CHASING THE SNAKE AWAY AND THE FIRST TAKEAWAY

The 1990s were rocky years in my career as I was still coming to terms with the demands of my profession with my first employer, while also enjoying the impression that my social circle perceived about me, as being a part of one of the top companies in India. I had already been part of two departments in the factory over a span of about eight years.

It was a Saturday in June. A very rare summer shower had come down just an hour back and dressed the huge lush green grass beds and flowers with silvery droplets. My company had bagged several awards over the years that had gone by, for gardening. It was a very beautiful sight that many a passersby would stop and watch from the main road that ran adjacent to the company’s outer fence. On the inside and adjacent to this green area, lay the cabins with dedicated air conditioning. The first three cabins in that row were occupied by the Information Systems Department (ISD). This was followed by the ones where the deputy general managers were seated and the last being that of the general manager’s office at the far end.  Behind it lay a huge open corridor where the reception area leading to the front door was at one end, followed by the Planning and Sales Co-ordination Department, the Exports Department and the Finance Department. This space had central air conditioning. I loved this setup as both a trainee engineer and a senior manager sat in the same space. The only difference was that the seniors had dedicated desks while the juniors had shared spaces. There were no partitions. The extensive woodwork, wooden shelves and panels, gave the space a regal feel.

Behind the wall of this open corridor lay a small path to the inner road leading to the rear exit gate and beyond this path lay the factory bays, active most of the time in a day with the hum of a conglomeration of precision machines. My stint then was with the Sales Co-ordination and Planning department with a seat at the far end of this open corridor just beside where the ISD cabins were.

The office departments that operated out of this open corridor worked half day on Saturdays. It was noon and most of the lower cadre staff had finished compiling the reports for the week. The reporting process was like a relay and the next in line being the senior managers. I could see a few of the lower cadre stand around tables in their department spaces, discuss something and then step backward each time and laugh away.  At the opposite far end, a fan suspended from a long shaft, kept squeaking, as though trying to desperately communicate that its last days were near. Sugun, the senior manager of the accounts department, like the other senior managers, kept shuttling between his table and the cabin of his boss that lay on the opposite side. Shortly, the divisional general managers would also be shuttling up and down the general manager’s office. All the shuttling was for refining the reports in terms of accuracy and presentability. And all this was to create impressions. Whether we like it or not, impressions rule the world we are in and impressions create unreal bubbles which in the long run we find difficult to sustain.

And even during this shuttling Sugun was one of the very few senior managers who could remain calm and keep his sense of humour intact, while processing the work in parallel. His team around his table were mostly smiling and laughing at the statements he made while moving around. At the same time, he was adept in commanding respect and getting work done from them. A fine balance it was.

The noise of huge hardboard binder files being shoved inside the wooden shelfs after use, dominated the scene. The central air conditioning went down and I saw Sugun call up the maintenance wing and inform a person there about it. “It was Anand, the new trainee who joined last week who took the call. God knows what he understood. No one else is there. I think the whole bunch is on the third bay installing the new boring machine”, he mumbled to his folks around. This was not the age of the mobile phone or when support tickets could be initiated on a company portal for internal issues to be fixed. The factory stood in a space of two hundred square metres and most of the issues and communication happened over phone calls. Internet and e-mails were just getting established and formal communication between departments were still through written memos while communication to outside parties was through fax.

Through one of the windows that lay adjacent to the path, I could see a branch of the Alstonia Scholaris tree with its yellow flowers, sway in and out in the wind. Vishal, a senior clark, who was two desks away from my place, was slowly chewing on his next bout of paan after finishing his work for the day. A distant annoying sound of the Pegard horizontal boring machine, taking another deep feed came and went quickly from the machine shop bay.  The workshops had shifts running on Saturdays too and they would work until late night.

Suddenly there was a pandemonium and I could see young girl associates, shriek while running out of the ISD. Soon their male counterparts in full chatter came out too. The ISD folks who normally looked like silent monks in a monastery, in full focus in front of their computers, suddenly looked like a chatter box. I got up and went to where they stood to understand what had happened and so did many from the open corridor. “A snake has entered ISD through the air-conditioning vent Sir”, said one girl. “I saw it slide into the server room”, said another. The manager of ISD, Kumar, wasn’t there and was into a meeting in one of the cabins with his superior. “I wonder why someone is coming into the office when it’s about closing time on Saturday”, Sugun chipped in as his rotund figure approached with its characteristic gait. It brought a faint smile on the flabbergasted faces. “How did the snake sneak in without an identity card?”, he asked himself loudly. It made the ISD folks and all of us laugh 😂😂. The best part of Sugun’s humour was that he would hardly smile while delivering some of the best humour pieces.

“Let me call the maintenance folks. Kumar will take time to come as he is into a review”, he said as he picked up and dialed while switching on the speaker. “Oh, Anand. Is any one there?” he asked. “Not yet Sir. I have told them about the air conditioning issue”, he said. “Ok. So, I called up for something else. There is a snake inside the ISD. It has come through the air conditioner’s vent. Please tell your team it’s urgent and send someone here to clear it up”, he explained. “Oh. A snake? Does this normally happen Sir? Has the air condition problem you reported earlier got solved Sir?”, he asked earnestly. Sugun smiled and there was a pause. He took a deep breath and winked at us. “Anand. Two things. We need one thing and we don’t need the other. The central air conditioning, we need it back. The snake, we don’t need it. It should be out. Please don’t confuse and exchange the requests. It can be detrimental”, he articulated with a tinge of humour that could have been interpreted as sarcasm. “Hahaha…yes Sir, I got it”, said Anand as he laughed away at the explanation. There was laughter on our side too.😂 The maintenance team arrived in less than ten minutes and got both the requirements done.

Sugun had beautifully handled an otherwise heavy situation and made all of us laugh and feel light. This is one of the many such situations where I saw him execute his natural strengths to fizzle out tough situations. Sugun’s humour comes to my mind and gets me into quiet times of laughter even after many decades. It’s been the same for my colleagues too.

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