6th grade to 8th grade back in focus

On 26th Jan, a few friends way back from primary school planned on getting together.

Meena Rao, Savitha, Myself ( the back benchers) Avinash, Prasad & a couple more front benchers. We tried calling more .. but somehow it ended up being just the five of us.

The plan was to meet at a coffee shop in 9th block Jayanagar (2/3 coffee, its called) around 11:30 am. Then, we'd walk over to Hemamalini teacher( one of the few awesome teachers we've been lucky to have in our lives), and invite her over to lunch.

Being Indians, we had to stick to the Indian Stretchable Time - and by the time we all got together and were knocking at her door, it was past 1 pm.

To be less dramatic - it wasn't so bad. Most of us were not too late, but the joy of seeing each other after such a long time, the girls wanting to pick up cakes/fruits/chocolates/flowers for our beloved teacher, all took time. And no - we didn't really get all that stuff - we came to our senses and picked up an assortment of fruits for her.

It was amazing to see Meena & Savitha homing in on the exact street her house was, and almost the exact house. We did ask her next door neighbour to find the exact house. But I won't be making jokes about 'girls and their sense of direction' for a while now.

Meeting Hemamalini teacher was awesome. Apart from the grey hair, she looked and talked just the same. Too bad she's stopped taking private classes - soon as I saw her, I wanted my son to go to her. :(

She didn't recall most of us initially - and towards the end some memories came back, we think. But it was amazing how great the feeling was despite that, just seeing her and hearing her voice. Yours truly - who used to get into fights with pretty much everybody - even once got into a fight with her son - about 5 years our senior. He seemed to recall it a little - and we had a good laugh about it.

She even took us upstairs to a little room she had on the top of the building, where she has a huge photo of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and spends a good part of her day in prayer/meditation.

It was with a good bit of reluctance that we left her house, but she'd already eaten her lunch. And some of us had little bunnies doing breakdance in our stomachs. We headed over to Jayanagar 3rd block -Pai Viceroy or something. The buffet was pretty good, and we each spent time talking about our life history, how we met our significant others, etc.

Going through Meena's autograph book was awesome. Looking at all our writing saying the same stupid things still felt great. 'If you meet a donkey, pull its tail. When it kicks you, remember me' was my line to Meena. Its a great wonder we all didn't turn out into Shakespeares & Wordsworths, I must say.

Then we came back to Sudarshan Vidya Mandir. Took pictures, reminisced some more about some funny incidents, half recited our school prayer ( basically we prayed everyday that Sudarshan Vidya Mandir bloom, and grow and stay immortal ) , etc.

I'd told some other friends visiting from the US that I'd be meeting them around 2-2:30 after a quick lunch with my school friends. But it was around 4:30 - 5pm when we finally said goodbye and headed home, wondering how the day passed so quickly.

What a day!

Here's hoping this leads to many more gatherings with many many more of our SVM contemporaries!

The benefits of eating together

Ok. This title is probably one of the oldest sayings in the book. Maybe not as old as love thy neighbour, kiss his wife, etc. But it's close.

Eating together with somebody fosters some kinship. Growing up, when dad was waiting for you to join him at the dinner table, it was such a bother. It would stop your already hour-long phone conversation, you were not done reading that comic/novel, etc. etc.

I didn't realize its importance till I was 36.

It happened at Sidestep - a company I worked for, for 4 years. The first year or so, a couple of us would catch lunch more or less regularly. Then some of the women ( it's always them, isn't it?) started making lunches more social. They'd make it a point of inviting all of the development team (which was less than 10, btw).

Initially, though it was a little bit of a bother, it became a regular thing. Atleast 3-4 times a week 5-6 of us ended up eating together. And we started talking a lot.

We mostly had good fun. We had plenty of fodder:

• our single guys' relationship woes
• a mother a little too controlling with her 1 year old
• another way too hippie like
• our kids eating vaseline, pouring mud on their faces..
• a newly married, meat-loving guy with a vegetarian wife..
• politics
• etc. etc.

Most of the time, that extended lunch time beyond 30 min. Sometimes beyond an hour.

"Bad for workplace productivity", you'd say?

Wrong.

"Oh, at lunch you'd talk about work stuff - algorithms, design, things to do etc.? "

Well.. mostly not.

"You stayed back late, and made up for the lost time? "

No. We did stay late regularly, but it wasn't because of the lunch stuff.

"You say, productivity didn't suffer?"

No. It got better.

"WHAT ? "

We understood each other better.

We stepped on each other's toes much lesser.

In meetings, when we took opposite positions on a technical issue, it never got us worked up -Never so bad that we took/pushed for wrong decisions to satisfy our egos.

A level of trust, friendliness, and camaraderie was built that

• Nobody shirked their share of work and put undue load on their peers
• If we had problems with somebody's work, we didn't need to tiptoe around their egos -Direct discussions happened, and things got resolved.
• Even when engineers got overruled by the smart-ass architects, there were no lingering hard feelings( I think)
• When the company looked shaky at times- morale within engineering was still fine. We all liked working there -with each other.
• We did joint coding/debugging routinely

I could go on. The converse also was true. The most problems we had were with people we didn't eat together with - going by memories of product managers we ate with, vs. didn't.

Which brings me to my Jerry Springer moment at the end:

Management should subtly encourage people to eat with the people they work with. Even the folks that people interface rarely - take time out once or twice a week and go eat with them.

You don't need to talk about work.

But your work & working relationships will get better.

Jayanagar Skating rink - part 3

So far: Our first time at the Jayanagar Skating rink, and the second time.

So, my son had been going skating for a month or so. I was glad I put him there.. given the time he was taking to learn. I definitely wouldn't have had the patience or understanding to break down the process of skating to teach him that correctly. I was happy to walk around the stadium talking on the phone with friends while he was busy getting up.

Then one day we go to the rink, and I happen to notice that same board I'd mentioned the previous time. There was something different. I paid closer attention.

The line 'Skating permitted for club skaters only' was painted over. You could still see the lettering under the white paint-over. But it definitely was gone.

The 3rd line had something about BBMP (Bangalore City authority) - who I'd deduced the first time to be the people in charge when I'd had the altercation with the woman running the club.

Looks like the club guys had taken upon themselves to put up the board and paint in their lie about 'Only club skaters allowed' - probably to deal with pesky people like me. Looks like somebody smarter than me (or maybe even the BBMP folks) had seen their lie and called them on it.

The good thing about it was that I'd seen this after a month or so into the class. So, I'd realized that putting my son into the class was the smart thing to do overall. So, I took a deep breath, took a picture of this ( to publish here).

And I continued with my routine of walking about the stadium calling my friends, eating tomato puri at the cart there, and eating roasted maize from another cart.

At the end of the summer, my son was going around the rink comfortably. Not fast - and he still didn't have the 'glide' that comes when you're skating comfortably. Thats the end of it however. I eventually got bored of driving him up to the rink. I stuck with just tennis lessons for him.

Jayanagar Skating rink - part 2

After that unpleasant experience at the skating rink, I thought some more and realized that lady must have been bluffing. At the same time, I didn't want my son to be tottering amongst the rest of the class with children of various skill levels moving around.

So, I took him an hour earlier one day at 3:30 in the afternoon.

So, we put on the skates and are about to walk into the rink and I see a new board there.

The board basically announced the rink, and the 2nd/3rd lines had

"Only club skaters allowed "

"By order"

Seeing stuff in writing, I thought .."Ok.. maybe she was right, then. Let me just take him in for today, now that he's here and ready".

We walk in, and he starts stepping about and the male coach who was teaching the kids last time.. walks in. He starts laying cones about.. and we started talking. He didn't say anything about us being there 'unauthorized'. But since I'd seen that board, I asked him about joining the class and he told me what I needed to get - the regular roller skates, shoes ..etc.

After 15 min, we went and got the equipment, and my son was enrolled.

I was thankful I did that. What I'd imagined as an exercise lasting a day or two.. continued for more than 3 months. I guess small kids(or some kids) take longer to learn the balance/coordination required for skating.

I remember how I'd taught myself skating back in the 7th grade. It was almost an entire day of falling on my backside.

But by evening, I had achieved two things:

1. I could skate around my terrace fine, make turns, etc. without falling.
2. My butt was so sore that I could only lie on the floor if I wanted to be in a non-standing position.

Anyhow, my son was now taking skating lessons. So, does that end the skating story? Not quite...