She - A Short Story

I was walking through the straight narrow muddy road in the middle of coconut tree field very fast. It was in the late morning and I could see the rainbows in the dews, on the tip of grasses. As usual I was not giving too much attention to what my skies and grass and all nature were showing to me, as I told before I was walking fast and concentrating on my very walk. You can actually think that it had a purpose. I forgot to tell you this, as a reader you plays a vital role in this, don’t feel hectic, but just give a long sound yawn and give me an opinion, that’s it, no too much heavy work to do. One old man asked me

‘Where are you going so fast?’

I smiled at that guy. People in my village were like that, they will ask some questions to anybody they see on the way. Asking so many questions to somebody was always a difficult job for me. How you will remember the questions? Even if you reiterate through some questions that you have prepared, you will always forget. Then it will be always those stupid smile and broken pieces of words told meaningless. But behind each of those broken words, I always had an ocean of words, which were like floating around without making any meaningful talk..!!  But for me those words were like one guy who gave his best speech or was something like the most meaningful statement of the era..!! The most meaningful words of the era..!! I ran almost through those slippery muddy road, it was paining in the ankles.

As expected she was waiting near the wall near the college. My friends were running bike through that road. I told my father to get me a bike and that decision was still pending. My friends waved hands to me, I smiled at them. She was in a rose flower in white color churidhar, and she had a very long hair. As she saw me from distant she gave me a smile. Whenever she smiles, I could see the rabbit teeth on one side, which was making her smile prettier. She was always beautiful for me and I was not caring too much attention on that pretty face, though she was beautiful. I always knew that I will never be able to afford such a pretty face, but why again I was talking to her was a question that I always asks to myself? I never had an answer, but it was a pull every day to meet her and talk to her, and when she talks, I was feeling, like we knew very long time back itself, like in some other life or something. And after she came in my life, I forgot to tell how she came into my life. It was all of sudden. One day I was sitting in the canteen, as usual having a lazy mind and soul, at least I could sip a coke can like some rock guys do. I saw her first sitting right opposite to me, giving me a look. I had no idea, how I took advantage of a look and she started talking to me. When I looked back it seems like a dream to me. A girl coming to me and speaking few words, I almost might got fainted down, but nothing happened. It didn’t had any punch with a flavor of some theme music kind of stuff and all, but I liked that very moment and I never could forget either. She was pretty and she used to talk or I used to talk whenere we meet. I started talking a lot in fact after meeting her. The guy who used to speak only scrambled, not very meaningful words, started talking meaningful words. I started to speak everything to her, if I couldn’t speak something that happened in my life to her, it would be leaving a wound inside my heart and when I tell even if the stupidest thing that I ever did in my life also was giving me a feeling like a shower on my heart. She used to wait for me near the college every day, then we used to walk. Walking with her was like rain started coming and we run under a tree and talking to her was like getting wet in the rain while I fly spreading my hands like a superman under the sky. I used to speak a lot and she also used to speak lot, those talks were or becoming my oxygen or becoming my life..

One day I took her to a river side, we sat there for a very long time. She never talked about her private life ever to me, but she always talk about subjects that I am interested in. She had an opinion on everything that I used to talk, she also had something to add or just talk. I used to talk about everything that was happening in my life and she will tell something on that was a wonderful feeling for me. When I can’t speak, when I wanted to cry, I will put my head on her shoulders and we used to cry together, then we used to cross the fingers each other and then we will spend lot of time sitting together. She somehow always used to understand me in every detail I had to talk.

I wanted to take her home all the time to introduce to my parents, but I never expected that she will do a smart act ever with me. she one day came in my bed room when there was nobody at home. It was a total surprise to me. She had a book for me when she came. It had some poems which she liked. Poems were something which I never could crack or digest, but she was reading it so nicely that I was very much attracted towards its lyrics. Lyrics were going on something like if we could disappear from the world to live in another world where there is a valley, river, skies and my butterflies. We lived in that world for some time, looking at those butterflies flying around my tree near the river that we had beneath those huge mountains in my dream. That was the first time, I was ever noticing a poem or that was the first time, I was ever noticing lyrics. Then we got out of the room and started walking and sat in one of the half built wall. It was bit muddy though, but when I was with her, I always loved those mud, grass and everything that was around me. When she smile or laugh, I sometimes feel like slip through those wet mud roads and get dirt and get wet on the rain. Then she will laugh loud sometimes, like some smart girls laugh. I wanted to be a smart boy all the time. But after she came into my life, I seriously had these notions that I am really a smart guy or let me put this way, she never let me feel otherwise. I really wanted to ask why that was happening with me?, but with her I will be always busy and I never got time to seriously think otherwise. Or did I became a smart guy after meeting her. I will have always something to talk to her and it became like I had only one person to talk all my problems in this world, she became that girl. Sometimes I will close my eyes on the bed and think how good it feels every moment I spent with her, and every moment that I lived. I wanted to live those life again. If my life was a movie player..I could rewind my life..to live with all those good moments.

We had our relationship for few years and I was enjoying every moment of it. Or in her words, I was living in the valley near her huge mountains, river, sky and butterflies. Then it happened, one day when I came to her as usual, she was crying out and tear was not stopping from her eyes. I asked What’s the reason? It was like in every typical teenage melodrama, her parents got transfer and she will be leaving me in few days. That day we both cried a lot. That day she was telling all her stories and that was the time I was hearing a lot from her about her personal life. Next day I wanted to introduce her to my friends as she will be leaving in few days. My friends never seen me talking each other much and I never spoke about her to my friends either. That day she came in a very good dress that I used to like and we went to my friends to introduce her. This time I was speaking.

I told to my friends that she is leaving, and to my surprise one of my friend asked me ‘Who is going?’..I told her name and pointed to her, another my friend asked ‘Are you mad, there is nobody here..’. I told her name and told ‘you not seeing her?’. One of my friend told ‘are you crazy, don’t fool around?’..I felt like my entire head is twisting around me..i could see her like I had been seeing her all the time..She was just smiling to me. I came to stable mind and told them ‘guys, don’t make fun of me..she is leaving tomorrow’. One in the group told ‘are you out of your mind..? get lost man..’. I was totally confused and I had no idea what to do..i could see her and I had been talking to her like years and I don’t know if you can imagine when somebody tell like either ‘you are mad’ or ‘they can’t see her’. So whats happening with me..what is true in this..Either I am mad or they can’t see her or they are fooling around. I decided to check the last option..i told her to ask for route to library to the girl who was standing near. She went and asked the girl who was standing there, the route to library, but to my surprise, that girl was not even listening to her, though finally my girl started asking in so sound. I understood that fact that either I am mad or people can’t see her. How can I be mad like this for years..When I think about the memories with her, it was like a melting ice, very faded memories, but had the chillness and beauty of early morning. Did not have any idea whether it is telling that she never existed as a human being? Though it was very faded memories, it was few of my happiest moments in my life. How can that be unreal? Or is it something like madness is.. feeling unreal as reality. I thought..!! I looked at her, she gave me a smile and that was the most beautiful smile I ever seen in my life..!! I never could leave her alone..even though I had to digest the fact that people may call me mad..!! But her love was enough for me to kill all those pain or sorrows that could give me by all people..

The Hero..

When I wakes up, it would be sun almost straight above ahead. Going college was another daily routine for me. Studies were happening in my life just like that and nobody was pushing me so hard that you study and it ended up me having only one book for all the subjects. For few subjects, I had tuition and there it was really funny time in tuition center. When on college, it was a push on me seeing myself as a grown up man. But it ended up like you got so many sweets and your parents telling you don’t touch anything. In the beginning it was a push towards so many things, seeing so many things, but ended up nothing and I was slowly realizing that I was not at all a hero in this world. There were so many out there, and those freaks were performing in front of me, and very clearly telling me that I do not belong here, in their world. So the push that I had in the beginning, were slowly vanishing from my heart in the realization that I do not belong here. Then where do I belong? Then I was like a guy who saw the climax of the movie first and then again starts seeing from the beginning.  Was I disappointed? Not really. But it was like I wanted to do a lot of things in college, but ended up in nothing. Then it was like ‘spitting-on-the-floor’ like attitude. I started hating anything and everything, especially seeing the freaks that over perform, I made sure that I spit on the floor whenever I see them, and when I spit, it would be mixed with the mud of my college ground and would be one day feed a tree, and the tree will tell to my ancestor college mates that one legacy called me studied in this college. On that realization, I was teaching myself to hate subjects, objects and everything in and around me.  But the bogan villa flowers that was there near our college I liked them a lot. It was beautiful like so many girls liked in college. Whenever I get’s time, I used to go there and sat there near the bogan villa as there was a concrete block to sit. Then I used to look above sky, and used to talk to the god ‘What was my problem? Rather if I do not belong to here, why I am here?’. That moment, while I was praying, few freaks, were coming towards me. I thought, did god heard my pray and did the god sent them for me. I was ready for anything as it was not many months I joined. Probably the seniors who were coming towards me might not like what I had been doing in the college, especially the kind of heroism I was doing in college. So I was getting ready for anything, I looked at my muscles, it was telling me that it is ready for anything and I looked at the people who were coming to me. There were four of them, I prayed to my god of fight, Jackie Chan. I was ready for anything and on my analysis, I could easily hit down two of them. Do I need to take few push-ups before they come to me and ask something or before they start a problem. No it was not quite necessary; I expanded my chest and sat on the concrete block, like it was my kingdom. Do I need to wake up, when they come, I asked myself? Normally juniors used to wake up, when they seniors. Nope, it was not quite necessary; after all we are all Indians right. Long time back, during Second World War our forefathers fought with Hitler, I knew that story. But another thing is that I didn’t want to put stain on my shirt, especially during a fight. It can get stain and what I will tell at my home? Nope, No matter this whole world stand against me and blame me, I am not going to leave them in case of trouble. Do I need to take few push-ups? I asked myself. Nope, it will create a wrong impact on the people who comes to fight. They will think that I am not prepared, but on the other side, I was waiting for this very moment throughout my life. I was ready, I was ready for that very moment in my life, I looked at all of them. They were coming to me, I stood like a man, rather in way expanding all muscles I had.  By that time, they reached me.

One guy was shouting at the other guy, you hold and I will pluck. I was thinking, what they are going to pluck. They came to me and asked, can you move little bit. I looked at them, that guy smiled at me. A smile, that was the last thing I wanted at that moment. A ridiculous stupid smile. I wanted fight, I wanted to shout it aloud standing on each one of their chest, when they all will fall down. In my thoughts, I was taking some time to give some attention to the guy who asked me to move. Second guy asked me, we want to get some bogan villa flowers. I moved and walked towards the college, they were making some voices and was plucking flowers. It was nobody sent by god, it was just some stupid guys I thought and continued my walking. When I entered inside the college, there were other few guys holding flowers. It was a festival mood in college. All guys were running all over, I was wondering what is happening today, is it some college festival or something. Then one guy is telling ‘If she is not accepting my flowers on Valentine’s Day, she will never get a flower from me’. Oh!! Today is that day.. The day which is created to make the people like me the very disappoint to the maximum. Do I need to go to college today? I asked myself. ‘Whatever’ I told to myself.. After sitting sometime in class, I thought will go to canteen, I decided. I walked to the corridor of the college and came to one end of the corridor. That was where our class room located, and it was like the row of classes. Me and my friends used to stand there whenever we gets time. The end of the row was for 2^nd group batches. 2^nd Group was filled with so many girls and I was in 1^st group which was mathematics. During the lunch time, we used to stand in the college corridor watching all the girls walking for the lunch. After making sure that even the last girl is gone for lunch, we used to go for the lunch. Then days were passing by, I was concentrating on studies more. But I always wanted to be one of the main stream guys. The guy who perform on stages, sing songs and plays cricket and most importantly guys who fight. Cold blooded fight. One day I was sitting in classroom, teacher didn’t come yet, as the bell was not rang yet. Then one of my friend came in front of the door, and shouted to the entire class room. ‘Maakkan is on fight, on the volleyball court’. Who is this makkan? Makkan as far as I know, was a colloquial term used to call the frogs. Whatever, who cares? But few guys who were sitting back on my desk jump over the desk to the corridor. Some shameless girls, who were sitting on the row also walking/running to the corridor. Seeing all these, I also walked towards the corridor to see the fight. It was like one guy hitting a group of people. My college was situated in a row, in the middle there is a ground. I looked around, all the girls were watching Makkan on a group fight. Shameless creatures..!! I told to my mind. Though nobody was looking at me, from that moment onwards, it was a new me inside. I wanted to fight. I prayed to my fighting lord. The Jackie Chan..!! One day a pray will come in front of me, I guessed. That day, I went to my father asking one thing. Father, I want to join karate class. My father looked at me, while taking breakfast. My father is a kind of father, who will not listen to anything on a first say. So I repeated, once again. My father stopped eating and started looking at me in anger, and shout at me.. ’Karate, don’t you want to do anything else.. Go and study something..’ and my father continued. So after my parents came to know, it was impossible for me to go for karate class.

That day my mind was full of the fight that I have seen on the college ground and the so many people staring at the heroes who were fighting on the ground. I also wanted to do some fight. That night I was seeing or was reiterating through each incidents happened before and after the fight. So many people including girls looking at ‘Makkan’ when this guy was walking through corridors. Even the girls in my class was looking at that senior guy like that. That night I took a decision, I will do some fight in college campus and by that time sleep got into my eyes and I slept.

Next day, when I woke up I was feeling so much energy on my body. It was not the me that was living in this world till yesterday. After taking the breakfast, I was going to college and I was not in fact, walking or travelling on bus, I was floating on the air. Then when I reached the college, it was a total change to the college campus; so many people were looking at me, which were not happening otherwise or on any other days. I had absolutely no idea what happened yesterday. Then when I was going to class room, many people including few girls were whispering in the ears each other, something which I couldn’t understand. I was in a feeling like what is happening on this earth kind. I got into the class room, and sat in my desk without any feeling that something had happened to me. When the class started, few guys came to the door of the class room, they were asking for me. Omg..!! I looked at those seniors,  they were our seniors who were standing at the door and asking for me. That too in between the class running. I looked around, probably there may be another one with my name in the class room, then teacher is also asking for my name and nobody is getting up. I got up on my seat like I am going to take me myself to hang. I walked along with those guys, one was telling that this time, we should win the election. I stopped there for some time and walked along with them.  I had no idea what is happening with me. But only thing which I was sure that these guys were talking very seriously. They were talking something like this, somebody nominated me as the representative for that election and I have to do so many things like requesting for the vote etc. And like a miracle happened in my life, all this was happening in my life. I was raised all of sudden from nothing to a lot of thing over a short time. I was never understanding how all this was happening all of a sudden. Who nominated me? How could I speak in front of so many people all of a sudden? How I could I request vote from girls? I was afraid of doing all these, but suddenly I was doing all of these. Then days were running, and the election was running in its peak time. Then one day, one of senior came to me and there were only few days for election. Today we have to stop ‘Maakkan’, he was tearing some of our wall posts and were disturbing our election activities. Fighting with ‘Makkan’.. For a few minutes, I went to the center of our ground in our college. I was putting my legs on the body of ‘Makkan’, who fell down on the ground and when I was looking around, so many people, including girls telling, whispering, murmuring. In that dream, I was shaken and brought back to the people. Today ‘Makkan’ will go through the college gate, we have to stop him. I looked at the guy who told me this. We means? I asked inside my mind. Then I looked at the guy who told me this. He definitely was not going to survive this mission, I thought inside my mind. Then I looked at my bisceps and trisceps which I developed, using the dumbells, which were a big round stone my mother used to make chutney. Was it good enough, my musles? But fight man..The fight you were looking all through these years. The fight of a man. I told I am ready, I remembered all the Jackie chan movies that I have watched. From all those learnings, Karate was never a problem for me. But I never practiced, all this was one problem which I faced at that very moment. I asked the guy, so we need to stop ‘Makkan’? He told a very firm ‘Yes’. Wasn’t there an echo in his sound that I alone have to do this? May be not, probably it was my feeling that I alone has to do this. The fight of political parties was very strong. They used to fight like anything. During the fight, we may even get wounds, I thought inside my mind. Wounds were not a big problem for me, but I hated the bloods that may flow from wounds, I may get fainted. But nothing was a real problem for me, at that very moment. So that was my day, the day which I was looking through all these years. The fight..!! Yes dude, you are going to be that very one guy all these people were looking for. After the fight, the murmuring, whispering, hearing names from unknown class rooms and all eyes on me like spot light. The moment.. that very moment, you had been looking all these years finally has come. The very moment, for which you were keeping all your energy for like a batman probably or may be like He-man etc. Yes, we have to stop this guy. I told my friend. We all agreed upon the same idea, then it was planning. A plan for the perfect spot, perfect timing etc. That afternoon, I waited near the gate of our college. Our college was located on a hill top and there was a steep road down leading to the college gate where I was standing. So ‘Maakkan’ will come through the road to the college gate. We were standing on separate places. I was standing in a tea shop near the gate. One of my friend in the same gang was standing near the gate and another was standing near the bus stop. The guy who was standing near the college gate will give us the signal was the plan. Then we were waiting for the time to come. Tension was on the air. I could see one of my friend started smoking. I looked at my biseps and triseps. It was telling me, you are all set dude. Then I heard the whistle, it was a signal that ‘Makkan’ was coming. When I run to the gate, I saw him coming on a bike. I got into the rush which had near the gate slowly. When ‘Makkan’ came near the gate, I used both my hands and caught on his body and throw him away from the bike down to the ground. Bike rolled down and hit the gate without a driver. Then it was a fight. People were calling out so many names, I heard few calling out even my name. While I was hitting ‘Makkan’, I doubted.. seriously ..these guys are calling out my name in this situation. Anyway I continued my fight, though my attention was deviated for a short moment of time. But suddenly somebody grabbed me from the back. I was in a struggle to get out of those guys. I was hitting and I was getting hitted. It was a real things happening over there. In the hands of those guys, while I was struggling, I looked around; there were so many people around me. Many of them were girls on the far top of the shop we used to have tea. In that short moment, I heard somebody shouting loud my name. In the eagerness, to see what’s happening, I looked to the side where I heard the name. But the only thing which I could see at that time was a stone coming towards my head. It hit directly on my head. I put my hand on the place where the stone hit, it was blood all over my hands. Blood, all over my hands, I was feeling like the entire world twisting around me. I was hearing a noise like a bee inside my ears for some time. Then my eyes were starting black out. The people in front of me started disappearing and it was like a thick black cloud in front of me. I fell down on the road with a big noise. I cried out loud and in that sound I heard another sound of something falling and my back side of the head started aching after hitting somewhere. Again it was another shouting. That moment, I heard the sound of my mother, brother and sister running towards me. When I woke up, my head again hit on something. When I opened my eyes, I was under the coat. The me who slept on top of the coat, how reached down under was, still a mystery for me. I rolled straight to the door and sat down on the floor for some time as my head was aching. I looked at my hands, there was no blood. My mother came running asking what happened? I told nothing, it was a dream. My mother started murmuring something like ‘dream, made people afraid..’ and started walking towards kitchen. I got into the bed again, but my doubt was something like this. Do people see dreams like this?

My Skies, butterflies and She..

When the rain was falling down deep earth, it was making the smoky smell of muddy earth around my house. I sneaked through the window to see the sky. It was so angry to me that day, and never had a smile on its face as it used to had. I never mind as I was so busy that day to pack. I was leaving my native to another world. But I still looked at my skies, to say a HELLO, but when it gave me a flashy smile, I was back out as I used to do in my childhood times. The wooden window we had on my house through which I could see my sky sometimes will give me a night mare when I look through its grill which got corrosive over a time. It was few years we painted the house. Painting the house, generally happens on some rare occasions. But that time the iron grills the window had all the paints gone due to ageing. But still I used to love my windows. It was my world rather it was my window to my world. When I was afraid of thunder, I used to look at my sky through the window. As I knew the information from my physics/geography class that thunder will not pass through the plastic, I used to enjoy a thunder day by sitting on the chair putting my whole body on the seat. I always loved the mild breeze of the rain and the smoky smell of the mud during the rainy time and getting out and run on through my courtyard putting my hands on air like my butterflies do. Then I will go out to see my rocks, it would also be wet after a rainy day, then standing on top of the concrete block that we had roadside, I will look to see the changes that happened to my world. Then I will walk. That was my world. My skies, my butterflies and skies. And that day, it was going to happen, I was going to miss that world and definitely I had grin on my face, as I was going to become somebody in my life. I was going to be richer than my dad, who got a handful of cash. So I was so happy and I sat on the window and looked at the sky and told I am going very far..!! For some reasons, I always could see a face on the skies, which will node head, rather react to my talks and when I talks, they used to move or dance and give me kisses. But the day I was about to leave, I expected it will rain, but it didn’t..May it had a reason, summer time..!! A summer time…

Then when I got in my bus, I was looking out for a professional look. Because the vast amount of knowledge I had till that time about this world was not really giving me a competitive advantage to fight in this world. And when one beautiful girl taught me about how a lift works, like if we have to go up, we need to press the upper switch and if we have to go downstairs, we have to press the down switch. More than helpful information, I was thinking about that ridicule moment in my life. My dad could built a lift in my house. Then I was building a boundary around me. In that boundary, I was building a block each day and it was keep on rising. But one sudden day, I realized the sky who was my friend sometime back and the one who didn’t cry when I left him, I could touch him. But by that time, I was also realizing that I became so lonely in my life. The loneliness I created or it created by itself, was some complicated chemical process that happened within me, which I never could understand. Then one day I was sitting on one park ground, without making any plan out of my mind. Because by that time, I learned to sleep on park benches. When I will sleep I will touch the ground with small grass and looking at the same sky that was far above me. I was alone and never felt needy of anybody. Banglore was a nice place, but the grasses, butterflies everything I loved in here till I saw her on the park bench that day. She was so lean and tall and sitting on the park bench from the time I noticed her. She won’t be wearing any splashy a normal looking but gorgeous ordinary girl. One good thing in that park was that there were so many doves around there chattering, murmering...Within few days, I could understand that she stays nearby and my spy eyes could easily locate that within few days. She was calm quite and very rarely came with friends..And more interesting fact was that she was alone most of the times, at least I had this mirage of thoughts built up over a time around her that she was very lonely or she wanted me to build up such a thought around her was my gut feeling. I was never observing her, though my eyes were or rather sometimes wander her on what she doing exactly. Most of the time my intelligent thoughts that I used to use for the calculations or arithmetic formulas while sleeping on the park bench, sometimes I used for her to find out the question ‘Who is she?’. She sometimes looked at me, whether she might looked at me or most of the people will look at people just like that. There may be hundreds of reasons for that, I might had a very splashy dress or I had a really good mobile or something which is really attractive. Could that be me. Hello, btw she was just sitting there and me had no other job to do, but sleep on a park bench. In Bangalore, nobody will allow to sleep anywhere else than in a park bench to sleep. It was those times, I used to sleep so tight. The only thing which I made sure that nobody steel from me was my company tag. I will put my legs over the park bench hands and head under my hands and looking at the sky. Before she came into my life, Yes, the moment she started sitting there, I invited her into my life, I used to measure the space to skies. I read or rather knew that some far distance away there is some people living just like us. They will also have some park benches and somebody like may be sleeping on that park bench. One day I shouted to the sky ‘Mr.ALIEN’..!! Are you there?. As nobody was there in the park at that time, I was safe. Then with a smile on my face, I came back to my bench. Over a time, I in fact owning that park. There were three benches for my park. One for me, one for her and I never cared who was sitting on the third. But one was for me and one was for her. Then one day, late day..I slept on the bench and when I woke up, it was slightly a night time. Then one alien smiling at me from the skies. I asked Whats up?, He/she chimed her eyes to me and told it was late night. Then in the realization of my late stay, I was in a hurry to go back home, and when I was about to leave the gate, she was going through or passing by the road. My realization became dream and sat on the side of the road to see where she is getting into.

I was so sure that she will be staying somewhere nearby as the people found with her seemed to be her parents. I sat on the side of the road, and she was passing by. When she reached near me, I said hello to the ants passing like a military march on the leaves of the plants where I was sitting. But I doubt whether she could hear that, but she noticed me? She might have seen but whether she might have noticed me. Like this guy used to sit in that park bench and observe me on what I do. When she was feeding the doves, he was learning the first lessons of being kind and on a day she missed her doves, he was learning the philanthropy. Then when she was moody, he was telling his buddies on the outer space that she is my best buddy. I always cared for her, and every single moment and when she was sad, I used to pray for her. But when she was passing by with her parents to her home, I really needed to grab her attention though. Did she looked at me? Or the look she was giving to my side, was that for me or to my new shirt or new mobile or something splashy she found interesting? As that moment, I really wanted a look for her. But apart from all those nice things happened in my life, one happy thing happened in my life was that I could find her house. She had a pretty good house. In the night I will be able to jump to the outer wall and then to the upstairs and to the window to see her sleeping. If not possible in that way, through the tree, that was on the roadside to the balcony and to the window. That was my plan B, in case if the plan A is not working out. As per my thoughts going to many possible permutations and combinations, she passed by. Then there was a quick doubt came to my mind, whether she was looking at me or my latest mobile or splashy something else. I looked around, there was cat who was looking at me and few ants marching like going for some war on their country border. I asked the cat, What are you looking at?, as I found it as the only species around me to which I can ask a reasonable question. What are you looking at? That stupid creature didn’t even mind to answer my question. I thought in my mind ‘damn stupid crazy fellow’. Then I thought of leaving to home, once she got in the house. He father was very masculine, enough for a fight with me. In case, if some fight is happening, I would need to take out all my fighting capacity to the ground, enough for that. I looked at my bicepts, tricepts etc. It was enough for any fight. I took a deep breath in and expanded my chest. It was bulging out and I was proud of it. During the time of my school times, I used to exercise. Like putting a quarter kilo of coconut oil on my body and taking the stone which my mother used to use for making ‘chutney’ and using it as my dumbbells. The effort that I have taken all those times was not such a waste of time. I proudly looking at my chest, it was smiling at me like ‘I am on the right hands..’. Someday I have to make six pack. I thought in my mind. I spit on the floor to the cat who was looking at me like he wanted some sort of fight with an unimaginable hatred towards that incapable creature. He was still looking at me. I took a stone and throw with as much capacity I had to that specific creature who was boasting himself. My stone was a direct hit and it run like a cheetah running back of deer. I laughed looking at the sky and looked at the muscles in my hand. Then I looked at her house and told ‘Bye bye babe, I will be back..’.

My life was changing during that time, it was getting more complicated and when it gets complicated, I will get more time to spend on outside my office. So sleeping on the park benches was my initial time pass and she was my first pray on that front. Then one day when I was thinking, I had this mild thought on where she will be studying.

Finding/Locating and managing resources

For few days, I had this thought nurturing in my mind about how I can be successful in a situation where I have to manage. I may be managing resources, wealth, a situation or anything that comes in my life which contains hurdles which I need to cross. So problem here is how I walk smoothly or how cross over hurdles with the maximum smoothness I can obtain within the constraints or limitations I have with available resources. But as far as a human being is considered, we got only two hands and two legs and a brain. Though all these components are supposed to be the smartest of species, it has got limited productivity in terms of achieving higher objectives. Then how do you manage a highly skilled or high targeted goal work within the limitation that a human being has got. Here comes the beauty of using resources and eventually managing resources. Yes here I am using the term management, with my limited knowledge from books or I have been observing that human kind had been managing resources when he is not able to do a particular piece of work alone or when he need to finish the task within constraints, especially tasks that is higher goals. I was just wondering, how human kind built the egyptian pyramids, china wall or Taj mahal. It was an art of human kind called of the so mentioned.

1. Locating resources (Finding out the right set of resources etc)
2. Managing resources (Management of time, resource etc.)
3. Consuming resources (Consuming the right amount of resources in a small quantity or in larger quantity).
4. Achieving goal

Probably the human kind from the very beginning of his life cycle has gone through this very specific cycle called managing a life cycle to achieve the task. Then later, it has gone through further enhancements and productive sharpening or changing of the entire nature or characteristics to the above mentioned steps to achieve the specific goals. But all the time, there were people who were doing management in all the areas were target was high or goals were high. The management might be in terms of various sub categories but definitely within the sub category of the above mentioned categories.

And human kind goals changed on various aspects from hunting for food to pyramids to rocket building. On all aspects of achieving goals, human kind had been experimenting management. It is a cool thought to differentiate the management involved in hunting and the management involved in rocket building. In fact, the bottom line principles of perfect processes involved in both are same. When the goals changed, eventually the processes involved in the very cyclic process also evolved and multiple sub processes has been added and removed from this very specific bottom line processes. So my point that I wanted to add in this note is that how we can sharpen or ensure that the goal that we are trying to achieved is achieved to the best. In short form, it all concluded to the very specific point, which was the same thousands of years back and same now as well, but in many varying aspects of fundamental principles. It’s all about..

Locating the resources and their management.

Again when coming back, it comes back to the point..!! Finding out the resources.. and managing the resources and well consuming the resources are the important part in life cycle of any goal setting and goal achieving processes where more than one resource count is required.
So in any such tasks, a quality delivery depends on the quality of the processes defined over the above, which is locate, manage, and consume the resources.

If we take this very life cycle as the crucial part of delivery of the main deliverables, it will have a major quality impact on the main deliverables. In fact it cannot or rather it can never stand apart. But the challenging part in here that, we are not alone in this world who looks for high goals. The most worrying part of this world when we look for quality deliverables is that, the world out there is very competitive and we may not even have the right resources, but still the quality of deliverables depends on ..

1. Locating highly quality resources
2. Managing resources in a really efficient way
3. Make use of or consume resources to target
4. Achieve goals.

In fact when we talk, all these steps will have challenges of its own as we are in a highly competitive world and each steps would require advanced and efficient manner of processes and steps.

In many of the organizations, locating the high quality resources would be known by the recruitment team. I personally believe that within the scale of the organization, the locating process should have a very high visibility, when I tell, I do meant a very high visibility across the place that we consider or across the globe that we talk about. So what possibly would be the challenges in terms of locating resources?

1. Locating resource by itself is a challenge
2. Attracting resources to the organization
3. A beautified way of working style leading to the well management of resources, eventually resulting the locate and attract of resources easier.

So how can we locate the resources? There may be a million einsteens or eissac newtons out there. Here comes the business processes of the organizations aligned with targeted goals for either a short term or long term comes into picture.

1. An organization should or mandatorily have a long term and short term vision or specific target for both short and longer terms.
2. Based on these goals, leaders should have aligned business targets crisped by practical goals streamlined to business goals reaching to bottom level employees.
3. With these crisped practical targets, varying capacity can be determined for the short and longer term.
4. And the pool required for the capacity of each target can be measured and thus counted and can be planned to obtain it
5. And the most critical step of it, getting the right kind of people for the right kind of job, which should be aligned with the count of streamlined/measured number from step 4.
6. Then attract and obtain the people.

Locating and attracting the people are the two major and critical components/parts which is ALIGNED TO OVERALL ORGANIZATIONAL STATEGIES.

MANAGING RESOURCES

Once an organization could obtain the right set of people for the job/task in hand, managing them is the next difficult thing to do. Managing a resource involves the following main component, which can be constrained by a single factor called happiness factor.

1. Happiness factor, which involves work culture, fun factors, monitory benefits, leaders and relationships etc
2. Professional reasons. Eg: Satisfaction with work
3. Personal & Social reasons

It also remains as a fact that, nobody can keep anybody happy for a long duration unless somebody is happy all by himself by understanding the following

1. Organizational constraints
2. Personal constraints
3. Social constraints

So these are the major challenges of getting a quality deliverables, having said the fact that a quality deliverable will always be made available by the right set of resources. But using the valuable resources of organization for only maintaining the resources would be a really bad idea. So it should be managing the resources, rather maintaining the resources. Maintaining a resource is like giving away valuable resources of the organization so that the resource is not leaving/ loosing from the company, which would not be a right choice any time. But it should be managing the resources, by identifying the right set of people and providing backup resources.

One solution would be to deliver a quality deliverable is by providing backup resources at the same time keeping the resource live. Here the ‘Keeping resource – live’ process will only makes sure that the quality deliverables are being delivered, but not mandatorily provide that the resource is maintained or not leaving the company. So ‘Backup Modal’ would be a solution to the problem of maintaining the quality of deliverables by managing the resources. In a worst case scenario, a backup may be the proper documentation of the work being done or the ongoing task.

This above mentioned ‘Backup modal’ will be working for the critical priority situation, but as far as an organization is concerned, employee satisfaction is a critical component that makes sure that the employee is not leaving the company in a case the resources are the people. So the employee satisfaction can be measured against the ‘Happiness factor’ in an organization within the organizational, personal, social constraints. A happiness factor of an organization would not only being depending only on the monitory benefits. It would also depending on so many other factors through which the “happiness factor of an organization” can be measured, which would eventually result in “Keeping resource alive” in an organization. So the happiness factor is directly proportional to the probability of “Keeping resource live” factor, which in turn will reduce the cost of maintaining the resources, eventually resulting in reducing the cost involved in achieving the quality deliverables.

‘HAPPINESS FACTOR’ will reduce the cost of quality deliverables.

CONSUMING THE RESOURCES

How we can consume the resource was always a question to my mind. So I just wanted to sneak through my past to get detail in terms of consumption of a particular human resource. When I was a bachelor, I had this thought of staying whole time in company as I had no other much work to do than watching youtube videos or circling in social networking. Though the consumption factor in this is not really big, It was comparatively larger than the productivity expectation at an organization level, for the reason that I was doing quality working more than expected 8 hours a day or may be weekends where expectation is 0 hours. Though not by organizational policies, I was consumed more than what is expected out from me, obviously at a lower cost. But what should be a process oriented modal in terms of consuming a resource.

My experience tells me that a successful consumption depends on the throughout expected consumption for a quality delivery. So obviously it directly proportional to a quality project delivery modal, which consumes a resource throughout rather taking an above 100% at some point in time of delivery and less than 100% at some point in delivery. I would recommend Agile project delivery modal for a proper resource consumption from my experience.

So consuming a resource for an expected working time is of a critical importance, so that ‘NOT OVERLOADED’ factor will not come into picture, which is a perfection scenario which anybody should be thriving for.

ACHIEVING THE GOAL

A cyclic process of locating/managing/consuming resource will be the fuel to achieving goals. Though many delivery/project modals were not existing old times, I believe that this fundamental principles were used from the time pyramids are constructed to the time rockets are built.

Incubating innovation and productivity increase on limited scale and capacity..

Please do not co-relate these ideas to any organization that you are working or know. This is my generic thought process on how Innovation should happen.

Recent times the thoughts on how nurturing innovation and how delivering quality up scaling on a smaller scale or within limited capacity are popping inside my mind and thought will share with you guys. Innovation and thus quality improvement through continues innovation were always my very much interest factors and I always tried to see the view points of the same from various angles and tried to analyze the same. I strongly believes that continues innovation is the key factor for sustainable growth of any organization. So how that can be achieved within limited capacity and within limited resources. So for the same purpose I just wanted to see innovation in the practical aspects of it to conclude it to two categories.

1. Innovating on the existing system.
2. Innovating for something new.

In either cases, innovation comes with a costly affair. Money spend on it and ROI makes innovation more practical and feasible, just like any good job. In order to achieve the same, I had a study on how we can incubate innovation on limited capacity or limited scale. So practicality of same drive me to the following factors.

1. Innovate by ourselves.
2. Invest on R&D of innovation by others.

In order to digest both facts, we should again understand that innovation is all about making our life simpler and easier. But it is also a fact that innovation comes at a cost. But as a matter of fact, internet has provided us with so many opportunities to adopt or get or use the open sources. It makes the innovation less costly than it actually meant to be most of the time as we gets so many resources already in the form of developed. Then it remains as just use it policies.

I have observed that the most challenging job involved in innovation is that shifting people from the comfort zone that they were comfortable with a prolonged to time to another comfort zone (on a happy path). Just the way mentioned, this shift is one of the main hurdle of the innovation adoption.

Yesterday in fact I was just going through the open sources that are available on the net. It was to my surprise that a single Google chrome can makes your life easier or rather precisely a short cut key on a windows operating system may make your life easier. Either you create a short cut or rather make use of available one.
Throughout my career It was habitual to me to make the shortcuts on any job that I do, it was nothing biggie though, but was making my life easier, and it was making somebody else’s life easier too. But it even came to my observation that certain small innovation or adoption to new ideas of doing job/work can eventually result in a drastic productivity increase.

It can happen in the following ways.
1. Most importantly it’s all about listing out the pain areas or understanding a tool or concept found interesting to list it to the category ‘How it can be made useful?’.
2. Study of the tool or concept  from every aspect of it is another interesting thing to do.
3. Evangelizing the tool or concept  in the appropriate way is the most important task involved in it. For example, if three people are using a tool in three different ways may not be an appropriate way to do. One can in fact find out the best/easiest way to do same and can spread the idea.
4. Quantifying/Measuring the productivity increase is another critical factor of any innovation.

As a practical example of it, I had a look into the Google chrome extensions/plugins, which made me wonder if somebody can actually do a study on how it can be made use of it in our daily job. To be precise, there may be so many shortcut keys which I am not familiar with the operating system that I work with or the tool that I am using. Per save of time/effort through a productivity increase tool in the name of innovation may actually result in drastic increase of time/effort. I have in fact proved it in many projects. Sometimes when the resource count increases it may save hours of productivity.

My First Exam..

I shared this story with my many friends, but just had a mild thought while I was sitting alone having a light coffee on the corridor of my house, why cant I write this story. So I started writing. It as very old time, when I was crawling on the muds and on the courtyard of my house, though it I was studying on the first standard. During the first standard time I was studying at my fathers house. It was the time I had so many people around me and to play around and I had the freedom to enjoy with my friends. Since we were a gang of good number, all families were not really giving too much attention and every families around us had a look on us. So we had a kingdom of workplace to deal with. Then we will play around starting at the time early morning when we wake up at seven o clock till the time the sun sets at six or seven or till it darks. My garnd father had a land which was good in size and so we had a good ground to play with. And we were utilizing the land that one of the famous politician at that time had near our house. It had cashew nut tree and so many fruit trees that were grown up all around and we used to play around cricket and so many plays that we used to do at our childhood time. It had a small pond which used to take out cricket ball and always made one of us stink fishy and smell of water plants. Those times I used to think and wanted to be very healthy to hit sixer as I always wanted to bat, but I was never a good cricketer. There were other good players in my team from that time. Then I was trying to learn to hit sixes, but was failing to do same and ended up in fielding on which I was always angry but I was made convinced on that fact that I should be fielding on a game to success. What game, I always wanted to bat first? We faced few other issues of missing the balls as well. First of all, the land that was maintained for the politician which consisted many money growing plants like cashew trees were look over by one old guy, who hated us playing on those grounds. He had two kids as well, they also sometimes will join the father in making us run when we hit the ball to his house. Also we were strictly restricted us from climbing any trees in that land and even taking any fruit from the trees also were forbidden. But there was a gua tree which I used to love to climb. When nobody is there or when people plays cricket or go for fishing, I used to climb this tree. I had a place on that tree, I will climb and will look at the sky and one place I used to watch was a white house I could see from the heights of my gua tree. I always used to watch simply eating gua fruit or any fruit taken from any tree till the game is over on top of the tree this white house. There was nothing there, but it was a big house and I used to wonder how the people will be living in that house. My house was an average house which had four bed rooms and one kitchen and three families were living there. It was a different kind of house in my thoughts. Nobody from that house ever came to play with us, so I used to think how the people In that house will be living and how those people will be living and why they are not coming to play with us. Isnt it really fun to play with? Then I used to watch that house. My house had a rooftop made of clay tiles, but this house had a concrete roof top. May be that is the reason nobody comes out of that house, they may be living a different life. Sometimes I used to see people going upstairs on the house and going back. When somebody calls me I will get down from the tree and will go back to play or sometimes field. I hated the guys who played well and used to hit sixes. Sometimes I used to wonder, why I cant hit sixes all the time or never, may be that I was kid, but others also were kids though. I wanted to draw since one of my friend used to draw, I considered it just like another thing which I couldn’t do. Later I learned to draw. I used to draw boban molly and the dog which I learned from one of the TV show which I was considering as my ever time achievement in drawing and used to showcase as these characters were very famous of my time. My initial school time of first standard was very interesting. As I told, I had my studies at my fathers house and all my uncles families and grand father and grand mother were living there.

I used to go school in one of my neighbour’s bycycle sitting in the front. Since this guy used to go his work place at the time I used to go school, I used to go along with him or my grand mother or one of my uncle used to take me to school. My father and mother was staying at muvattupuzha which was distant from my father’s house called Thripunithura. So one of these people will drop me to school. But I loved to go along with the uncle used to drop me at the school as he will give me 25ps or 50ps to buy sweets or fruits. At that time, it was really good amount of money for me as it was good enough to buy sweets for me. There was an old lady who used to sell the sweets candies in front of our school. So I used to buy candies before going to school or coming back from school. One day my teacher told me to get 25Rs from home to buy the stamps which used to sold through the schools. I was told a week before and I completely forgot about that stuff that I had to get 25 from my grand mother. I used to ask everything from my grand mother. Then while we were digging out the small elephants that we find on the muds, I suddenly remembered that I have not yet given the 25Rs for teacher. I got beating from teacher for not doing the home work at that time and I was really afraid that I do not ask my home for the 25Rs. And since it was a week time, I was afraid to ask home also, since it was supposed to be a huge amount. I was eating up this trouble for few days and was not sure what to do. I was sure that I will get beating for this from home and from school teacher, so I was not asking it at home and was expecting my teacher asking this at any time. Then that time when one day my saviour uncle came for my help. The guy who used to drop me at school, who used to give me 25Ps when he drops me at school. This money he was not giving all the times and he used to give me sometimes only telling to buy some candies and all. That very day when he gave me that money, I jumped with joy. Because I got what I wanted to buy the stamps. That day I was waiting for our class teacher to come and I run to the teacher and gave 25ps. Teacher asked me she wanted 2Rs, but I couldn’t really understand whats the diffrence between and 25ps and 25Rs. That day I went home and explained that I given 25ps and teacher told me like this. Then my grand mother came next day along with me and teacher explained the incident and given 25Rs to solve the problem.
Then time has passed by and days grown and became older by few months. As far as I was concerned, my life changed not a bit, but people had a difrent opinion on that. One day I was going to school as usual. As usual my grand mother droped me in the school. Then I stepped in the school steps. I looked at the sky, it didn’t had any change from the time I first came to those steps. Then I run to my class room. It was near one big tree, which used to give me a kind of fruit which was very small and will not get in any shops. Sometime I used to look above the tree for many hours to get a fruit. Then sometimes I used to shake the tree also. That day I didn’t try anything else as I run straight to my classroom and gone my seat. That day I observed something when my class teacher came to my classroom. Teacher had something extra things in her hand other than the chalks that she used to carry. When she came to my class I was looking at the other class room what was happening. Then when teacher called everybody, I was not even listening as I was busy looking at the road where vehicles are passing by. Then suddenly when teacher called my name, I was afraid. Teacher called me to come near. I went without any hesitation. Teacher whispered something on my ear. I wondered, why she is whispering something in my ear who used to shout in the class room. Teacher asked me to sing a song. I thought for few minutes and the song which came to my mind was the song which was famous at that time from one of the movies of Rahman who was famous among the youth. I sang that song ‘Oru madhura kinavin lahariyil ente kudamilla poo virinju..(youtube.com/watch?v=oz1sz6BwtyM)”. Teacher didn’t talk to me anything for sometime. She looked at me and told I can go and sit back. I came back to my seat and continued my nature observations. Then I heard somebody singing ‘Koo..kooo..theevandy..”. I remembered it as a song from my text book and I was not really worried. Then we all moved to some other location and we all lined up. Then also I was I involved in my own activities which was nature listening. While I was observing a bird which was sitting on the partially completed building. One another teacher called me. This time it was entirely different setup altogether. There were three teachers sitting on the desk. One teacher asked me a question ‘Which is the creature who live on both water or land?’. I thought for sometime, I didn’t get for five minutes. Teacher told me to move to next teacher. He told me another question ‘Which is the biggest anymal on the land?’. I thought for sometime, I didn’t get answer for that either for five minutes. Then teacher told me to go back and sit. I thought for another five minutes, for which I knew the answer, but I forgot. Then teacher told me to go back and sit. Then I went back to seat thinking about the answer for both questions. Then when I reached back in my seat, the einsteen inside my mind worked out and it evolved out to the solution and eventually to the answer. Yes, I got the answer. Frog and elephant. I shouted the answer from back seat. Teacher called aloud my name to come here. When I came to teachers seat, teacher told me. If you know the answer, do not shout aloud and now go back to seat. I sat back to my seat and thought why that answer didn’t come to my tongue, when teacher asked the question. That examination result what happened, I do not remember to the result, but it was my first exam.

How to be successful in life..

As a human being and more like above human being I have gone through many tough situations in my life. And come across situations which is challenging for a normal guy like me and outstanding for an abnormal in me. In the initial time of my life the wonder areas that I had to break apart from me was the fear.

• FEAR
The fear when we define, its an emotional constraint that sometimes drive or sometimes massacre the thoughts of any human being. To be successful in life, you need to kill fear. But from my life I kind of knew that to conquer the very feeling of fear, someone has to be really intelligent. Because feeling of fear comes in life at various point in time. It may be the feeling that you are going to loose, at that very moment, one should take decision to let loose or grab tight. It may be the fear of dropping of, then you should have strength to raise like phoenix or try like a donkey. Then the greatest fear, the fear of death. Thus in human life, there will be so many kinds of fear that may attack you at any point in time. To survive you should handling the fear successfully to eventually successful in life.

• PATIENCE
Another feeling that people got is that patience. You know, one big difference in animal and human being. Animals are never tired of doing anything. They may be physically tired, but never mentally, because they never feel anything. They are never afraid of anything. When I was a kid, I was afraid of darkness. Though I was afraid, I used to look at the big tree which used to take various massive forms of darkness on night at my father’s home. But I was afraid, but still I used to enjoy the various forms of the monster tree in my father’s home. Then after a long time, it was cut, then I was bit worried. It was my feeling and emotion, then I used to look at a cow, goat and always had this thought, will they be looking at me and see as a monster. But they only got a habitual, routine process. Goat eats, cow gives milk, birds fly..otherwise human couldn’t have get them killed and eat. Then there are people who see love in stones and fight each other and kill human who feel, why brother? Why did you raise the sword against me? Again, drastically going to another topic altogether, let me come to the point which I was discussing. Patience and success. Patience is an important factor that decides how a human being can be successful in life. Its being measured in so many situations that which in fact helps in rather preserving the eco system that he lives in system, rather its can be called as a relationship system. A human being who got lots of patience..oops, I would say patience with intelligence will be able to achieve so many things than one guy who does a heroic act of arrogance or rowdism. A common man like me had a time where I used to watch stunts as my passion and many myths that we read while growing up as a child always had stunts and wars a heroic form. But when we live in a society, perseverance has got a lot of altitude in the life of human being. Many situations in life of human being, your patience may be tested. Many would give it to the over reacting or to the stunts that he might have recently scene or to the act of hero, forgetting his responsibilities that he hold at that point in time. So it is really important that somebody hold tight to the patience, to preserve a family, friendship or relationship. Or when we have nothing to give up, we may even shout out loud..!! 

• INTEREST
I would be mentioning it as skill, but I purposefully put it as interest. The work or job that we do is more of interest that drive us from the start to the completion perspective of it. When somebody is interested in something, he will be doing the job best, relative to his capacity in doing the same. And I would say that when the interest goes down impact of fear or impact of patience would be inversely proportional to the target goal. So choosing a person who is interested in doing something is really important.

• Goal
Having a goal is really important for any human being. If you see the life of human being, there goal is to make a family on a very minimal. Human being is largely depend upon the society and the very existence of the society depends upon the survival of the family and how human being makes family. A family of boy and a family of girl are connected through sex and have another family united is how generally society made of. So for this very process human being has to goes through various processes. So ultimately making family is the goal of any common man. Then to raise the family, he needs to do so many things which defined part of the society. They need to mingle with other human beings, co-operate with them, fight with them, make friends, do so many things which are absolutely required for his survival and the survival of his family. A family is like a bubble. It floats in air and floats through or travel through many distance but when it tries to join with multiple other bubbles, it will break. A person or human being should only be taking care his or her family matters and he should never have a society interest should be the bottom line principle of any human being. Then he comes out of his family, looks into the society and looks at his family, then when he realizes nothing will happen to his family or rather there are so matter of interests that can benefit his family, he can take up society needs. That is how precisely one should be a social human being. This particular way of thought of human being is the best way or rather the good for a human, family and society. So for any human being, building a family is the primary goal of any person. Then comes the artifacts to achieve the goal. It will be many features that would characterize the goal. Initial time of human being, it was food that was the goal of human being to survive in society. If a human being was getting food for a day, he was a satisfied human being. Then it was preserved food for the time when he will have scarcity of food. Then it evolved and evolved and evolved to iPad which satisfies a human being from the goal perspective. For the past few years, my goal was to get an iPhone which I never could from my own pocket. Many times, money would be the goal of the human being, but sometimes when we have the very thirst for the goal, we will never reach goal as there are so many traps that human being only set to not to reach to the goal. So there comes the perseverance.

• PRESERVERANCE
Perseverance is the thirst or eagerness or fun in doing something till we achieve goal. So it is nothing but energy or oxygen or continuous thirst for getting the objective.

July

The alarm rang on my face and i realized it’s time for me to wake up. That day i woke up in a totally new place and bed, as i was not remembering what happened yesterday night. My family packed from home early night yesterday and i slept in our car was the last thing came into my mind. That moment, some kind of happiness rush into my mind like the sea shore that i watched in one movie which i saw some time back, it was July. We all get together on this month and i used spend a lot of time in my father's home where i had lot of friends. So the very realization of it was pushing me from the bed as my sunlight alarm was telling me, its already late to get up. I also got a bit idea that nobody around me in the neighborhood has come to know about my arrival, otherwise somebody would have woke me up already. I waked up, and combing my hair and yawning i came to the door in the room, where i was sleeping to the corridor. My room was very small, where there was two beds and a trunk which my grandfather kept his assets. It was a total miracle for me to see such an old trunk box kept under the bed. My grandfather will sometimes check it out, and i used to wonder what was inside it? I touched the trunk box just like that. It got corrosive bit and nothing changed a lot from the last time i seen. I never could see what was inside it, as I couldn’t find that anytime even after I grown up. So the trunk box remained as miracle still in my mind. I was feeling slight sleepy though, i came out of the room. There was a slight bump on the room door leading to corridor. I used to stand on the bump and see what is happening to the world. That day also i stand on top of the bump and was looking around if something happened to my world or not, the cat who was sitting on the sideway of the corridor looked at me like what am i doing? It yawned, when i looked at it. Then i came to the corridor and pushed myself up hanging on the wood of the door on the corridor. My arrival nobody came to know till, or somebody might have called me by this time. I looked outside. The sand on my father's place was so sandy like the sand on sea shores..when i look at it, it smiles at me. I came out of the corridor and stand on the courtyard and looked how my feet pushed the sand down. I used to get dirty with the sand there, and get scold from my mother and family. Sometimes when i go there, there will be a bunch of sands for some work happening there. I will jump into that and will get dirty on all over my body. My father's home had bit land with so much coconut tree and some kind of cultivation and all done from time to time. When there will be cultivation of some small plants which will give some kind of seeds for which i do not know name in english, so much butterflies will come from all my place around there. I had very specific areas everywhere on which i had key interests, which i consider myself as my place, where i will get on top of the trees and will shout loud. Then nobody will listen, but my goodies like sky, clouds and butterflies will listen to me. Here i used to make so many friends, when i climb the trees, the sky will look at me and butterflies used to whisper on my ear. But when at home, which was my commanding center, i used to be bit cruel, i used to tie the butterflies to the strings and make them fly and will run back of it. So it was really fun time. And i had so many friends there, my cousins and friends in neighbourhood. In my father's place, neighborhood was very nearby situated and people will be getting involved in everything, which I generally do not like especially when some big people in neighborhood comments on our playtime. When on a ready day, we all will be ready to game starting from early morning. Then it would be like cricket, fishing and getting into trees to get some food etc would be going on. There was a big land of one of the politician there which was maintained by one of my neighbourhood family. So we were freely roaming around there though that guy will not allow us to get on the trees. But we used to do that. Sometimes this guy will come and will make us run from there where he found something wrong happening there. We included my cousins who were enough in numbers in addition to my friends in neighbor. There was one girl also in our gang, but she was just like another good friend who will participate in all our gaming activities and nobody ever behaved or showed any partiality to her. From that time itself, I was involved in uprising women rights. So while playing cricket, I will not let her get tired of batting, and I will try to replace her while playing cricket and batting. But this july something happened in my place.

It was early morning, I wake up and when I got to the corridor..somebody was shouting from distance seeing me ‘are you not coming?’. I never used to reply to the messages, and I engaged myself in morning activities and was getting ready to my playground. Then when I got ready, I got down the house calling my cousins to join me and I walked towards the meeting place where there was a post which served the electricity for five families. When I reached, my friend was there, but when I looked, one another girl along with him. She was looking so pretty and I was not able to talk anything to her. She was introduced to everybody. She is my friend’s cousine came for a few weeks during the july holiday time. I was bit nervous at that time, which I was not able to understand why it was happening so and while batting, fishing I was looking if she was noticing me. But she was really engaged in her gaming things and she was not really looking at me. I had no complaints on that either. We used to play all sort of games, cricket..fishing..then some native games. One such game was that people will split into two parts and will face each other as a group of more than five to ten people and will walk front and back facing each other holding hands on waist. It will be a group of two. So after a move backward and front singing a colloquial song, one will be picked from each group and they need to pull each other to their gang. The one who succeed will get an addition to their team. I was an average guy in this pulling-in game, but that day I got that girl to pull in. I hold her hands and I could pull her in my team. It was really a nice day in my life. But after two days, she was missing in the gang. When I asked my friend, he told her father came to pick her and she is gone. So that was the end of July. Then back to my place, my world, my sky, my cloud, my butterflies. Then I grownup, at least I tell myself that I am grown up. Then when I looked at the sky, the cloud in the sky was coming..it put a strand to me and on its light I could see the face of sky..

Pros and cons of Ideation and What is an ideation? Why do we need it?

This is not meant for a specific organization, but its a generic thought of mine. Kindly do not correlate this to any activity done by any organization. Its my thought process on generalizing the activity of Ideation.

As everybody are aware, Idea management is something that need to be provided with the highest priority just like the deliverable that we have. Because idea will make you unique or differentiate you from others, for the following reasons.

1. Idea tells you the story of a deliverable.
2. Idea tells your understanding about the application.
3. A good idea will be appreciated even in a place where good deliverable is not appreciated. Definitely idea implementation may be painful though. As deliverable is always expected, but idea not necessarily.
4. Idea will bring a new level of confidence.
5. Idea increases the level of collaboration among the team.
6. An Idea will be the future. It will help you to see from different angles that a customer thinks.
7. Onshore/offshore/developer/manager/business collaboration increases.

So I should say that an idea has got a significant importance in our career life, just like your deliverables.

Ideas should be the heart of deliverables. In any ideation process, the following should be my suggestions towards it.

1. We should see Ideation and associated collaboration as one which really required and one which is an absolute necessity. Also I should say that the collaboration among the team members should be increased as part of the ideation. The team members and business analyst should sit in a room and should discuss about the bottle necks of the problems and should come up with problems and should give room for a thought in a month time or so with a quantified number of problems as per team size. Then on subsequent discussions, the solutions should be discussed and should be solved in to the implementation perspective. So every team should have year end goals as measurable number of problems as per the size or complexity of the project. This specific activity will increase the depth of knowledge of the application what they had been using.

If I tell you for example, I had participated in such a collaboration environment where, I came to knew that a page load hits two main frames with cost of few dollars for each hit. Till that point in time, it was just a page load for me. Then it leads me to think of other possibilities also.

So many people in the project may not be aware of the business they handling with, but they will be doing the part they have assigned with it to the best. But if we give a platform for them to interact with everybody, on a high level perspective. I believe it can create wonders. Just that very thought in mind, when I say ideation, ITS NOT ABOUT CREATING IDEAS, BUT ABOUT DEVELOPING A PLATFORM FOR CREATING AN IDEA TOMORROW OR DAY AFTER TOMORROW. So all my thoughts being described here are not intended to not expected to get an idea, but its all about a talk to create a better platform for collaboration and then ideation. Till we reach this point, I would suggest that we should not talk about idea. Idea should be a by product of so many things happened to the team. Like ARGENTINA GOT WORLD CUP or like INDIA GOT WORLD CUP, same way we may get an idea in future.

2. So the ideation process should not start with the ideas itself. It should be a process that makes people understand the in depth of the application. Problems that client already facing. Future plans by the clients etc can be explained by the business analyst. It will make an in depth understanding of the environment and the situation in hand.

3. Then the ideas should be popping out as a by product of the understanding of the application and understanding of the business.

Possible suggestions in my perspective towards idea creating process:

1. Ideation should happen at associate level.

2. A Business Unit idea champion should be there to understand and upload an idea on the idea platform, when all project team comes up with ideas as being explained above.

3. Any idea, good or bad, should have a discussion platform either through an application or through some other sort of mechanism.

4. I suggest that each project should have an idea champ.

5. Business Unit level idea champ should be a coordinator to delegate the tasks at a very higher level. He should be informing the project level idea champ about the dates of discussions, idea collation, idea logging etc. Through this process, BU champ can make sure that the activities are happening and project level champs can make sure that activities are getting implemented.

6. Project level ideation should happen through the following steps to achieve the yearly goal

1.     a. Every team members including onsite, offshore, developers, managers, business analysts should have a meeting on current scenarios of the project.

2.     b. Existing problems

3.     c. Expectation of the clients.

4.     d. Areas of concerns

5.     e. Cost involving components

6.     f. Upcoming projects

7.     g. What is the need for more projects

8.     h. Situations onshore/offshore

9.     i. What impact the current project are making to client and business

10.  j. How could we save money

11.  k. Current political/economic situations that may impact the project.

12.  l. Discussions happening on the above mentioned base

So all the sort of situations/problems/expected solutions should be discussed among the team members within a targeted date. A project level Idea champ should be coordinating it to the completion reporting to the BU level idea champ.

7. The above-mentioned activities should be happening at the organizational level or at delivery center level.

8. After these discussions, collaboration/discussion has to happen on the topics for a span of time determined by the BU champ.

9. Then the idea champs at the project level should log finalized pre-defined number of ideas.

10. BU level champs should be approving the idea logging.

11. Then it should go through a process of verifying, analysis etc. Which has got much higher scope.

12. I think the need for an idea may not be able to be digested to a genius guy outside the scope of a project. Or he/she should be taking extra care on understanding the application and to analyze the need. So the idea analysis and implementation should be done with the help of the team member rather it being done totally an outside guy, no matter how genius he is.

13. A valid idea should be implemented; In a case, if an Ideator has a special interest in escalating his idea on his rejection, he should be given an opportunity to escalate his idea and explain it. He/she should be given a platform for the same. Rejection of an idea is a de-motivating act, if it is good one. So we should be really careful on analysis, verification and selection.