first reply seemed obvious as we all think it to be..he was from Bihar. I then asked how long he had been in Delhi and has he been driving auto all the while? I have forgotten his name but his initials were D somethin..I'll call him 'D'. He said its been 3 years bt he has been drivin auto for only 3 months now. He had lost his job in an industry where he used to work. Next came the impromptu that he was also studyin and had juz given his class XII exam from IGNOU. It just struck me as i found it interesting. I asked how was it like studying nd he was pretty candid about it how he screwed up his Political Science paper nd did well in English grammar , History though. I asked him about how do you take out time to study and all...Obviously with all the hard days of work and supporting a family with 4 children he had no time left to study daily..But then came the most startling revelations.

He said he was actually a B.Sc Honors graduate from Bihar and had been a teacher in primary school there.It took me by surprise what would have led him to drive an auto here with his qualifications. As the conversation went on and I was all ears to this interesting account it was getting a bit difficult to listen in the blaring horns all around. He then said "He was a murder convict"...Okay i was now in an auto with a Science Honors graduate Murder convict auto wallah from Bihar..dats interesting...There was a bit of silence from my side bt he went on and narrated his account..He told me how he was falsely convicted as the murderer had hid the weapon- the gun in his house. And while he was going to dispose it off he was caught by the police!!! Now you can either believe it or just junk his story..but i just believed him. He faced trial and had to spent around an year in jail,his documents seized, his identity kinda erased..I was not really interested in the law and order system of his place..he had suffered a lot..But i was more keen about his present how was he coping with it. His zeal to get back to life to study was inspiring in a way.

He talked about he ensured that his 3 daughters and 1 son they all went to school. His wife he told me was teaching in an NGO for aged people. The man's commitment to follow the right course in life and how he had made education his calling in life had some or the other lesson in it.
It seemed all this was just churning inside him and he wanted to share it and I was more than interested in his account.I asked him finally what exactly he wanted to do after completing his education and D replied he was planning to join a 3 month English speaking course very soon and wanted to learn computers to earn a descent living for the rest of his life. I must admit I was overwhelmed by this man's account and while paying the fare i gave him my Card. Its my first card i have given to any one since we got them printed for every student in our B-skool and had find no good use of it :) I just told him that hopefully when you will be done with your pursuit of education and i would have completed my MBA as well may be I could do something for him..I was just remembering his quotation from his English lessons he had learned in school that summarized the mantra of D's life...i have tried to recollect it but the essence is intact " He who has lived death faces no fear in life"....Hats off to the Human spirit !!