No love lost!

Good morning, and welcome on-board what feels like a bad week coming. Or at least, the start couldn't have been insaner. It feels wrong to crib in the morning, but short of kicking myself (and including that), this is the best I can do. So here's what happened:

After the thought of the longgg flight to Chennai and the long day and week ahead made my sleep disappear over night, after I got out of bed at 4 feeling refreshed with a 2.5 hour sleep, there I was trying to get to the airport at 530 in the morning when the car broke down. Had Einstein been around and amnesiac, he would have probably rediscovered relativity seeing how long and short 15 minutes are early in the morning - the 15 minutes of sleep, too little, the 15 minutes of car breaking down, too much. And just as I managed to reach the airport 2 minutes too late, I realize to my horror that I forgot my wallet (with all my money, cards, ID proof et al) at home. The ah moment of taking out change at 1030 pm returned. The sleeplessness kicked me on discovering that the next flight out is only at 850, and the guilt of asking my dad to wake up early in the morning and bring me the fateful wallet has sapped all my energies for the week already. And hence, here we are, suited booted packed and sleepless, waiting at the airport for Dad to come and the flight to leave. For all the work I was supposed to do in two hours in morning getting pushed to late at night. For more sleeplessness.

Yes, you can go awwww now. And repeat that when I crib about working so hard on Valentine's day, with no one to swoon over. Double awww. 

And double yawn. Damn.

Bits and pieces of a consultant's life: Chapter 2

So, some of what they say about consulting is true. One day in a year you get to live a "high-flying" life. Somebody says the client wants to do the meeting in Dubai, somebody says, "What the hell, you come too", and in a haze, while you generate slides after slides for the said meeting, somebody makes the booking and one evening you find yourself flying with other much senior, darker people in the team (and thanks to them, flying business class, no less). Few hours later, you find yourself chauffeured in a 7 series Limo to a splendid hotel (which sadly enough, is only 5 minutes from the airport). That's the part they tell you - the glamor!
And then there's the rest of the iceberg. Like you spend a total of less than 24 hours (including 4 hours of sleep) in a new country, only seeing the airport, one hotel, one "view", and one boardroom for 14 hours :) And then you fly back, landing at an odd hour in the night, body tired of too much exhaustion, wanting to just sleep in peace. That you didn't get to see more of the city at 50 degrees C is hardly a regret by then. Lots of people will still kill for this job. :)
Or maybe not. But show off of the one good day in the year apart, it's actually been more than 10 months in this job. Thanks to the fact that our joining was delayed, the new batch for this year is already in and we are already the "older", "experienced" lot. Really? :)
I wonder if I've changed much in this time. I wish there was someone who could point out and explain. I would like to reflect what I learnt and what I unlearnt. The collage in my mind has started filling in with memories of the good times and the bad ones. Of crying in a meeting, to the ones where awesome people around made life feel a breeze. Of mistakes made, of misjudgments, of frustration, of fatigue, of excitement. Yeah, I guess I have grown somewhat.

Don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. :)

A tale of a few cities

Those of you on my Google Talk may have noticed oft-changing city names in my status over the last 10-12 days. Such is consulting life, and my brush with early morning flights and hotel-airport hopping has been tiring, but work-apart, also insightful in a few ways.

Delhi and Mumbai are both "home" now (yeah, I'm gonna give Mumbai-whining a break, this city has grown on me that much :) ) but Ludhiana, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad were refreshingly fun, even in the brief city. Ahmedabad felt good, modern and developing after all these years, even though my cab driver talked about the invisible parts of the city where poverty and discrimination were collected. Still, there was an energetic air in the city and in the people, in the smiling kids and buzzing households. Ludhiana was a completely different experience. The city has a lot of money, probably more than Ahmedabad, and definitely more per capita than Delhi (if you include "actual" and not "stated" income). Every home houses entrepreneurs, but sadly enough, the infrastructure is crumbling and governance seems to have fallen short on so mnay grounds it's sad. Education is a priority so low that an outsider will be surprised. 15-16 year olds in every home have taken to alcohol - the official figure for last year was 29 cr scotch/whisky bottles, up by 10 cr, not including Chandigarh (where it is duty-free) and only counting bottles actually bought offiially in Punjab. Even that, is almost 2 bottles a month per person. Holy shit. Over more conversations, I discovered most women in the city aspire to get married to an "NRI" and virtually very neighbourhood boasts of a few Amreeka, Canaida, London, Greece and etcetras. Marriage - sine it's easier if you have a degree - is the sole objective of most of the women who study, and the rest tend to move to other towns. The men run businesses, drink and make merry. It is a larger than life lifestyle for most of the happy, kind people of the town, and let, feels another country, another era altogether, in a few ways.

Hyderabad is a far more complicated place to make generalised comments about, even at a caveated opinionated level. I loved most of what I saw - it is no longer the sleepy town of the 80s, the infrastructure is pretty Goddamn good (awesome airport and love the roads, mostly!) and the people are nice, learned, hardwoorking and speak Hindi easily :) ! I was stuck in the curfew though, over the Telengana agitation, and heard mixed opinions while trying to find a way out of the city. It was almost painful, to see what I saw, but I admit I don't understand and appreciatew the full complexity of it yet.

Travellogues can be boring more often that not, but I was still amazed at the perspective I found in brief visits to three of the most important Indian cities the coming decade. Would love to know more.

Despite 530 am wakeups, some things are fun about this job.

Bits and pieces from a consultant's life: Chapter 1

Three months is a long time in consulting - long enough, I reckon, for me to begin writing my memoirs. In any case, the rate at which my hair are graying and my memory cells degenerating, I fear I'd be too senile too soon to remember any of this. :)

Many, many people have asked me what do I do as a consultant. Depending on the context and the person quizzing me, I find a different answer each time. But if I were to reflect and give a neat three bullet point summary (rule #1: There are always three points about everything!) about what I do just to myself, I think I'd struggle. Being a consultant is being so many different things at once, from a hardcore analyst to an efficient networker to a top class call center executive as you adopt both their lifestyle and cold-calling skills. Being a consultant is about learning and unlearning a lot of things really quickly - from being a manager to being a
waiter taking food orders ( :D especially true if you're the junior-most member on the team!).

Last month we were in Kuala Lumpur for regional training, and one of those team-building/ice-breaker games was built on a speed date format, meant to give us a chance to know and interact with our colleagues from other offices. It is amusing how invariably "How's your work-life balance?" was one of the top three ice-breaker questions, and how people found solace in knowing people elsewhere were just as screwed as they were. It was an-almost cheerful feeling of bonding.
The people around you are the single biggest reason what keeps people doing this job. I'm really lucky though, I work out of office for this project and it's a series of pranks and cracks at one another, interspersed with some work. Absolutely adore my team, even the bosses (except when they become too bossy :P). More than anything else - even more than the fact that I enjoy what I do despite obscene hours- so far, that's what keeps me going. Making fun of my 'boss' for wearing a pink shirt, or sending silly emails from each other's accounts to the entire floor, I suppose that's all I remember now.

I've been told I'd be a different person, at least in terms of work and work maturity, at the end of one year here. I don't know how true it is, but I sure can feel some growth, and all I wish for is that I'm still the same person at heart. Silly, naughty, sensitive kiddo.

There are several joys of consulting, and there are several pains. But that's true everywhere, isn't it. There are thrills in consulting, and that has somewhat fewer parallels elsewhere in the world. There are also kills, but let's not go into those. :)

Cheers to living another day.