Chapter 1

(NOTE: Minor Editing Still Pending)



“Imagine a profit of Rs4000+ a month! You are being stupid not investing in shares”, says Rahul.
Investing in shares never did and never will attract me. I hate letting other people decide my fate. Investing in shares is like handing over the reins of my life to some stranger; one wrong decision by some CEO and I might be doomed.
But now, I feel a knot in my stomach. Four thousand rupees! That’s about one-fourth of my salary. The thought of earning additional four thousand a month is lucrative.
“No yaar, not shares.” I say, trying to be confident but feeling a little uncertain.
“Why?”
“Nothing in specific but there are lots of small reasons which all add up and pull me away”.
“Reasons like?”
I never thought much about this. It is more of an intuitive feeling.
“I don’t know. But let me ask you something, are you sure you can repeat your success next month by carrying out a similar exercise?”
Rahul falls silent, he is doing some thinking. I got him. Shares are so damn unpredictable.
I sip my coffee, it is no longer hot. It always happens with me. I start with hot Café Americano but by the time I take the last sip, it turns into Iced Americano.
“I don’t know. Well ok, I cannot be sure. But I might” he says slowly.
“So if you make a profit in one month, there is absolutely no guarantee that you can repeat it again. In fact there is an equal chance that you might even lose, right?”
“Well yes. But if I am careful and invest only the profit, I will not lose any of my money except perhaps the initial investment in the worst case”
“Then what is the point in carrying out this exercise if you make profits in, say, the first two months only to lose it subsequently?”
“Then what do you suggest? Do nothing, play safe and stay happy with our meager salary? Wake up dude. Almost everyone is making money this way”
“Hmm… I don’t know, but I would like to divert my efforts to start a business. In business, once you make your mark, it guarantees a constant source of income, well in most cases.”
“Oh really? Then from where will you get the investment to start a business?”
“Come on man, you are not attacking the problem properly. Investment is not the problem, IDEA is the problem. If you have an idea which will help the society, all you have to do is to convince the investors and believe me there are plenty of investors out there”
“So you have some ideas now?”
“Nothing solid, but let’s not digress. The argument is about why I am not interested in investing in shares and that’s because I want to divert my efforts towards starting a business and if I invest in shares I might get carried away”
“What is the not-so-solid idea anyway?”
“Well ok. See sometime back I had this idea of advertising. I pay restaurants, food courts, malls etc and ‘buy’ a small portion of their wall where I mount a TV. Then I contact companies to advertise, charging according to a tariff”
“Why would anyone want your help in putting up a TV? They could do it themselves” he quickly points out.
“I did say it is a feeble idea but I can reason it out. Firstly, the people who manage the places I am talking about have enough problems and would prefer a fixed monthly rent without any additional management overhead. Secondly, I can form a big network, co-ordinate it and widen the audience. This will attract more companies to advertise and also justify the tariff” I say
“Hmmm… sounds interesting. Did you make any enquiries or calculation on the feasibility and the profits?”
“Nope, laziness and office work are delaying me”
“So there is no way that you will invest in shares? I was hoping my initial success will encourage you to join me”
“I admit I am tempted, but no. Come on, we are engineers. We have the ability to do things much more interesting, exciting and rewarding. What say?”
“Well I don’t have anything like that right now and since I am quite successful, I will continue trading. Don’t feel jealous if I buy my Merc before you buy a Civic” he says with a grin.
“Of course not! I hope you buy one fast, can’t wait to drive”
“I will not let you drive”
“But I will”
We laugh. We often end up counting our chickens before they hatch.
“When is the party?” I ask suppressing a smile.
“Party?”
“Come on, your four-thousand-rupees profit party!”
“Acha, I take all the risks and tensions only to treat you? Get lost!”
“That’s the tradition. Don’t you remember Gowri? She used to slog during the exams, top the class and end up treating us”
We laugh. Those were the good times, the college days. No tensions, full masti even during exams.
On the normal days, we used to play LAN games day in and day out. But during exams, we used to feel guilty to play but also bored to study. Group study was the only solution. The first person in the group to get bored would shout ‘I hate this college. I hate this education system. I hate …’ One of the things he hates would start a debate. The topics ranged from ‘how good is our education system’ to ‘does God exist’. Our favorite topic was ‘Are we in the right place?’ Most of us were IIT aspirants and discontent with our private deemed university was ubiquitous. But I had no complaints. In fact, after two years of claustrophobic and torturous JEE preparation, the freedom of the hostel life felt like heaven.

I look around. The crowd in the cafeteria is thinning out. The clock is showing 11.05AM. We were sitting in the cafeteria from 10:20. A forty-five minute tea break is going to give Rakesh, my Manager, a heart attack.
“Time to go” I say and get up unenthusiastically. Rahul stretches himself and with a painful look stands up, with equal reluctance.



***



Router crashes instead of giving error when user enters the date 43rd Feb.
In over a million lines of code, split across tens of thousands of files, my job is to isolate a few buggy lines or sometimes one buggy line or sometimes just one single buggy symbol. This is my life, my boring life. When I was tagged as “the debugger” in my college, I never imagined that I would be stuck at it for so long. At times, when I realize that I might be stuck up with a job like this for the rest of my life, I end up feeling like running away, keep running and never stop, like Forrest Gump.
But now, I am stuck to my seat and have a bug to squash.
I curse Hang Ho, a Chinese in the testing team for finding this bug. Why the hell will someone, intelligent enough to use a router, enter the date as 43rd Feb? I open the bug description and the answer stares at me. Instead of typing 4, I typed 43 and the router crashed. I look at the keyboard. This guy or perhaps a girl must be having real fat fingers to have achieved this feat. Curious, I search in the online Indigo Employee Directory and zoom in on the photo. Two small eyes of a sleepy, fat Chinese stare at me.
His podgy face confirms my guess. He must be having equally podgy fingers.
“Who is he?”
Oops! I dread this sarcastic voice, it always spells trouble. I turn around; Rakesh is looking curiously at the zoomed photo.
“Submitter of the bug” I answer.
“Maybe you could send a mail across on how to solve bugs by looking at submitters’ photos. I see everyone else struggling hard with the code”
Thankful that Hang Ho did not turn out to be a lady, I look around. Everyone is busy, even Vinodh, I can swear that he had orkut opened a while back.
“Any progress on this?” Rakesh asks.
The only progress I made today is to find out how Hang Ho typed 43 instead of 4. Sure that this cannot impress him, I started blabbing about my feeble progress in the last three days.
“Try to finish it by end of business today” he says and walks away.
Ridiculous! It is impossible to meet that target.
“Well better get prepared to face his wrath tomorrow” I tell myself.
“Didn’t you observe him in the back of you da?”
I turn around to face Vinodh my cubicle mate.
I was right; Rakesh is barely two cubicles away and already a tiny photograph on the left, an advertisement on the right, two monsters on the top, ‘Orkut’ and ‘Welcome, Vinodh’ replaced the boring code.
“I am not as good as you are in sensing the presence of unwanted agents in the vicinity, next time try and warn me”
Vinodh can actually sniff out Rakesh’s presence.
Initially I used to laugh at his English. But soon, I realized that he does not consider this as a handicap. He has the ability to confidently address any audience in his lousy English. This made me stop laughing and start admiring him.



***



After 8 hours of continuous work with just half an hour break for lunch at 2 and ten minutes for tea at 5, I am feeling exhausted. Debugging is like searching for a pin in a haystack. It would be so much easier to go and buy a new pin. But unfortunately, the cost of buying a pin works out to be much higher than to hire people who will look for the lost rusty pin. Yes rusty; with thousands of people fixing hundreds of bugs everyday, the code is in a mess, like an overused rusted pin.
.

I open Sametime, the Online Instant Messenger,

Vikram: Come let’s go. There is no way I can solve it today. Rakesh doesn’t understand any technical details and yet sets deadlines. Wonder who made him a manager.

Rahul has been pinging me for the last one hour. We started playing table tennis 3 months back and we are now TT addicts; leaving without playing will render our day incomplete.
No response. The large round bubble against his name is red, meaning he is away. But only 10 minutes back he said he is going to wait for me.
I call him up.
“Hello” he answers after two rings.
“Where are you?”
“In my cubicle, waiting for you”
“Idiot! Why didn’t you reply? I wasted a rupee calling you”
“Reply to what?”
“I just sent you an Instant Mess… Oh my God”
I stare at the screen. My mind goes blank. This is not possible. This is the end of my career in Indigo Solutions.
I sent the message to Rakesh instead of Rahul.
“I didn’t receive any Instant Message” my cell phone squeals.
I throw it aside, run to Rakesh’s cabin and look through the glass door. No bag on the table, he left for the day. He will be oblivious to this message until he logs in tomorrow. Once he reads the message, I will be fired; there is no doubt in it. I want to quit Indigo, not fired!
I slowly walk back to my cubicle thanking God for small favors. I am an optimist. A pessimist would be cursing the world now, but I know the situation could have been a lot worse like what if Rakesh is still working; highly improbable considering the fact that he runs home the instant the clock strikes 6.30PM but not impossible.
Rahul is waiting for me beside my cubicle.
“Kya bey, what happened? I called you about 10 times. Hey, you look so worried. Why are you sweating?”
I look around, some cubicles are still occupied.
“Come to the cafeteria. Emergency” I say, tension evident in my voice. Rahul started following me without another word.

“I just screwed up my career” I say, choosing a table in the remotest corner of the huge cafeteria.
“What?”
“I sent an IM to Rakesh instead of you!” I blurt out.
“Rakesh? Your manager right?”
“Yes”
“What did you send?”
“I wanted to take out my frustration. So I typed in a message saying that he does not know anything and it is a wonder that he is a manager now. I IM’ed it to him instead of you”
“Jesus Christ! You sent him that?” asks Rahul horrified.
“Yes! As usual he already left for the day. But he is sure to see the message first thing he logs in tomorrow. We don’t get along well and now this. I am dead!”
Rahul falls silent.
“There is one way out” he says slowly.
“Please, anything to get myself out of this mess”
“Turn off his computer”
I stare at him. Turning off his computer sure would erase my accolade without a trace. But for that, I need to go into his lair.
“Are you crazy? You want me to go inside his cabin and turn off his machine! If someone sees me in his cabin now, I am dead.”
We, the lowly software engineers are given cubicles and Managers are given cabins.
“You are dead anyway” he replies shrugging.
That’s right. But turning off his computer? Something does not sound right.
“What if he is running any scripts? They will all get terminated”
“Jesus Christ Vikram. You are sure to get fired if he reads the message and you are worried about some stupid script he might be running?”
“Just thinking if there is some other, more benign, way out”
“Yes there is. Let’s go and kill him tonight” he says changing the very definition of benign.
I smile, for the first time in the last fifteen minutes.
“Ok I will do it” I say feeling a little hopeful.
“Good. We need to do it tonight. It is 8.30PM and the office will be deserted. I will keep watch outside the room”
Oh no!
“What if the room is locked?” I asked, suddenly remembering the golden keyhole present in every door.
“Don’t worry the cabins are never locked. They lock up anything important in their lockers. So all you need to do is go inside and switch off the system. I suggest you plug out the power cord just to be sure”
“Ok” I say, too willing to leave all the thinking to him.
“Can we find someone else to help us? Two levels of watch will be much better because no one should see you going in or coming out”
“Vinodh!” I exclaim. “He can sniff out dangers like this” I say clicking my fingers.
“Is he still around?”
I call him up, no answer, calling him again, still no answer.
“That’s ok. We will manage” says Rahul as I am calling him up for the third time. He answers on the fourth ring.
“Hello Vikram” he whispers.
“Hey Vinodh, emergency. Where are you?” I whisper back.
“Why the hell is he whispering and why the hell am I whispering back?” I ask myself.
“I… I… am going to shit da”
“Can you go after 5 minutes?” I ask, desperate.
“Uh…no… I already in middle of it da”
Middle of what! Oh I understood.
“How much longer will you be there?”
“Oh God! What am I asking?”
“Uh… five minutes” he replies sounding puzzled and annoyed.
“Ok come to the cafeteria as soon as you can”
“Ok da” comes back the reply and he hangs up immediately. I am too tensed to feel guilty for disturbing him in midst of such an important activity.
“He will be with us in five minutes. Oh God, I just hope it works” I pray.
I am agnostic. Dad always says mental tension increases our faith in God; he is right.
Why don’t you and Rakesh get along anyway?” Rahul asks.
“Well, in one of the team meeting, he proposed his idea of restructuring the entire code to make it modular. I opposed saying that it is an impossible task considering the size of the code base and the fact that almost everyone who wrote it left ages ago. I suggested it would be better to design from scratch”
“Designing from scratch? Come on that would be one hell of a job” interrupts Rahul.
“Believe me not more than restructuring a million lines of muddled up code. Anyway, he took an analogy and asked me whether I would prefer to renovate or destroy and construct to redesign an old house. I told him it depends on the extent to which I want to redesign the house and the availability of blue prints”
“Well he ignored me and suggested his idea to the big guys who sit on his head. They rejected saying that designing from scratch is the only option for which we do not have enough resources now. Guess it hurt his ego and he has been giving me a tough time since then”
“What da, why are you calling so urgently?” asks Vinodh joining us, looking very irritated.
I apologize and explain him the situation and the plan.
“What da, such carelessness from you I did not think” he says, his eyes as big as saucer plates.
“I know. Please, will you help me?” I want him to help me, not admonish me.
“Ok, I will be standing in the corridor and calling Rahul if someone is entering inside. Correct?” he asks.
“Correct” says Rahul getting up.



***



On our way to ground zero, we started fine tuning the plan. Vinodh will stand outside in the corridor and give Rahul a call if anyone walks in. This is critical since Rakesh’s cabin door is right opposite to the entrance to the office area. Rahul will stand in front of the glass door monitoring the surroundings. He will raise his hand if anyone is close by or if he gets a warning from Vinodh and will put it down when it is safe for me to walk out.
Leaving Vinodh out in the corridor, we casually walk in. The office is sparsely populated. Only Gautham, one of my teammate, is still hard at work. We casually stroll down towards Rakesh’s cabin and stop in front of the door. I look around, nobody is watching us. With Rahul shielding me, I put my hand on the cold metal knob and turn expecting it to be locked. But Rahul was right, it turns without resistance and the door opens. I am saved. Heaving a sigh relief I walk towards the lone computer which is humming to itself. I was about to crawl under the table to pull out the power cord when curiosity grips me. I want to have one last look at my message, in Rakesh’s computer. I royally sit on his chair, switch on his monitor and press Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Shit! I don’t know his password and I have wasted precious minutes which could jeopardize the mission. Cursing, I switch off the monitor and crawl under the table. Tracing the power cord I pull it out. The CPU fans stop and the machine falls silent. I count 5 to make sure that every bit in the RAM is erased and then plug in the power cord. I started bolting towards the door; I freeze half way. Rahul has his hand up, but I cannot see anyone in the vicinity.
“Shall I run out an be done with it?” I ask myself.
I crawl back under the table forcing myself to stick to the plan. Sneha walks in and turns towards her cabin. She goes out of sight and Rahul puts down his hand. I rush out and give a thumbs-up.
I did it. We did it. We quickly walk away from the place of crime.
I entered Rakesh’s lair and sabotaged his computer! This is my best day in Indigo!
We exit the office area and burst out laughing.
Vinodh joins us and we could not stop laughing for the next 5 minutes.

“Dinner is on me guys, you pick the restaurant” I say at last.
“Ice cream on me, I am very happy today. I wanted to something crazy for a very long time” says Rahul. We both turn towards Vinodh.
“I will be needing to go to the toilet now because it stopped midway, only 5 minutes” he says and scurries away. We burst out laughing again.