Friday, July 22, 2011

One night @ the call center

Just finished reading "One night @ the call center" by Chetan Bhagat.


Good narration. Most people naturally identify themselves in the roles for shyam, vroom et al.


Though the major part of the book is devoted to in depth analysis of the problems being faced by the team members of shyam, the last chapters describe the way out to solve or circumvent these problems.


Almost any of us will be in such situation one time or the other and the mind will thoroughly intimidated by the illusion of helplessness. Most of the time, we know the solution to our problems. But never have the courage to act it out. Most people like inertia. As most often we feel secure in such inertia, rather than working out the solution and face the 'unknown result' what so ever. We constantly seek pleasure in pleasing others...! We fear change. We fear 'disapproval'.


The call from the "God" in the story may appear dramatic. But such 'inner call' always will be shouting at us.

We just don't want to listen to it. So we don't hear it.


Till one fine day ...

Once upon a time

The interesting story received by mail from one of our friends : story about a software engineer, who tried to live out the moral story learnt during his childhood. Read on...
***

Once upon a time,

....there was a software engineer who used to develop programs on his Pentium machine, sitting under a tree on the banks of a river. He used to earn his bread by selling those programs in the Sunday market.

One day, while he was working, his machine tumbled off the table and fell in the river. Encouraged by the Panchatantra story of his childhood ( the woodcutter and the axe )

He started praying to the River Goddess. The River Goddess wanted to test him and so appeared only after one month of rigorous prayers. The engineer told her that he had lost his computer in the river.

As usual, the Goddess wanted to test his honesty. She showed him a match box and asked,

Is this your computer ?

Disappointed by the Goddess' lack of computer awareness, the engineer replied, No.

She next showed him a pocket-sized calculator and asked if that was his.

Annoyed, the engineer said

No, not at all !!

Finally, she came up with his own Pentium machine and asked if it was his.

The engineer, left with no option, sighed and said Yes.
The River Goddess was happy with his honesty.

She was about to give him all three items, but before she could make the offer, the engineer asked her, Don't you know that you're supposed to show me some better computers before bringing up my own ?

The River Goddess, angered at this, replied, I know that, you stupid donkey! The first two things I showed you were the Trillennium and the Billennium, the latest computers from IBM !. So saying, she disappeared with the Pentium!!

********

Moral:
If you're not up-to-date with technology trends, it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're a genius than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.