Chapter 14 – On leave for marriage
I had only two choices. Either someone else would take up my work and I get married or I would take up my work and someone else gets married to the lady. Since the second option was impossible for a guy caught in love I had no choice but to go for the first.
My first plan was to find a reliable guy who could take up my part in such a manner that I get credited for it. Also, I had to cleverly request for leave from Mahesh, my manager. He had not yet been informed about my marriage plans and expected me to deliver the release on time.
In my nervousness, I started working hard to impress my manager. My idea was to impress him and then request for my leave. However, the whole idea backfired as Indian managers usually don't get impressed with hard work, especially from Team Leads.
“You should develop more leadership skills.” declared my disappointed manager one day
I nodded in agreement and realized my mistake. What he meant was that as a Team Lead I should be putting the entire load among subordinates and enjoys the pleasures of life. In this way I would reach new heights to becoming a manager one day.
I had to change my strategy. But what could I do now? I had to get married and I had to manage the delivery. My marriage preparations were going at full swing. Things were being bought, guests being invited and innumerable marriage suggestions being given. At the same time our critical project was also racing against time to meet the impossible deadline.
I had to find a way out soon. But in spite of thinking again and again, I couldn’t find a solution to my misery. Caught in tension, I stopped over-eating and my sleep duration come down to less than half a day. Soon I found that depression and stress had become my best friends and I was down the whole day. I could have gone down in history as a martyr but my lady love, Trisha saved me again.
“What’s bothering you dear? You appear to be so down. Don’t worry man. I won’t make you do all the housework after marriage. Tell me now, what is it?” Trisha asked to me
I couldn’t have told her my problem. She, just like other women didn’t have the insight for understanding the problems of a man. Also, to save from her bites, I had lied to her earlier that I had earned my marriage leave.
“It’s just some office tension dear. Actually, I am stuck on a problem and I am not getting the right solution for it.”
“What is the problem? You can tell me.” asked Trisha
“I think you won’t understand. It’s a technical problem”
“Whatever it is, at least we can pray for it. You see, prayer has a lot of power. Let’s go to the temple nearby. Come with me.”
I obeyed her quickly. Only God could help me now. God had helped me earlier and only he could inspire me to handle my approaching disaster. As we reached the temple, I quickly removed my shoes and ran up the stairs to meet my God. I rang the bell of the temple, I bowed before him and with folded hands I closed my eyes to pray.
“Oh god! Please save me. Please save me from my manager and my love. Please save me from becoming a working Team Lead and a working husband. Please save my project from client intelligence. Please show me the true path for marriage leave and total project credit.”
Suddenly, in the middle of my prayer, I heard the temple bell ring behind me. And then I heard my name being called from behind. God had given me a sign for success. I quickly, turned and found my former Team Lead, Rajiv standing there.
“Hay Rohit! How are you doing? I am surprised to find you here….” he asked
As soon as I saw him, I knew the solution to my misery. God had helped me again. Who could have been a better person than my former Team Lead to guide me to eternal peace and happiness? Yes, I hated to work under him once. But today, he was my inspiration. During his days as the TL, the guy had handled multiple projects on time and that too without taking much pain. I had to follow a similar path now.
One of Rajiv’s greatest weapons was to delay critical projects by exposing non-threatening bugs as life-threading to the customer. The panicked customer would then request for re-evaluation and extend the deadline of the project. His subordinates would then work for him and he would be awarded for showing his great insight.
Now, I was going to try the same trick. The next morning I went confidently to my manager to report about my lack of confidence on the project. I assured him that there were some terrifying issues, which would destroy the very foundation of the project. Being from managerial species, Mahesh was completely disturbed to my satisfaction. He then asked me to send the list of issues and arrange an emergency meeting for the evening.
My next move was to call a Team meeting with my army of subordinates. During the meeting I asked them all to submit the list of issues identified till then. As I did so, I was confronted with some curious questions.
“Issues? But Rohit, shouldn’t we concentrate on meeting the deadline first. We have so many things to do”
There was a time when I used to ask similar questions to Rajiv. I must admit that I was immature to understand the work pressures of a Team lead at that time. Now that I was in his shoes, I gave him the usual Team Lead reply.
“Of course, the deadline is important. But as per my experience, tough problems found at later stages can bring down the project and the client might reject it. So we must be careful from the beginning”
“But till now we haven’t found any blocking issues. Only some minor problems have come up”
“Yes, but they can hit our project hard. They can become some major problems afterwards. As a ‘real software developer’, we should never underestimate the risk associated with bugs. I think we should take more time to analyze them before proceeding further. So I want all of you to consolidate and send me the problems list”
As my faithful subordinates went digging for problems, I prepared myself for the evening act. This had to be a masterpiece as my marriage and my married life depended on it. But to my great surprise my manager had brought our senior technical consultant, Mr Kapil to discuss the problems in the meeting. Influencing my manager was easy, but convincing this guy was a going to be a difficult proposition.
“Yes, I got the list of issues Rohit. But I don’t think there is anything blocking at the moment. We can still go ahead with the release at the agreed deadline. If required, we can send a patch release with these bug fixes at a later date for client pleasers.” said Kapil
Kapil was killing my plan and I didn’t know what to do? But I knew one thing, if my Team lead could do it, so could I. After all Technical consultants are nothing but half baked technically overgrown managers.
As my mind raced to meet the challenge, I looked at the guy carefully. Even being a technical consultant, he would have been away from serious coding for a long time. This, I could easily confirm looking at the size of his enormous belly. Also, as a senior consultant, I believed that small issues couldn’t frighten him. For shaking him well, I would have to make the problem big enough to match his tummy.
“But these issues are blocking Kapil if we look at the larger system. We know that the client would integrate our library to their module. If they are running a ‘Distributed multiuser multithreaded synchronized architecture’ then even our small issues would turn up to be the biggest disaster for them”
“Hmm!” The big consultant gave a big sigh on hearing this but I continued
“If it impacts their system from the first day they would not accept the release without fixes. Moreover, it can hamper our relations with the client”
I don’t know how much impact my words had on the big guy. But my story about an unhappy client had some serious impact on my manager, Mahesh.
“I think he is right Kapil. They are our biggest clients after all. These issues should not impact our business relations with them. We have more projects in the pipeline with them.”
“Hmm!” The big guy gave another big sigh.
Then there was silence. The senior consultant was thinking hard while his tummy went up and down with his breath. Both I and my manager were waiting impatiently for his reply. Along with his breath, mind was moving left and right. Would I get married? Would I stay single?
Finally, after a long gap, Kapil opened his mouth.
“Fine! We can delay the project to fix up these issues, but you should convince the client about the delay.”
Hurrah! I had done it. Now, convincing the client was a child’s play for me. I quickly sat down to write the disturbing mail to the client with the issue list. The next day, I and my manager had a long teleconference with the client to explain the intensity these problems. The client was convinced and agreed to set a new deadline for the project.
Coming back from the meeting room my Manager said,
“I am really impressed by your project handling abilities, Rohit. Now that we have a new deadline, I hope we can deliver a quality product to the client.”
Waiting for this opportunity, I quickly replied
“Yes, we have time now. But I was thinking, since we don’t have the delivery on that day can I get married on that day?”