Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Strange encounters

There have been instances where in I have met some of my friends very rarely and these meetings have had lasting impacts. I have known Shankarnarayan right from my primary school days and he was my senior there. Also we used to stay 2 blocks away [Jayanagar 1st block] and often used to meet after school for cricket or just to roam around the streets. Gradually I lost contact with him, and met only once in a while. After we moved to BSK 2nd stage, I totally lost contact with him

My degree subject had been a combination of Hardware and Software. So there were great deliberations in the house on whether should I stick to Hardware or Software line. Both had its own pros and cons. Finally I started off with joining a Computer hardware servicing company. I started to gain experience in servicing and repairing computers, and slowly started to enjoy the work. In the meanwhile, my father had taken up a fabrication work at a house in Rajajinagar. The owner of the house had just started a S/w company [Tantra Solutions] and my father had spoken to him about me. I went along with my father to meet the owner [Mahesh P] and learn about the company

During those days [1999 - 2000] Infosys, Wipro, TCS were the main S/w companies, and everybody wanted to be part of these organizations. The salaries that were paid were huge [at least 10000/PM] and every parent wanted their children to settle down in one of these companies

It was a good meeting with Mahesh. The discussion went on for about 30 mins. Mahesh had been an expert at Database technologies and I was a novice. I only know dBase3 and did not know anything related to core DB concepts. But I had known C very well and had expressed my desire to work on this technology [and had frankly told that I don’t like to work on DB]

I was again called to meet other directors of the company. This is when I saw the physical location of the office. It was neat Majestic and in Cottonpet area. I met with Arvind, Kumar, Mahesh P and Mahesh N. There was one other director [Jayesh] whom I met at a later date

Having heard about big IT companies, doubts started to creep in my mind about Tantra. This was more to do with physical infrastructure rather than anything else. I bought some time for deliberation and continued working for the Computer service company. I was not convinced that I would want to join Tantra and decided to pursue career in Computer H/w field

I was returning home one day after office, and met Shankarnarayan accidentally near my house [I was meeting him after 10 years or so]. It had been a very pleasant surprise and spoke at length on how life is treating both of us. He had joined for a S/w course and was considering joining S/w companies [even though his father had an established business]. I had not told him about the interview at Tantra. During the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he would be willing to join any S/w company even though it did not have good infrastructure. This was mainly to do with gaining experience. He also advised me to do so if there is an opportunity. Probably he was able to foresee the future of S/w industry better


If it had not been for the rendezvous with Shankarnarayan, I might not have joined Tantra and not entered S/w at all. The wonderful journey I’m having in this sector started on Jan 24th 2000 from an office near Cotton pet main road. I have not met Shankarnarayan since then and not sure when the destiny would arrange further encounters

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