Starting the week with Tuesday, I suddenly realized and also thanked god as the ritual goes :) that it was Friday!
The work week was work as usual. New things to think, innovate, implement and then cherish them! .
When you know that the piece of code that you did in one of your company's products is going to be executed in a high end, carefully managed, transaction processing system somewhere down the time line, it becomes something worth cherishing and being proud of.
Like some engineer might be proud of tightening a bolt on Chandrayaan. Or a chef to have garnished the salad to be served to Abdul Kamal (or whichever personality you adore the most). Or a pit-hand to have refueled Schumacher's ride for the third consecutive win. Or someone who packed a parachute for a pilot who escaped much pain (are we talking about error handling here? ;) )
If we try to follow the tracks of a piece of code that I just mentioned, it performs very trivial tasks at the production machines where it is made to execute. One if-then-else statement is eventually going to change the state of one of the millions of flop-flops in a microprocessor on some server thousands of miles away. But it is the nebulous mess of crisscrossing microscopic circuits and a web of wiring connecting all those servers and a web of networks connecting every computer in the world, each one containing these millions of microscopic circuits, that cause this virtually insignificant change to emerge as a meaningful event for one of the users of one of our customers.
Technology is overwhelming. And getting harder to imagine day by day!
Fridays are not easy to end well most of the time, I was preparing for a ride up and down from Ambala to see one of my siblings off while I had to conclude something of importance to the coming week at work.
The ride was okay. Got to visit the railway station maybe after many years!
What I saw was different from what others might who commute daily.
There was a subset of whole of our national diversity en-crowded at one place. All, rich, poor, not so poor, very poor and beggars. North, South, East, West India within 200 meters of you. You can hear three different languages being spoken for every 100 feet walk down the platforms. All hurrying or waiting for something.
My sister remarked, "This is the real India, rich and poor in exactly the same proportion as in statistics, around 10%". And I just realized that how many of us (talking of all Indians) can get to see the kind of life we (talking of middle class and up) live! The one who borrowed my pen to take down a number that he just memorized from some list, might not even know that it was a Parker Special Edition that he was using. Let alone how many of them would know what Levi or John Players are. Or why richer kids are taking about some animal called 'Ninja' these days.
I wonder, if it was possible to make them realize need of the hour and make them understand and follow the decisions and advises that great thinkers are yelling out aloud on the national and international forums. The need for cutting greenhouse gas production, the need for reducing water consumption, the need of disposing off plastic properly, the need to vote, the need of sanitizing hands after every wash!
I could not think of a way to reach their souls because they all were too busy. Looking for something, heading for something, not able to pay attention to anything other than what they had on their mind at the moment. Maybe it was the place, maybe it was their nature. I don't know.
We all probably are a very small subset of privileged population that get public school education, city life, know and discuss brands, watch Dolby DTSes, get the hair rebound, have a credit card and so on. सावन के जन्मे सब के सब!
The ride back was rather chilly.
Weekend is about to begin and a mental list of tasks is already in place. Lets see what it mutates into by the end of...well weekend!
Good Night.
