The Produktion Maniacs!!

Have you ever visited an industry?? If it's a "yes", then you're "GREAT". If you've worked in one you're "REALLY GREAT". If you're continuing to work in one, then I guess you've missed most part of your life. "AS FAR AS I'VE SEEN" the people whom I've met, have been really out of purpose and get submerged in the routine activities instead of improving the plant around them and doesn't really want to boost the morale and create what they call "SYNERGY". A sweet friend of mine used to make fun of me when I use that word. He used to call me Mr. SYNERGY. Let the fun part be aside, there is a real need to create in yourself and to make the people on the shop floor feel the same kind of feeling and vibes that you've. That's the vision as they call it. A great feeling that can be experienced through the hardship of everybody participating in contributing to the goal. There has to be a working towards the goal rather than giving importance to little things that can create problems in breaking a team.

Now, I'm telling all these because I find the production unit of today playing what we call in the industry as "THE BLAME GAME". The thing over here is, each unit in an industry is an internal customer. It will blame its input unit and that, in turn, will blame it's input unit. Finally, it would take you years to find out whose mistake it was, that you would forget what the problem really was and why you started analysing. At the end of the day, there is no happiness and there is nothing more than laborious work imparted to the industry with least value addition. That's the worst thing that can happen in a company. Production happens in every industry, but is it happening at the expense of the happiness of the people?? Is it being extracted from the people in expense of their motivation and growth?? Blaming others becomes their job. This goes on and the production also goes on. They go on to become MANIACS. They shout at people, with the anger, being on somebody else. Ultimately somebody who's not related to the crime becomes the victim of his/her boss. Each moment there is a pressure on you and it keeps on impinging. You start hating. An additional responsibility even when you get out of the plant. A nightmare. You start getting bad dreams about it. I guess that's the extreme case of mania. Getting dreams about the work that you do. Personally, I've had dreams that have made me get out of my sleep. I would wake up exactly at 2.30am and at 4.30am with a dream of some mistake that I would dream myself as doing in the plant. It has haunted me for a long time. I've wanted to quit the job because of this. No proper sleep, no proper timing to take food, at the end of the day no appraisal for what you do as well. What a life!! Ringtone of your phone, no matter, how pleasant it is, becomes a very annoying noise because of the fact that you get nearly 1000 calls after getting back home. If you put it in silent, then you'll be caught for not attending on the next day. After somedays you feel like your phone is ringing even when it is not. Sometimes, the call might be from your house but you feel like "Who the f**k is calling from the company??" You get this feeling because you could have attended so many calls from the industry. What an annoying life it can be!! I've decided that no wonder what happens, never enter into a manufacturing firm that has a wrong attitude towards production. When there is an appraisal for the work that you do only then think of getting it. Otherwise it can be hell.

-SATZ

A great teacher!! A very sad end!!

It was my first day in my 12th standard class. I was back from my sister's place. I hadn't got any sleep whatsoever. I'd somehow caught the first bus to Coimbatore from Hosur and reached Coimbatore by 7:30 am in the morning. After the breakfast I set out to school and the first hour of the class was Physics. I'd been studying in the school for nearly 4 years by then and I'd been told about the 4 giant teachers who were the talk of the school, who handle hte 11th and 12th classes. The names of the teachers were Mr. Rajapandian, Mr.Jayamani, Mr. Sivaswamy, and Mr. Vijayabaskar. Students used to get frightened and make the fellow students frightened as well, wherein the latter part is of prime importance or the motive of every student. So back to the story now. The first hour was Physics, handled by Mr. Sivaswamy. I was late for the class because I'd travelled in a bus which was far more slow than a tortoise. He let me in though with a warning not to come late again. I'd a place in the first bench and since I didn't have any sleep in the night and had a very bizarre journey I started getting sleep right in the first bench and that too drawing his attention towards me. He left me just like that. Remember it is the first class and he doesn't know my name and all.

There was a special class in the afternoon for Physics consisting of all the sections and the strength was nearly 120 odd students. Suddenly when he was taking class, he spotted me and called out my name(I was not sleeping). I didn't have any idea of how he caught my name. He asked me the definition of electrostatics which was taken in the first hour of the day, in front of all the students. I somehow managed to pull it off out of nowhere. He got amused for a fraction of a second and gave me a light smile that I still remember, acknowledging the fact that I'd not been bad either and continued with his class. He used to keep test everyday. We got to write whatever had happened in the previous class and that was a really good technique indeed. He used to keep weekly tests as well. We used to mock at the way in which he used to enter into the class and straightaway tell us the following with a loose tongue that he had: "Huh, come on pa!! Take your papers!! Write the test pa!! Come on. Only 15 min pa. I'll give you 5 min for reading pa!! " The loose tongue of his makes it really funny. But he was really determined and somehow used to conduct those tests and the amusing part of it is that he used to take it very seriously and give us back the corrected test papers.He took those surprise tests so seriously.

The lab experiments that he used to conduct would be more systematic than anything else. He used to shuffle the batches perfectly and make sure that everybody understands those experiments. He would give one week exactly to get the experiment done for the week, correctly and get his signature.

I used to be consistently poor in the weekly tests and I remember well, there was this one test(Test on Nuclear Physics chapter), I'd scored 35/50 which was not a great score compared to standards. But he'd written a "very good" and a "can do better" underneath the "marks scored" area. The marks were not that great but the comment showed that he's been tracking my performance for a longtime and he's happy for my breakthrough. The "very good" for my performance and "can do better" for the fact that he knew that I can do better.than what I'd done. This shows how great a teacher that he is.

On August 11th of this year, I got a call from my close friend that Mr. Sivaswamy was suffering from a unique brain complication which has been faced only by 20 people in the world and he was the 13th Indian to acquire the disease. He told me that the doctors had lot hope. After a long time, Mr. Sivaswamy had given birth to a child and before the child can realise what death means, the father was facing it.

On September 2, 2011, morning 1.45am, Mr. Sivaswamy was taken away from the earth by the Gods were he can be safe without human trouble. The last one month had been a torture for him, with the disease slowly wearing him out. Friends had helped him a lot during the last days. At this point when everybody was so sad about the end of a great teacher, one of my friends told this, which had a little positive feeling in it:

"When you go into the garden of roses, you'd always pluck this one rose which is good. In the same way God has chosen a very good rose on the Earth and has taken him away from us"

The most unfortunate thing is that God had chosen the best one. Today I am, what I am because of this great teacher. A reason for my current position I hold. A gift that the teacher has given to the world is his knowledge to so many thousands of students who're all spread around the world. It is proud to say that I'm one of them. I salute him, from the bottom of my heart, for his feat and may his soul rest in peace. :( :(

-SATZ