Showing posts with label colleagues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colleagues. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

My Man Friday

“Hope you filed your IT returns.” I got this blank mail last week with this as the subject line. I could not help smiling and replied, “Nope. Need help!!” Within few minutes I got a call from an international number with a baritone voice on the other side. I don’t remember if he asked about my well-being, the usual drill after picking up the call. All he said was, “send me your details; I’ll file it in the weekend.” Oh yeah, after that we did try to talk but as usual it ended up in an argument and calling names to each other. I’ve been sharing this love-hate weirdness for the past 5 years now.

It all began when I joined my present workplace 5 years back where I met this portly spectacled man who greeted me with a faint Bong accent (he disagrees with me) and a smile that instantly changes the contours of his face in a pleasant way. He along with other colleagues made me feel comfortable within no time and today, I owe it to them for making so many good memories. Of all the people, I enjoyed talking to him for his love for literature, art, books, music, architecture and life in general. Trust me you don’t find many with such varied interests among techies. Nothing makes me happier than an interesting and thought provoking conversation. At one such conversation, he asked me what I am doing in a software company. He still thinks I’m a misfit here and I can’t agree with him more.

I was often asked by many at work that how could I get along with him? Even I wondered. There’s nothing nice about him according to the usual conventions. He is not soft-spoken, arrogant and has zero tolerance for people with limited knowledge. Many times generic topics became personal, we argued passionately and soon the cafeteria turned into a battle field pushing others into uncomfortable silence or arbitrators at times. This led to many weeks and months working in silence and behaving as if the other person didn’t exist (our workstations were adjacent to each other). So, yeah I wondered why I put up with someone who drives me up the wall.

He knows how to keep me grounded and doesn’t hesitate calling me terrible sounding adjectives if he thought I made a mistake. He is ruthlessly honest; though his comments hurt but it’s one of his qualities I admire. Once I wanted his opinion on a sensitive mail. His feedback was, “humility is definitely not your virtue and whoever is going to receive that mail will not recover from the humiliation for a long time.”  He was quite upset with me for writing such a mail but it served my purpose.  He moved on 2 years back, got busy with his new job and since then we hardly met, spoke occasionally. But he was the first one I called when I was getting the agreement done for my house. He guided me to reach my lawyer’s destination while attending the meeting in the car. He read and re-read the documents before he allowed me sign on the dotted lines, he helped me buy electric fixtures for my house just hours  before he was scheduled to fly to the US. He pushed one of his meetings so that he can drop me home when I wasn’t well, he never allowed me take a cab late in the night and dropped me home even though his house was on the opposite side of the city.

Our interests are different; we enjoy completely different kind of food, hardly socialize, and watch completely different genres of movies. I can’t think of at least one similarity. It took a lot of time for us to agree to disagree and stop proving a point.

I’m not sure when will we meet or talk again but, I’m sure he’ll not ask any reason when I ask him to come over at an ungodly hour during an emergency. I’ve been lucky to have some wonderful people who continue to be a part of my life though I talk to them once in a blue moon. Man Friday is one of them.