by subroto bagchi
I see it in their faces when they report to work on the first day, after being selected from an engineering college or an MBA institute. I see spark and innocence and a desire to conquer the world, laced with a kind of confidence only youth has been granted. Then I look beneath the veneer. Into the recesses of their minds and I swim with their thoughts. Below the exuberance and the self-confidence, I sense uncertainties I sense worries about what lies ahead.
Flashback 1976. In the post-graduate class at Utkal University, at all of 18 years of age, it occurred to me that I was wasting my time. My father had retired. I was living off my brothers. It had been only a couple of months before that I had graduated with a first-class honours degree and was eligible for a national scholarship enough to pay the mess dues at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) the place I had wanted to go to. But the scholarship got disbursed only twice a year and mess dues needed to be paid every month. I went to many banks, they would not listen. At that time, you did not get a loan to study humanities. So, instead of going to JNU, I took admission at the local university and I didnt like it. So, what did I do? I walked out of class and took the job of a lower division clerk in the secretariat. It paid me Rs 305 a month and in the bureaucracy, I was senior only to the dhoti-clad, elderly peon.
My job started as an intern with the ‘‘upper division clerk’’ a very dignified man who looked like a teacher. I would reverentially call him ‘‘Khuntia Babu’’. He taught me to file letters something taken with very seriously in government departments. One day, I was asked to draft a letter of regret on behalf of the Secretary it ended up being so sophisticated that both Khuntia Babu and the Sectional Head Clerk who was called ‘‘Bada Babu’’ saw great risk and thereafter, I was given a very light load. Given a lot of free time, I found myself often dragged to mediate among warring senior clerks who would suddenly start a furious debate on subjects like whether Sanjay Gandhi was good for the country the debate often led to verbal violence but like receding waves after a crash, they would head back to the brown piles on their respective desks. One day, the dhoti-clad, elderly peon who had a permanently glazed look invited me to a secret club on the roof of the Secretariat building where a chillum was being passed around among his fraternity. In my life, it was the most exclusive, ‘invitation-only’ club I have ever entered.
I worked there for a year before the DCM Group selected me as a management trainee. In a sense, the job at the secretariat had taught me to brace myself for what was coming my way at the seventh largest industrial house in India at that time. Management trainees at DCM were considered to be God’s special people. Except that, I got posted to the oldest textile mill run by the group. There, my induction started at the ‘‘time office’’. At the gate of the mill, at the blast of the siren, thousands of workmen some with bare feet, some semi-clad — would march in with their ‘‘attendance cards’’ in hand. The smell of beedi and sweat from hard working and tough talking workmen interspersed with the noise of the clerks with thick glasses sliding down the ridge of their noses. I was the odd man out.
Cut to 2005. In my office in MindTree Consulting, today I peer down the screen of my laptop, my thoughts are atomized and satellite links move them as bits and bytes across the world. I begin my day looking into the eyes of twenty-something engineers. By midday, I have spoken to customers in different parts of the world. By afternoon, I have sat in review meetings and spoken at training programmes. Finally, ending the day breaking bread with a visiting IT delegation.
I time travel and step into the mind of a young man of 1976 and search for the familiar images. I ask myself: Did I know that things would happen the way they did? In what way is my first job linked to where I am today? I don’t know. In some explainable and mostly unexplainable ways, it is. Sometimes, instead of looking for that link, it is probably better to simply do an outstanding job of whatever one has on hand. The rest falls into place.
Subroto Bagchi is co-founder & Chief Operating Officer at MindTree Consulting
