NOTE: This is the first time in my Blog that Aseem is introduced. Aseem is a person I know really well. I started using his name in some of my writings, and continued relating to Aseem so closely that he is becoming a second self........
Aseem looked outside the window. He could see the few cars on the big 4 lane road, shining under the Sun as they passed through his eyes at a slow speed. The Sun was bright and the whole road appeared washed in the Sunlight. Bright and Clean. In the cold January winter evening, this was a very welcome sight. Aseem smiled to himself. The Gloomy evening wet and cold with freezing rain was just yesterday. “God never ceases to amuse us,” he thought “Or may be God likes to amuse its Godly self by changing so many colors in the landscapes.” He felt a certain happiness seeing such brightness, certain joy that the gloomy yesterday was gone.
Aseem looked around inside the room. Everyone in the group was working on their computers. The whole group of dedicated (and some not so dedicated ) professionals, working to accomplish a common task, reach a common goal on the same day. Deadline! That’s what they call it. He was somehow not very enthusiastic about the term “deadline”, he always felt as if somebody had taken the challenge out of the term and replaced it with fear. He would rather call it the target achievement date. Target achievement Date, the term, that has the essence of the challenge and the zeal to achieve, in it.
The Sun rises after the damp days and brightens up everything, dries the sorrows and light ups the moods. The life moves on and gets brighter after all the storms. Aseem could never understand how this all works in the big scheme of things, all he was sure about was that nothing is ever final. It is all a cycle. Long back he had heard, and heard it many a times that a real human is the one who never get too happy in “good weather” and never too sad in “bad weather”. As a child he had always tried to negate this theory and from his books and his discussions with the people, he tried to find reasons to oppose this theory. All his life he has been looking for the reasons against the theory, reasons in his words, in his actions in his thoughts. But today after all those years he was finding another face of the theory, another way to look at the theory. The wise from the past were not talking of not being happy or sad at the moment when happiness or sorrows come, they were rather talking of not carrying the feeling with you, living the feeling and leaving it with the moment. The wise knew that the change is inevitable; things never stay the way they are. Nature likes to amuse us all and to amuse itself with these changes from day to night.
The team was still in the middle of their ever important work. They did not appear very happy as the tools and the techniques kept on failing. The target date (most still had the deadline mindset) was coming near. The results seem difficult to achieve. They were all committed yet not hopeful. Aseem looked at their faces and smiled, “Don’t loose heart friends.” He said loud. Every one started looking towards him. “In the large scheme of things, this all has to be done and we all have to do it,” he continued. “We can do it only if we give our best effort and we can not give our best effort or any thing near that if we loose heart.” He smiled after having said that, he knew that what he has said is a cliché a common thing to say and these days such words are used so much that they have lost not only their power but also their meaning.
“You all will realize this thing soon, and you all will forget it too, just to realize it all over again at a different time,” he murmured to himself, “at least that is what always happens to me,” he was in his dreamy self again. Loose hope and loose heart and think of giving up and reach to that edge where it all seems to be over and then all of a sudden just a moment before that final giving up, rejuvenate, reincarnate, re-live and that too with a force much stronger than ever, vigor much intense than ever. This is what Aseem had always experienced. He had this same feeling so much that he had almost started looking forward to the bad times, the ‘almost gone’ scenarios and he had always emerged out as a better human.
The past so vivid in his mind, all the times when he was on the end of the road, the new turn was facing him. All the time when he was at the edge of the cliff, either the cliff extended into bridge connecting to the next hill or he got wings to fly off. The future was so unsure yet so certain. He was sure that one day he will do what he has always dreamt of because that was what he was sent on this earth in the first place. That is the reason why God never let him down in the end. God was in his favor always, and the problems or the almost given up scenarios were God’s way to amuse Aseem or to amuse God it self. Aseem smiled again.
“Why are you so happy, we are still no where near completion on this tuning of values and we have to have some results by tomorrow? You being the lead engineer on this project, you should be crying, yelling and may be screaming at us, instead you are smiling!” One of his team mates who were his good friend too exclaimed.
“Well, yes, you are right,” Aseem answered, “you are right, if we are failing, but the way I see it we are not. We will have this tuning done and done by the target date.” The looks on his team mates faces were of obvious disbelief, “How can Aseem be so naïve” they were all thinking. Aseem almost read the thought and stepped closer to the computer, thinking about the past tasks he had been working on two years back. He quickly changed some values on the sheet and hit the apply changes button, all his team mates didn’t seem to be very happy seeing him doing the things in such a way, usually termed as unscientific way in their business. Aseem gave a reassuring look to them as he spoke, “I think this is the same problem that I faced long back in a previous project, however it was with a totally different set of parameters on an older technology, but still physics didn’t change with the new technologies coming in to the market. And my gut feel is that this will at least give us some direction towards the solution, if not the solution itself.” They looked back; those who had worked with Aseem in the past knew that he always give a lot respect to the intuitive ideas of his own and of others so they looked at him with a mix of doubt and confidence in their eyes.
It took a few minutes for the system to generate the output arrays, and when the arrays were generated they appeared to be much closer to desired. They all took the resultant arrays and started reviewing it. Every one found some short comings and a great need for improvement. However the changes had given them the right direction towards the solution as thought. They were all full of energy now talking, discussing, laughing, working, getting results. The damp weather was over. It was bright and sunny inside the room too. Aseem looked outside the window again. And then towards the sky, the place all the rays, all the brightness was coming from. He smiled again and murmured, “You have done it again, I don’t know how much you like doing this again and again, but I hope you never get bored of doing this. Thanks a lot.” As he finished saying this, there was a bright ray of light, reflected from a car down below on the road, landing right in his eyes and he knew that his gratitude has been acknowledged. Things will be done well; in the end everything will be fine. Resurrection is promised in Holy Scriptures for all religions he had known or studied so that must be a universally accepted notion. One and the same thing, life goes on; something makes it go on always. Night is always dark but is always followed by the day. Nature is cyclic by default. And the day always brings new hope, new life, committing that life resurrects promising the New day.
