The co-passengers of my 2.5 yrs of roller-coaster ride at i2....

I joined i2 on 21st June, 2004 and the clock started ticking away. And as it often happens with time, they started forming a chain of days, months and years. The 2.5 years at i2 have been a period of roller-coaster ride and this blog is dedicated to all my co-passengers.

A&A: While all my significant co-passengers will be introduced in alphabetical order (easier for me to keep track of the list!!!!), these two SPECIAL passengers definitely violate all rules and orders. After all, I have spent some of the happiest moments in the last 2.5 years when they are around. Anvita and Ananya-the two little dolls- are two of the cutest kids I have ever met! It's the memory of their innocense, their smiles, their shouts, their demands - that's gonna be with me all along. I sincerely hope that my leaving i2 has no impact on our outings, park visits, singing sessions, dance sessions, game sessions and bike sessions....

Aarti: 12 O'clock, Midnight. If the neighbours at Mantri Residency or at Manish's C1 had thaught an earthquake had hit Bangalore, they were not quite right. It was our dear aunti at her dancing best! And after one or two glasses of wine/vodka/beer (well it realy doesn't matter which version of alcohol it is!!!!), her dancing enthusiasm reaches its peak! This amazing source of enthusiasm and energy just does not know how and when to get tired!!!! Have worked with her right from my first project in i2 till the last one and I must admit that the level of enthusiasm she brings into her projects is truely admirable. But the best part about her being around is that fun is always just round the corner and more often than not, it's herself who is the center of attack!!!!
We all know that the consonents G and H are next to each other in the english alphabet list, but in her world A is just as close to G and H as it can get! And the poor S gets sandwitched in the fusion of confusions of her admiration for G and H (Well, I may sound cryptic, but those who should understand WILL understand)!!!! She is one of the oldest in the team, but looks the youngest. Many attribute this to her brilliant dressing sense, but I have always believed that smartness aur beauty dressing mein nehin attitude mein hotee hain!!!! Keep up the evergreen & everhappy attitude auntiiiiiiii....

Anant: Bikes, Trips, Adventure and Music - he loves it all. And that is precisely why even after almost two years of his living my team , we are still in touch. Hats off to this guy for his ability to find time to continue doing all of these inspite of work pressure and other personal issues. This is where I definitely need afew crash courses from him:-). Coming back to work, we worked together for a comparatively short time. While I would not catagorize him as an epitome of dedication and hardwork, what is striking about this guy is his ability to complete his tasks at blistering pace. And I am sure the main reason for that is his indulgence (well at times over indulgence!!!!) in all those outside office acitvities. In a very ironic way, once again, we may end up working very closely with each other in our new assignments. And if that happens, am surely looking at some real fun time ahead....

Ashish: We fondly call each other Darling and it just stops there! Our chat sessions typically start something like: "Darling, howz life?". "Arrey Darling, going on". And our love affair ends there! The next sentence would sound something like: "saala kutta, kamina kabhi to office se ghar jaya kar" and it continues!!!! I got to know this guy closely during our internship period. And we happened to concur again, after one year, in i2. He joined i2 one week after me and since then we have shared both our personal and professional issues with each other. A very intelligent guy with extreme dedication, this guy is surely going to go places. With the unexpected and unintended end of my i2 career, it's our personal friendship that will surely help us to keep in touch with each other....

Atul: Give this guy the name of a new tool and he will stop his breath till the moment he finds that tool and installs it on his computer!!!! We both joined i2 together and attended most of our initial training sessions together. He has this uncanny ability of cracking a joke on almost every topic under discussion!!!! A java freak, I really have had a tough time stopping this guy from writing a java script for every damn validation that he is asked to write:-). An ardent reader of techie stuff (god knows how people manage to read the long techie articles without dosing off), this guy must have ended up taking print outs of atleast 30-40 pages everyday. He is a simple person at heart, but his codes are almost always the opposite. Even the simplest of requirements he will end up implementing in a very complex manner making code reviews a night-mare! Among the passengers that I have introduced so far, he is the only one who will be working with me as part of the Teradata team and am sure we have a challanging yet stimulating time ahead....

Manish: He is suffering from 100+ fever, shivering, quite understandably could not come to office! 5:30 in the evening he receives a call: "Hey Manish, today is Sangeeth's last day, so we are planning to have a quick party at his place. Will you be in a position to join us?". After a moment of pause, incomes the reply from Manish: "I am having fever, but I think couple of drinks will serve as better medicine that the antibiotics". And we found him - all set- waiting for us infront of Raheja Residency!!!! Well, that's Manish Vijay for you. Never short of enthu for party, dance or movies - this guy also probably has the record of completing the maximum number of releases after "party" under his belt. And for Christs' sake, if any customer had ever got to know how and when and in what state he did those releases, even almighty himself would have found it tough to save us!!!! But the best part is, customers never got to know it since when it comes to work, his dedication and sincerity is beyond any question - all party fever come crashing down when he gets back to work!!!! The guy responsible for introducing me to the world of i2, he has always been a great source of help for me and the journey continues....

Neelesh: "Hi, I am Neelesh. This is your training schedule to ramp you up on MDM and other related stuff. I have discussed this with Seema as well." With these lines he shook hands and handed me a piece of paper. Life has come a long way since that hand shake. There are three persons to whom I owe all my professional success so far and undoubtedly he is one of them (The other two will be introduced later). I have already written in my first blog about how I was introduced to his dedication and hardwork even before my joining i2. It will always remain a challange to come even close to the level of dedication and ownership that he displays. But it's not only about work. He is no less than our Mr. Vijay when it comes to parties and whiskies!!!! And he also has this great ability to stretch any release till its last minute (arguably in the best interest of the project!!!!). I still remember those days when we would start ftp of the installers at 2 am, go in search of a "cycle-teawala" to Koramangala and return to send the final mail before WOWAUS start of business!!!!
Though he was officially my manager in i2 only for a brief period of time and with our moving into Teradata, we again end up working for two different groups, I am quite sure I will continue to get all his guidance and support in all my future endeavours....

Nitin: "This is Jain, Nitin Pratap Jain" - pata nehin kis galat waqt pe kis galat jagah pe kin galat logo ke saamne usne ye lines kaha and it's still haunting him! Tassion ka chalta phirrta dukan, this guy joined us as an intern in the middle of one of our projects. And he almost picked up things from nowhere and started contributing to the project. He did have the luxury of working with an extremely helpful team, but unless one is himself enthusiastic to learn, even the greatest of teams cannot make one learn. This is where he stood apart from the rest of the new joinees, an ever-inquisitive mind to learn something new, something different! His active participation in i2-bash events have earned him quite a few fans for his dancing and acting skills. Sometimes acting does come naturally especially when one can relate to it completely (those who cannot relate to this sentence must see his i2-bash dance with a beer oops I mean bisleri bottle!!!!). It's indeed great to have such an enthusiastic, hardworking and dedicated guy as part of a team that's just starting a new journey in which strong will power will be the required vehicle and indefinite resolve to achieve excellence will be the required fuel....

Rajeev: It did not take him long to become only Rajeev from "Seema's husband Rajeev"!!!! He can single handedly bring any party to life. His enthusiasm, his sense of humour and very surprisingly his singing skills are unmatchable!!!! Every moment of his singing "jaha charr yaar" after a few glasses of beer at a late night party is still fresh in my mind. This poor soul believes that his singing talent was never allowed to blossom and was always overshadowed by a much more well trained and well sung counterpart!!!! And for once I completely agree. His command over any damn topic under the sun is really commendable. If you are planning to buy an expensive music system and you are planning to consider BOSE then DON'T consider a session of advice from this guy!!!! But do consult him for where to place your speakers, at what angle, how many micrometers (well, that's the level of precision he demands when it comes to music) above sea level etc etc. The great thing about this person is that I never knew him as a coleague and whatever we discussed or shared had nothing to do with work. And it always helps to be in touch with such a person because you always have something common to discuss even when there is nothing common related to work between the two. And am sure we will be in touch for a long time ahead irrespective of in which city we stay or which company we work for....

Rajneesh: "Main curd nehin khata kiyonki mujhe pimples ho jaayega". "The best thing about i2 is that in i2 you don't have to pretend that you have work when you actually don't have work". "Bahut dino baad ek firang mila hain, aaj to nehin chorunga". And the list of master statements from this guy can go on and on. Mr. Rajneesh Kumar from IIT-Delhi joined i2 together with me and Atul and since then we worked together almost till his leaving i2. But the best time spent with this guy was the period when we used to have an "early morning photo session" almost every alternate day at his desk. And believe me (with no offense intended) those must be the snaps of some of the hottetst babes in the country. Then there will be the usual cut-pastes into folders named in the lines of "Excellent", "Probable" and "Rejected" (don't remember the exact names of the three folders) depending on which category that girl falls according to HIM!!!! The word "him" is in caps because as per my ratings all of them belong to the category "far exceepds expectations"!!!! A die-hard fan of Amitabh Bacchan, this guy remembers almost every famous dialogue of BIG B. His command over urdu and hindi languages are unbelievable, more so for a guy from IIT since you would associate languages like C, C++, Java, assembly language, .net etc more often to such guys rather than hindi and urdu. This guy is a walking telephone directory and has this amazing ability to mug-up every damn phone number that he comes across. His keen interest on OSHO's advices and other spiritual topics is awasome and he can spend hours lecturing you on such topics (wel, almost till you dose off!!!!). No wonder, even after almost one year of his leaving i2, we are still in touch since you are never short of topics to discuss when this guy is around....

Rashmi: "Rashmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii", "Yes Samarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr", "Can u send me the WWRE CIN again?", "Sent", "thankuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu", "yeah yeah manager only na saying thanks", "rashmiiiiiiiiiii managers say 'thank you' not thankuuuuuuuuuuuuu", "poya"!!!!
That's a typical chat session with rashmi. Never got a chance to know her as a senior in BITS, probably because we never had any common friends or we never were involved in any common extra curricular activities. Also, Electrical and Electronice (EEE) people always used to scare me off!!!! But that hardly made any difference and I can clearly say that she was one girl in the team to whom I never had to think and talk. Many times I just used to blabber something and then I used to wonder, "what the hell did I say just now"!!!! Her being a college senior ofcouse helped, but I often feel even if she had not been from BITS I could probably have spoken to her as freely anyway. A fundoo gal in all sense, her level of dedication for dance sessions were as infectious as her dedication towards work. I was initially shocked to see her cry so easily even at this age and stage, but later I realised that it's her strong involvement in whatever she does that makes it so easy for her to get emotional!!!! Also, again for the same reason, at times, she has such strong opinions about things that unknowingly she ends up giving people a very strong reaction even though she probably tries to convey the simplest of messages. But these are the qualities that make her the gal she is, a unique rashmiiiiiiii....

Sangeeth: In one of the previous introductions, I have mentioned that there are three persons to whom I owe all my professional success so far and he definitely is one of them. And the best part is that his leaving i2 has virtually had no impact on our conversations and mails. And this is because his help and guidance were always genuine, had nothing to do with whether we work for the same organization or not. Maxu was right when he had said even before my joining i2, "samar tum humare PM se milna, I am sure u guys will surely be very good friends". First time I met him in a DS conference room where he was presenting the WOWAUS New Line project to the MDM team as part of a Friday Session. And I immediately realized that this guy was different from the rest. Extremely diplomatic, softspoken and articulate, he was far more mature than usual for his age. And I can say that because after a lot of drilling and ragging (well he literally used to get ragged by us) Aarti, Rashmi and I could find out his real age (thanks to the spare time provided by the delay of that particular call with the woolies). You should have seen the embarrassment on his face when we all got to know that he is younger than Aarti!!!! After all, in some sense he was manager for all of us!!!! His leaving i2 and joining MIT did come as a surprise, but was really happy for him since he had taken the right decision. It's even better that he is currently doing what he is best at and what he wanted to do anyways. I will always remember those numerous sametime chat sessions with him on MDM, scope of MDM in EDM, his learnings from the WOWAUS - Amendline and most importantly the raggings that he used to go through those chats!!!! Sincere thanks Sangeeth for all your help so far and no prizes for guessing that the bugging mails and calls will continue in future as well....

Santosh: This guy thinks he knows assamese. And for god's sake, if you happen to know assamese then don't even think of asking this guy to speak assamese infront of you. Because the few words that he knows will not pass the scrutiny of the most generous censor board in the world!!!! This computer science graduate from NIT-Silchar thinks he is one of those antique pieces who dared to think differently and hence took computer science as a discipline inspite of the limited awareness of computer science as an engineering discipline in HIS time!!!! He joined our team as a PIM expert who was part of the team that had been working on PIM almost for the past 2 years. Though it took him some time to come to terms with our level of informal and chaotic behaviour, he did manage to finally become an active member of our PIM team. We successfully completed the first release of i2-PIM and as if he was just waiting for that to happen. He ended his career with i2 and joined Wipro. After some "rocking" experience at Wipro, he is back to square one again. So he is with me working for Teradata and very soon we will be working on Teradata-PIM....

Saurav: The biggest problem here is I can write pages on this guy - my two year wingie and one year roommate in Bangalore. But the unfortunate part is, on principle, I will have to refrain myself from writing anything from our personal friendship since this bolg is about the Saurav in i2. And I met the coleague Saurav only for a month!!!! On his farewell day at Taj Neelesh said, "He is the best I have seen so far" and that says it all. His sincerity, dedication and hardworking ability are just beyond comparison and the fact that even today his name is mentioned as an example in i2-MDM shows the extreme level that he had set infront of all of us before leaving i2. From my 2.5 years of stay in i2, I can safely say that i2 has not managed to find anyone who can come even close to what Saurav was....

Shashank: The first time I saw this intern in i2, I was like "what the hell is wrong with i2! Why on earth are they recruiting rock stars instead of some quality developers!!!!". And after a few days I see this guy with a neat and short hair cut!!!! My opinion on this guy changed completely when he started working with us on GAP project. The pace at which he was fixing issues was amazing. And to top it, hardly he gave me a chance to reject any issue. I was so surprised that finally I had to request neelesh to have a code review of this guy's fixes to see if he was doing it the right way!!!! When I look back, I think we were fortunate that he had decided against joining i2 post internship, otherwise we will not have been able to have him as a member of our Tearadata team!!!! But having said so many good things does not mean he has learnt it all. He is still new and is still learning. He still has a long way to go before he reaches the leagues of Sauravs and Satishjis. But with his dedication and sincerity, he definitely has the potential to get there. And till then he will keep getting scoldings from me for every mistake that he does....

Seema: What do I write about her? Should I write about the manager Seema or the singer Seema or the doll's mom Seema! How easily she plays each of these roles t perfection without one role ever coming on the way of the other!!!! As I have told in my previous blog, I knew a lot about her much before I sat infront of her on that interview day. As I told on my farewell day meeting at i2, she is one lady who had hold the fingers of a dumbo clueless mechanical engineer (not that I knew anything about mechanical engineering!!!!) and had taken him all along till he was literate enough to work independently. No doubt that she is the third person to whom I dedicate all my professional success so far.
How many times have people realised the fact that she is one manager in our team who - everytime - has to recruit completely illeterate (i mean in the software world) people and then train them right from the basics? And then when they are good enough to work on their own, they move onto play other roles (I myself belong to that category). She has to start all over again with another fresher!!!! Though I worked for most of my QA time with Neelesh, technically still she was the lady who had to decide which project I work on. At times my demands were difficult to be met, but still she tried her best to help me grow in my chosen career path instead of just forcing her verdicts on me.
And then the singer seema.... in every party I wait till she arrives (well, coming late is almost her birth right!!!!), partly because the dolls will come and secondly because the music session will begin only after her arrival. Everytime I liked a song in a newly released movie, she is the first one to be informed, the latest one being Jaane Kya from Pyar Ke Side Effects. Still waiting for the next party so that I can hear this song from her....

Sumanta: I was installing MDM when Seema came to my seat and introduced me to this guy who was sitting right behind me. And in a typical sumanta way, he said: "kuch bhi doubt ho to mere taraf mat dekhna". I just smiled, like a "fresher" should do, and continued the installation. After some time this guy came to my seat again and asked me if I remember meeting him before. I was like, what the hell is wrong with this guy, just now we met and he is asking if we have met before!!!! Then he asked me if I had been to hotel Savera and I immediately remembered. I had met him 1.5 years back at this hotel with Tathagata, another i2er whom I had met in the train when coming to Banaglore. So in that sense I knew Sumanta long before my joining i2. This guy has this amazing ability to argue with you for the most impossible reasons and he will continue till you give up!!!! A critic to the core, it'll have to be some real exceptional quality to attract a word of praise from this guy. A very quick learner, it was amazing how well he could pick up the WOWAUS stuff and then managed to fight with Marc Nunes at WOWAUS regarding whose API is more efffcient (it seems our dada's API worked faster by a few miliseconds)!!!! Keep up the good work dada....

Swati: The kid that she is - she often used to fight with me saying that I always invite her last whenever I used to send Lotus Notes Meeting invite to the team and I always used to say that I didn't ask her parents to give her a name starting with S and even worse, followed by a W!!!! (for those who are not aware, Lotus always arranges the invitee list in alphabetical order). And even here, her name comes last in the blog. Since we don't have sametime anymore to fight, so to compensate I will type the mail IDs in the blog publish notification mail in reverse alphabetical order!!!!
Jokes apart, it hardly makes a difference if her name features last in this blog. Because if I arrange this entire list in a new order where the names are arranged in the order of most cherishable time spent with that individual in the last 2.5 years, Anvita and Ananya are the only two names that will feature above hers!!!! Bachee, swats, chairlady, daadima, chashmish - and her list of nicknames was just increasing exponentially till one final day we decided to stick to the basics - Swati!!!! At times, I have been accused of being partial to some of the developers in the team and her name, along with rashmi's and aarti's, are the common factors in that list. Every time I had to reject an issue back to her, I used to criticize her. Every time I found an issue in her module, I used to have a word with her. Every time she developed a functioanlity without trying to understand the business logic behind it I used to criticize her (if that's being partial, then I will rather continue to be like that!!!!). And she always took it in the positive spirit because she knew the only reason I did so was because I wanted her to think beyond simple development. How often would you come across a girl who sits all night all alone in office because she needs to complete some outragiously irrational volume of tasks before a 10 O'clock review meeting the next day morning and then again returns to office by 2 O'clock to start her next tasks decided at the 10 O'clock meeting? How often would you find a coleague who is ready to come to office every weekend for more than two consecutive months and work all alone, often sacrificing her friendly gatherings, parties and personal schedules? If i2-Studio is her first love then think twice before daring to say a word against her second love - dance and Shyamak Davar!!!! This self proclaimed tom-boy is extremely sensitive towards her code and her team and the easiest way to make her angry is - criticize her coding skills, it gets even easier if you do so for wrong reasons:-)). Will always miss this sweet little friend....

Sooooo finally this marathon blog comes to an end. It has taken me hours to complete this one. Not because I did not know what to write, but because I had so much to write that every introduction was becoming one blog in itself!!!! So editing and shortening took more time than the actual typing.
Hope all the readers enjoy reading it as much I did writing it.



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