Durga Temple, Joshi Wadevale and Hyderabadi House !!!!!!!!

This Sunday, was Quite different, needless to say Sans music, Sans snooker and without those punks around, this Sunday marked a new beginning. I may call it a second Innings, Read a lot of Technical stuff through out the morning and put the brain to use after a long time, might be for the first time after 99, yes after those glorious school days, precisely March 15 1999. I jumped up from the chair and pumped my fists I could still recollect what I had learned in Trigonometry and also to huge extend Physics as well, the feel was out of the world, sheer joy !!!!!

To add icing to the cake, I decided to roam around the city , not M.G.Road, not to K.P or Camp but this time to a Temple, It's the temple of Goddess Kali's avatar and I would say it was mind blowing. The walk up the stairs, the calmness in the air, Kids running around, the flower vendors, just another world, where pleasure is long lasting, pains healed to a higher extend and Subconscious talking through the layer of a calmer conscious self. Climb up the stairs was not that tough but, the way up was kind of confusing as the steps lead you to one corner and then takes a steep turn towards the summit. The way up almost looked as if it was a park, could see couples everywhere, Some with Kids and some without. Kids added to the beauty, most of them for the first time realized that world is a place where they could run, Jump and fall down.I could see Kid's enjoying the most, flat's can only offer the 24/7 Security and a lift; but a childhood spent with nature Quite a dream!!!!. I remembered my childhood, with mom asking me to come out of the pond, then marching through the bushes with food in her hands asking me to have it there (It's fun to eat sitting on an Inflated tube, on the sides of a pond), at last coming to fetch me herself and after that the infamous hue and cry !!!!!. The Ganesha temple on the way up was another highlight, The Goddess was simply sensational, I sat spoke to myself and took resolutions, which might stay more than the usual Sunday swearing s !!!!.

With no plans and a cool head, I joined hands with my only partner till date, My Bike. Riding is fun and the weather made it a pleasure, The ride took me to "Joshi Wadevale", which I never saw till date, though FC Road is my second home in Pune. Vada Paav has a different version all together here, there are add ons and plug gins available other than the usual green chilly. I could not believe the fact that Even Vada Paav can be customized to this extend. Pune is vibrant, with a hep crowd, youngsters all over, you will never feel old here, but the City has it's own charm well above the hep and the "Yo" culture. Understanding takes time, I took six months ; so what , "I understood " and that's what is important.

ITIL - The Ticket Bouncers !!!!!

Saturday Night, Heavy Music, Metal, Hard Rock what not, With proportion of Alcohol increasing in the veins, as the mind gets Mischievous, Fantasies grow wings, we see a bunch of men who bring us back to the ground, Our very own bouncers. This post is not about them, it's very much about work, the first time I thought that work must be a subject of Blogs, It turned me off. But looking at the Characters you meet, the people you deal with, the challenges you face, might be my perspective ; though presented in a crude way can make life easy for people. Mostly for those who work in IT support, Infrastructure or for those who follow the new Bible of IT organizations ITIL.

Incidents are nothing but the documented agony of a human being who comes to work, the agony when becomes an epidemic becomes severe otherwise remains what it is just another "Incident". Requests I would say is the user filling in forms that would grant him future agonies or agonies before even he gets the service. Imagine a user who runs around with forms, behind his manager, that too in the dark, he tumbles down, falls, gets hurt and at last gets the service. A well managed ticketing system, will get half the job done in an Infrastructure, with leaders believing that Remedy is actually a remedy for their issues, pushing messages to the resolver groups could have been much more easier.

People have their own ways of getting things done, a guy from sales and marketing would always call the desk and talk about getting the job done with in minutes ( Mostly a bargain), where in some one from Quality assurance would ask about what all processes are involved in getting the task done, Some one from IT would explain that it's just about pushing a policy into the firewall and the time taken for that is Excruciatingly high. Customers come with Expectations and these are mainly mapped to their domain and meeting all these without hurting any ones emotion's is the key, key to the business of IT Service Management.

Service Desk, the middleman is always compelled to play a diplomatic role, washing hands off before and after food and while doing the job is a common problem that we face on a daily basis. But that's what keeps us in the job!!!!!. If you sort words that will be used heavily and followed lightly " Ownerhsip" will be a winner, with the Silver Medalist miles and miles away. Incidents assigned to teams would come back to us like a rubber ball on the wall, comments ranging from " Working from my end check from user's end" , " Issue not with our team" , " Check with the network team, might be a connectivity issue" are common.Incidents / Tickets that would say why it is not an issue with ones team will be a rarity, those will go to a museum directly. (Framed and Worshiped)

To manage an Infrastructure right, the only thing the management needs to do is to monitor the health of the Core ITIL Processes. Count of incidents logged, closed, pending, missed SL, Team wise / Manager Wise will tell who is getting the job done and not. A daily call with defaulters would bring down user dissatisfaction to Zero. Incidents reoccurred daily / Weekly and permanent fixes if tracked will lead to Incident reduction. Capacity planning with Dash boards of user base per application, Usage in terms of Bandwidth, Time , Response times within the Lan and over the wan with proper inputs to problem team will tackle those Slow performance Issues. Changes raised by capacity keeping an eye on future incidents will tell us the Quality work done and would show on less number of Incidents,Example(Incidents which cropped up as another application was added to the agony of a already suffering database).SLA without OLA is like an "underwear without elastic", the vendors, internal customers must be accountable to each other, an environment where my job not being done will make me answer to 10 different people will bring Pro-activeness for sure.

ITIL processes are like a chain and a chain is only strong as the weakest link, for an implementation to be Successful, the processes must be reviewed as a whole not Individually. For Example a discussion were the number of Problem Tickets raised by Incident Management is reviewed, Number of Changes raised by Capacity team is taken into account (Capacity Dashboard pointing at peaks and lows of Critical apps), SLA missed is accounted on the basis of OLA's agreed, Changes raised and implemented as part of the Incident Problem Life Cycle are reviewed and evaluated will make an Infrastructure much more healthier. What most Organisations might be missing out will be this holistic view of this new approach , or are we promoting the Hindustani way of building walls between departments with the Slogan " Tu 13 Dekh ".

Service Management Where Love is War !!!!!!

Sharad Pawar would not know what a bouncy pitch is, but he knows how to Run BCCI, Lalu Yadav never Learned Project Management, Cost Management or anything but he ran the Indian Railways, Ganguly never scored on the field but the team won the game over and over again. A world were people do things in domains that even their forefathers would not have Imagined. Welcome to Service Management.

If you think that to lead a fight, you need to have fought before,then my dear friends;Service Management will prove you wrong. To get the job done, you must have done it before is again a wrong statement, to involve in the Problem and to address the problem are two entirely different things. It's fun to hear words that you would not have heard in your entire life and act as if you are comfortable with it, It's fun when people who have spent their whole life working, sleeping on AIX having to listen to the "gyan" given by kids, who have not even touched the system once !!!!!!. Welcome to Service Management, the new heights of techno commercial, techno lingual career path. Man, Money and Machine are three aspects of any business. If you can manage the man, set his thoughts right, align him to the needs of business and deliver the services, that is what Service Management does.

Life takes it's on turns and I never knew the quest for a morning job will land me in a 24/7 job. Where Credit Management is subject to be learned and mastered, your efforts, if it has to be yours, even your sweat to should drop on the right carpets. Service Management is where Love is War. where you would haunt your colleagues and give them Nightmares. Efforts never Quantified, Results of efforts conceptual, Emotional and often tagged on people who are backseat drivers.

Being in the middle of Chaos being the key KRA, the only person whom you can yell at is your own image and that too if you have time to look at the mirror. Support groups wanting to resolve issues from the root, Process team wanting approvals to be in place, Technical Managers wanting the Logs' s and backup's in place, Restoring the services is like waging a war, were people tag you as a Pakistani, where in you are very much an Indian. Con calls starting from a professional mode, ending up in a kinder garden mode, Minutes of meetings getting forgotten in minutes, Processes moaning as they get raped over and over again, they will all take shapes and sizes in front of you.

Calls at the middle of the night, will wake you with problem statements close to titles of Bollywood Hits " Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" ( There is something happening ), Calls that will remind you of the Lokh Sabha and Rajya Sabha, were truth is a kid with no father and Problem does not have a mother, Calls that will make you feel confident that politics has a different level all together, might be Rahul Gandhi should use it as a test environment. From people who panic when there is a problem, from people whose calmness makes you panic when there is a problem, you can see a new world, where information passed and supplied makes you deliver and not deliver.Your hue and cry at the initial phase of an issue hits a world renowned IVR which every resolver group has " Our system is Taka tak", to by pass that " shamelessness " is the first qualification you need. Skin must have an ISI mark so that taunts do not go through it, were chauvinism of people are always shown to these nomads who own nothing but at the end of the day are answerable for everything.

Life goes on, Belief in the fact that technology will change, people's mentality towards work won't. The simple fact that technology depended business, cannot survive without this new breed, Managing technology has taken a new face, but be ready before you enter this,beware ; it is a one way road, Here respect is not on how much you know, it's on how much you can be diplomatic, Not on how much you deliver but how much you portray that you are delivering. Welcome to the Stickiest wicket I have ever played, May be it's Durban or Dubai, Pune or Perth, It's all about delivering when the fire is there !!!!!!

About Money and the Efforts !!!!!

Pani Puri (An Indian Snack) might be the most complex of inventions in the food world or will top the list of complex dishes in any cuisine. Not that making it needs a lot of expertise But the number of components involved, the way it is served and the permutations, combinations and customizations possible will startle anyone. How would have one thought about making it? Inventing anything must be tough, Pani Puri no Exception!!!!!!

But this is not about Pani Puri or any other dish, this is about our people, the way they treat others, especially their fellow beings. On the way back from office to home there are certain joints were you feel at home, might be due to the chit chat with the street hawker, stall owner or the kind of people who hang around there. I have always had relations with whomsoever I dealt with, a personal touch, a mark that made the stall owner ask “ Kidar thee Sahib “ (Where were you), and the question would sound embarrassing when your stipulated time (7:00 pm) has been bypassed by just 15 minutes.

Pani puri, finished in a flash and then it was time for the Bhel (Another snack that is lip smacking) to be served, I could see a man in Dothi and a white shirt standing behind me. Holding to his hands was a kid, who eagerly wanted something to eat. His wife was scanning the menu card and was talking to her man on what would they order. White shirt was white just because it was 9:30 in the night and the lady looked too tired to lift the kid as well. I assumed they are coming back from some construction site, were this kid had spent the whole day amidst rumbles. My Bhel was on the make the stall owner had asked what they wanted at least twice and the second time it was quite rude, as if their presence degraded the standards of his Proprietorship.

The man ordered “Vada Pav “and some other Maharshtrian dish, were in the kid wanted something else. The kid started weeping and the spicy Bhel made tears roll put of my cheeks as well. The Man was waiting and in-between the stall Owner was rushing to cars and bikes which stopped there, asking this family to stand away from the stall. The kid’s eyes were lit up and she was peeping into what the “Bhaiya” was doing. The lady reminded the guy once that they had been waiting for sometime, the kid’s hue and cry would justify the same. Vada Pav was served without Chilly and when the man demanded for the same, the stall owner frowned and denied. The potato dish was served in a use and throw plate for them, while others got the same in a stainless steel vessel, that too with a smile. After the Bhel I sat on my Motorcycle just to watch the only war on this earth happen “between haves and the have not’s”. Throwing the plate on the road which is any Indian’s right was denied for this lady, she was given a lesson about cleanliness by the stall owner who had colored the wall behind him red, by spitting the tobacco that he chews.

The money earned by me or in reality anyone who ate there that day, would not have been half as hard earned as theirs. Why is that after a days work, back breaking work their money is not respected, why is that his efforts to keep his kid happy is undermined.
Why is it that we exploit people or show our aggression when we are sure that we will not be hit back??. I spoke, told that stall Owner about what it takes to spend 10% of the total earnings of a day to see the smile on his kids face. What it takes to be a husband who holds his wife close, with a kid on the shoulder, who walks back home with no promises to make, no hopes when the sun rises, but still holds a smile and with a simple but firm resolve tells himself “ I will never let them go hungry”. Our country is still fighting it out, not in Kashmir, not in West Bengal or Arunchal Pradesh, but in stalls were a common man is denied a steel plate, where he is denied respect for the money spend and also were rules matter only for the underprivileged.

About Origin,Roots, That Makes a Difference !!!!!!!

A tired day at work, the walk back the steps to the bike park, Heading towards loneliness and the untidy bachelors den , adding insult to injury is the sight of a young couple with a cute kid at the balcony and your heart pounds for a family life, a life that makes sense. The morning next day searching for a washed pair of dress and stuffing up the burnt bread confirms the fact that a married life is the only solution, the way ahead for personal, financial and a disciplined life ahead. Life teaches men to compromise, Lying down at the window side, as the thought about married life seeps in, As it takes shapes and sizes, again the mind moves to another direction, Is that the only thing the mind does, to confuse you, or is that what you let your mind do, To jump from one decision to another.

Roots as always is the decision maker everywhere, running alongside life all alone is a tough task, and when you are not rooted anywhere you well can run, running is all you can do. There are two ways about life, one is to be in the ship and let the wind do the job and the second to be the sailor and take the ship were you want to. But I believe ship and the wind are just the to aspects, sailor is born free but in chains. Why is it that you are always just not what you are, why is that you are measured against your roots and the mistakes you commit, linked to the DNA. Is it that sailing through the ocean is easier if your masts are good, that the Ocean does not complain if you sail through and reach where you want , provided that you forefathers were sailors and the ship a veteran????.

What is that matters in the way ahead, a new beginning, erasing the past, easing you from the baggage, making your sail across, a pleasure. Winds have come down, my boat has reached the ocean. All the struggles one would take to get to the destination, I have gone through to get to the beginning, should I turn around, cut down the pace or should I get aggressive. The almighty has got you here and it’s you who need to take it forward and my decisions must only impact me, not my race, if it all I end up in a family web, their journey must begin at the Ocean and not at a lagoon, A lagoon which can challenge anyone much more than an ocean. The tough sail, I thought has made me cross half the way, the job, the money and the brand I believed has pushed me up, but I still remain looked down, sympathized and my ship which I thought was a ship is actually a boat and that too tattered and weak. People are sailing and moving ahead and me with a broad smile, reassuring and sealing the statement, I will F@##k this Ocean one day !!!!!. I hope the aim wins over the grudge, the emotion does not cloud the focus and the pace of the others does not tamper my heart, as it’s always said that “It does not matter who starts first, what matters is who finishes first “. I will finish this race, not for me, but for my roots, for my race, so that their heads are held high.