Coke with the CEO of Logica, India.

It started when I was waiting for some work to be done before I could begin work on something and had sometime on my hands. Nandini was going up for lunch and I decided to tag along to give her some company. We met Niraagulan Murugan upstairs and joined him. Since I had already eaten, I got myself a coke and was talking to them about what Logica, Bangalore did for World Environment Day and about the Emission Testing they had planned.

Halfway through, we were joined by Abhay Gupte, who just happens to be the CEO of Logica in India. No biggie right??? Yeah. Start the freak out! For me, a fresher, my first job out of college, it doesn’t get bigger than this!! I sat staring at my coke, listening to everything he said, because it just seemed unreal. Who has a coke with the CEO casually? Really!

He talked about Logica’s CMMI appraisal (Level 3!!!) and things that need to go up on the intranet. Business-y stuff. Then he talked about the Environment Day plans and we talked about planting trees on barren ground. Like a hillock. How cool would it be to be travelling say, from Bangalore to Chennai, and find a green hill and a Logica sign? It seems to be a good idea and I hope it can be done.

I started contributing to the conversation when Mr. Gupte brought up Logica sponsoring an animal enclosure at the local zoo (Bannerghatta Zoo). This had all my attention the minute I heard Logica + sponsor + animal. I told him about a Non-Government Organisation called People for Animals who I volunteer for. For those of you who are interested, PFA is an organisation that deals with wild animals that are displaced due to the encroachment (of Bangalore as it expands). They rescue these animals and then rehabilitate them into the wild. They work closely with the Forest Department of India and work out of many cities across the country. They have a program where you as an individual or a company can sponsor these animals (medical and general maintenance) for a specific period or till they are released into the wild.

We discussed the work Infosys has done with the Mysore Zoo, where they sponsor enclosures and considered doing something similar with the Bannerghatta Zoo. The point that I raised was that Logica would look like we were sponsoring captivity, which is honestly not cool.

We branched out to talking about the oldest zoo in India which is the Vandalur Zoo, just outside Chennai. Mr. Gupte told us about a lecture he attended by S. Muthiah which was about how Chennai (or the then Madras) is the first city of modern India. Some of the facts that Mr. Gupte shared with us were fascinating.

There is a building called The Ice Room and the reason it’s called thus is that when the British established the East India Company, they would ship massive amounts of ice all the way from England to be consumed by the British here. All this ice was stored there! Another fact he talked about was the initiative taken by Colonel William Lambton, who started the Great Trignometrical Survey of the Indian sub-continent in 1806. Unfortunately, Lambton died by the time they made it to Nagpur and the survey was taken over by his assistant, Colonel Sir George Everest, who was his assistant then. At the end of the Survey, the Colonel Sir George Everest had the highest mountain in the world names after him, but the poor Colonel Lambton, who started this survey only has a tiny hillock in Salem, Tamil Nadu named after him!!

I found Mr. Gupte to be extremely approachable. After my initial freak-out, I wasn’t afraid to open up or voice my opinions as I would have otherwise been, when in front of someone so senior. He is so down to earth and I love that he took time to chat with his employees, no matter how junior they may be. Not something you’d expect from someone so high up! I truly appreciate it. Now, getting back to my narration.

We talked about the origin of the city of Bangalore, or now, Bengaluru. The name of the city came from the Kannada name Benda Kalooru which literally translates to the city of boiled beans. The story goes that in the year 1120 AD the Hoysala king, Veera Ballalla lost his way on a hunting trip. After a long search, he met an old lady in the forest who offered him shelter for the night and boiled beans to eat. To thank her for her services, the king built a town and called it Benda Kalooru.

It was only later in 1537, that Kempe Gowda helped design the town and give it its modern shape. It was fun to realise that we all knew the story, but none of the specifics. We didn’t know when it happened or who the king was! I’m hoping that now, after my research, I can wow people about my awesome knowledge and then say oh yeah, I chatted with the CEO about this, nonchalantly. How cool will I be!

It was the most interesting coke I’ve ever drunk and I’m quite grateful that I had some free time on an otherwise busy Tuesday. I’m sure this was probably a regular lunch for Mr. Gupte, but it’s definitely one of the highlights of my Logica life. The other one was riding in the lift with Craig Boundy. Just saying. Till next time then.

PS: I’d like to thank Google and Wikipedia for a whole lot of history information.

An animal life

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had adventures with animals. They are a part of my life. The first animal encounter I can remember is me and a dead rat. I do understand that this sounds quite weird and disgusting, but it's true. We, my maternal grandparents, my mum and me, lived in an old house in Shankarapuram, in south Bangalore. It had a big garden with a Litchi tree and lots of "wild"life. It was in this garden that, while playing with the neighbours, that I discovered the rat. Let's call him Rattie shall we? Now Rattie was lying in the mud waiting to decompose, as all dead creatures do, when I picked him up. I must have been about three years old, as I was physically big enough to hold him, yet young enough to not understand the concept of death. I must have thought he was asleep or something.

I could never catch a squirrel or any other small animal, so this was a major achievement for me. I took Rattie to meet my grandmother, like I would any friend I had made, and I remember her horrified shriek. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why she was screaming. As far as I knew, she was pretty fond of animals herself, so I must have been confused. I don't know how, but somehow Rattie went away to a place I cannot remember, probably the dustbin down the road. My hands were washed till they were a bright red colour and I suddenly became a Red Indian in the literal sense.

Today, thinking back, knowing what I know, I shudder to think of all the diseases I may have caught, the ants, the smell of the decomposing body, the fleas and ticks that may have been on the rat and everything else that makes you run to the loo and empty the contents of your stomach.

Maybe as a child, I was forgiving of the smell and the various insects. As for the diseases, I was thankfully ignorant. I have been told that my life has revolved around animals even before the Rattie fiasco. I would apparently yell, as a baby, when I heard the jingle of the bullock cart as it went down the street, and quiet down only when I saw those majestic animals – the oxen. My first animal attack though was from chicken apparently (if you know me, you’d have guessed a cow). Those infernal birds, for some strange reason, took offense to my grandfather and me walking down the road. I was in the pram and it was my poor grandfather who had to fight off the nasty squawking, pecking birds and save me. I think that is quite heroic. If I had to choose between my legs and a baby, I sure as heck would choose my legs!

Spring at my grandmother's house was always greeted with the arrival of the monkeys. They would go straight for the Litchi tree (taking away all the yummy fruit) and this resulted in my grandmother and me yelling at them while running a stick on the veranda grill, making as much noise as possible. As you can imagine, to a child of five or six, this was good fun! Even to a young woman of 23, this is good fun, I must say. I would secretly pray that the monkeys would come, even though I knew this would upset my grandmother.

Because our house was an old one, it retained the charm of having many lofts. These lofts were often next to windows, which could only mean squirrels. I would do my best to not alert anyone of the squirrels nesting, until it was too late. This would upset my family, I knew not why, but they would not move the nest if there were already babies in it. Today, looking back, I get where my family was coming from, because a nest meant things like cockroaches and all kinds of other insects, not to mention the fleas and ticks.

When I was about seven, I think my mother realised, that no matter what she did or how hard she tried to keep me away from all the stray animals, she would fail. She then got me my first pets. I had a pair of love birds. I cannot for the life of me remember what they were called, so for now, let us name them what I would call them if I had them now - Addison and Kevin. This was a great source of joy and entertainment to me. They were green and blue.

Unfortunately, the neighbourhood cat learned of these birds and decided to try to make a meal out of them. If you've seen old houses in Bangalore, you will know that there isn't really a peephole at the door, but a sort of slit in the wall next to the door. This slit was big enough for the cat to jump in and out. After catching the cat near the screeching birds a few times, my mum came up with a solution. We put an empty tin can in the slit, so that the cat would knock it over when it came in. This worked for a while, until I came home to find one of the birds dead. We released the other bird into the wild and I said bye-bye to pets for a few years.