Friday, March 24, 2006

A Contradiction!?

Today in the morning I read an article in TOI by Subroto Bagchi titled Life & Its Contradictions …
Let me quote some interesting things from it before I start….

“Faced with a contradiction, most of us usually look for the truth, instead of dealing with the contradiction itself. The truth is always much more comfortable. The difficult but inevitable thing in life is that the truth always reveals itself in contradictions. The packaging never gets any better.”

“Who must guide us in moments of indecision? The concept of the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna is symbolic. Essentially, every one is part Krishna and part Arjuna. The Krishna in us is the voice of reason. The Arjuna in us is about the responsibility to act. Without one, the other is incomplete. Action without reason and reason without action are both inherently destructive.”

“The interesting truth is, when you clean the ink, it is just a transfer of the mess to another surface. In reality, it is impossible to clean anything in the world without making something else dirty in the process.”

When I read this, I was totally mesmerized by it. What he said made so much sense to me. It was happening to me. A Contradiction!!!

My contradiction about work:

My Principle: In any organization your work speaks for itself and you need not go around blowing horns about the work you do.
Reality: You need to do the latter and do it always. Blow the damn horns about your work.




I am or rather I must say “was” a narcissist. You can read that between the lines of my principle. Today I did the unthinkable. We have an automation tool in place for making some folder which is later sent to our onsite folks (For non-IT guys generally Onsite is a jargon used for people in the IT industry operating at client locations). I was supposed to use it from today. So I made some enhancements (For IT guys, I enhanced to get latest versions of files from VSS which is like a small script of say 5 lines thats all). Then I did what I thought I would never do. I mailed to the whole team about this enhancement; well okay that’s fine since the team needs to know about this… But then I mailed my Project Manager also!!! I don’t know why I did this. My principle says I must not do this and then I do it. Did my reading of the article trigger this? Did the Krishna in me outgrow Arjuna?
And then Do I still Love my self? If yes then how could I do this? These are unanswerable…
The truth is Reality Bites and bites hard. I know what I did is not considered wrong in the industry. But why am I feeling the guilt, the damn guilt that made me write this post?
???????...........
I don’t know…... hmmmm.....

5 comments:

SiD said...

well.. to survive you need to learn the tricks of the trade...

but again...if you have a notion..some thing fixed in ur mind abt how to act in certain situation that is not because of you just thought about it... it is there becuase that concept has grown over u during the 23 years of your life with your past experiences.... and i dont think that you should just let that natural thing of you to go...most of the times, being Unnatural does not help... let few incidents not disturn that natural instinct - well thats strictly a personal opinion

Ashithraj said...

Interesting post dude. Happens with most of the people around I feel.

Anonymous said...

Hey Amrut,
I have known you for years to post this comment.We have infact discussed all this umpteen times..
My intention in posting this comment is the underlying hope that reading this will help reduce the guilt you have developed towards what you have done..
At the very outset , i don't think you have done anything wrong..These things keep happening as a matter of routine in our industry(read IT INDUSTRY).There are hordes of people like you who do it (blowing horns) , do it intentionally and do it repetitively..When these guys dont have remorse why should you ??
The bottom line is this..There is no denying the fact that flattery and ass kissing is rampant in our industry and more often than not, the remuneration you get and the so called APPRAISAL is NOT linked to your performance , rather is linked to the 'relationship' you share with your MANAGER..
Managers enjoy a bit too much of fiefdom and they are the ones you have to SELL your soul to , else you have to be contended with a below grade appraisal and strong enough to see less deserving people get more adulation than you get.
The mail you have sent to your manager and your team must be already drawing heaps of praises..
But, you are the best one to answer the questions and the guilt you have.Is the mail and the praises due from it really worth ? Does it really fall in line with what you have set to achieve ? If yes then continue , if no then probably my dear friend you have to stop...But be a bit careful;there are certain situations arising out of compulsion s where you have to resort to such tactics.(blowing horns)..
This practise, a deep malaise which has crept in will only stop when the so called MANAGERS put up their hands and LISTEN to thier conscience.
Sadly as long as these people enjoy their asses being kissed , there will be hundreds of Amrut's doing the same thing you did , albeit compulsorily...

Anonymous said...

ha ha ha .. very interesting blog dude...

as a matter of fact i should aslo appreciate Anil and Adi for writing so much about the situation... well there is truth in what both have said..

well every one have their own explainations about this topic.. but Amrut to mention to what u have done... YOU HAVE NOT DONE ANY THING WRONG!!! absolutely right... right for the job u are doing.

at this point of time i remember one nice dialogue from RDB... " LOGON KO NEEND SE JAGANE KE LIYE DHAMAKE KI ZARURAT HAI"

and in this case the dhamaka is nothing but "blowing the horns"

chill out dude..

there is one more thing that comes to my mind right now..

"ITS OFTEN SAID ABOUT CHANGES, THAT ITS THE ONLY THING WITH IS CONSTANT"

its just a change thats taking place boy.

Anonymous said...

Well...i guess more than a Contradiction ,it's the Confusion of Diction.Going by Your Logic "Geeta" itself would be Blowing of trumpet by Lord Krishna...
He says I am the "Operator"..and he glorifies his actions..why did the Lord do that ?now is that Unjustified ??if it is then Yes U have to be sorry for your mail to your Pm..Think on these lines and you will get the answer