Month: October 2002

Divali bonus given today… …

The year was good … …

None of us are from a business family. We learnt to do business by the seat of our pants. We did make a few early mistakes but mostly succeeded. Over past 5 years we have been called, ranging from, affectionately a momma papa company* to snidely a small town middle class company

Several of the policies we follow we later learned, have been expounded in tomes. I am sure most of them are already taught as basics to business management students.

One of the most important things we learned was to keep our burn rate** as low as possible. This when coupled with middle class psyche give interesting results.

Like – An average employee is more happy to receive a one time bonus of Rs15k than a Rs2k hike. So we give Divali bonuses to everyone in our office, the bonus is linked to the company performance and individual hierarchy rather than individual performance!! Somewhere down the line Swati discovered the importance of Gold in an Indian household. So this bonus is in the form of 24 Carat Gold coins. Keeps the mothers happy and will keep the wives happy in future.

Just as I was about to post this Swati came up with this quote

Our employees are more productive because they feel that they’re in an organisation that values the complexity of their entire life and tries to do something about making it a little easier for them to balance all the conflicting demands.
David Hillenbrand President and Chief Executive Officer Bayer Inc.

* Because we took Aasim (he was 18 months then) along to a first contact meet and Swati did not hesitate to bottle feed him in middle of everything 🙂
** a.k.a recurrent expenditure

Nagpur weather is generally weird in the last couple of weeks of October. The days are hot and you sweat a lot and nights are about 20C cooler. The result is you tend to drink less water… …

This literally resulted in a bad pain in the a**. I jogged without proper warm-up and water intake. Result – a bad cramp in my gluteii

On a somewhat (un)related note I got volunteered for a community project. So here I am writing code when I had expected to be relaxing … …

Not much difference 😀

When ever I work on a Sunday, Tuesday always makes me feel that it is Wednesday.

Thankfully this time it has had a good side effect. I have managed to tick out about half of my tomorrow’s to-dos

Home cooked food, hand made food, food by the lady of the house – all these are so firmly entrenched in an average middle class Indian psyche… …

I myself would have never imagined that I would do it BUT for next ten days it has been decreed that the kitchen at our home be closed!!! No meals to be cooked at home.

Swati protested and her mom hollered at her when she heard what her daughter had agreed to but the fact is Swati has so much on her hand that we cannot afford her spending time in the kitchen, at least till the new maid joins in OR if we are doomed for it till we seriously reschedule our life… …

The week passed by …. … Was not as bad as anticipated. We did fight but even that was not too bad 😉

Our Visa’s are here including Vinay’s ECR (Emigration Check Required) has been suspended for a month, getting it was the biggest bother I had – Again thanks to Swati for managing it.

Another Sunday in office – BUT – this will be the last, things are exactly on schedule, features have been frozen we will only do testing and debugging now. Everything else will be done in-situ on the live server.

This gives everyone time to celebrate Divali in peace.

Aasim just woke up singing “We will we will rock you”

A hang over from his yesterdays pre-poned birthday party to his class mates. He will be 5 on 5th November.

Apparently the kids had a lot of fun and I missed out on most of it.

Don’t know whether to be glad about it or sorry… …

Is freedom, if thrust upon still freedom?

Have downloaded a copy of Free as in Freedom – Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software By Sam Williams

The downloads are available at https://www.faifzilla.org

Earlier it wouldn’t take me so long to recover … …

Wondering about it made me realize that earlier I was on both sides of the scene. I use to practice medicine – the daily interaction with patients children … …

Most satisfying for me was reviving a fresh neonate – Theoretically you have 3 minutes before there is permanent brain damage BUT in reality you are never sure as to how much anoxia the neonate has suffered in his arduous journey thru the birth canal… …

So you learn to work fast your actions are more of a reflex than preemptive… … Call it vanity but I was somewhat of an expert in this, specially intubating (inserting a breathing tube in the trachea) a baby by just the feel.

Believe me it is not like what they show on TV or films – you have to be calm not show panic to the staff – trust everyone else’s skills. There are no curt commands to nurses, no flashes of lights on shiny apparatus.

It usually took around 60 to 80 seconds and no matter how many neonates I had revived the smile of satisfaction always betrayed me. The tears in the mothers eyes always made me feel warm inside. At times I did wonder at the potential of the life just revived.

Oh yes! and at times I was paid Rs50/- for doing this 🙂 It was just another working day… ….

I miss it all …. …. very much … …

It happened in a fraction of a second but it has been continuously playing in slow motion.since morning in my mind

I was standing at a square waiting for traffic lights to change. There were last few seconds on the opposing lane green light, this man on scooter was zooming past the square when suddenly this stupid woman in a Maruti decides to make a illegal U turn from his left – the car hit the scooter on the rear third completely flipping the man and machine in two different directions. Even before his head hit the ground with the sickening crunch I knew this was a fatal fall. He was still breathing when I reached him and nobody really comprehended that he was dying but he had multiple cranial fractures the pulse was already way too fast.

I always think that after personally declaring more than 100 deaths and performing 350+ postmortems, having been witness to post Babri riots and the Bombay bomb blasts, giving CPR to my own father – I would be immune to death and its processes

But no!! The profound despair and sense of loss you feel when a life fades out in your hand just cannot be put in words and it is always there… …

All these death mongers talking of suicide squads and those doing it should just for once hold a dying human in their hand and feel the emotions which go thru them… ….

By a quirks of mis-calculation my wardrobe has been relegated to formal trousers instead of my usual 6 month old Lees.

Several people, including friends, relatives and clients have asked if I always wear / wore jeans and full sleeves

No! when I was a doctor OR at least pretended to be I wore crisply ironed formal trousers and shirts. Oh yes the shoes were also always black leather polished daily. So now when my friends and relative see me wearing things which they have never seen me wearing the question I presume is natural.

But now as my working day starts from 7am and goes on till 10pm I find that jeans and wrinkle free shirts are the best option – you can sleep in them and they still look the same.

Also for clients Swati says that me being casually dressed is apt specially when she takes care of being formal