.........if God were on Twitter

Finally, after all the bickering and the cribs from me that Dear God put up with......

Dear Ram,

Thought I'd let you know that I am now on Twitter. Do add me, easy to look me up - @The Real God..

Some of the tweet highlights:

1. Officially on Twitter. You can't be serious!! You want me to sum my creation up in 140 characters, kidding me?

2. Watched Inception last night, left me baffled. Had to call upon Sigmund to interpret the movie.

3. Didn't pay for the movie ticket, does that amount to piracy?

4. On women - Still figuring out the Taxonomy, classification, genus....to me a different species altogether.

5. On Men - I am a Man, I assure you!

6. "Gods must be crazy", Yeah right!!!!

7. Sorry for the long gap in the tweets. Was caught up answering back to back emails...

8. Exactly who is this Steve Jobs guy and why is he changing my script? The Apple still belongs to Adam.

9. Audit meeting with Chitragupt, turns out we've been maintaining palm leaflets for records. Will press for automation.

10. Working incessantly to drive Six Sigma/Lean across the three sites (read three worlds)

11. Successful meeting today with counterpart Gods on fostering peace.

12. Signed up for Facebook today. All of India is following me already. Guess that beats Ashton Kutcher's record, eh?

13. @Shashi Tharoor - Thou shalt not tweet.

14. @Karan Thapar - Thou shalt not speak.

15. @Raj Thackeray - Tumcha jeebala kai haat, kai vaatthaye tya badbadta"

16. @Lord Shiva - Let's catch up on some Amrut today. My place, my treat.

17. @Leslie Nielsen - Big fan' o yours. Fancy a job as our court jester?

18. @Tiger Woods - You know where you are going after life, don't you?

19. @Javed Akhtar - Tamam Tallaffuz Takkalluff Tikrit Talluqaat Takhlia Takht Taj Takkiya. Sufferin' succotash! (PHEW!!!!!)

20. Having trouble reading some of the emails, need a multi-lingual adaptor. Anyone?

21. First and proud owner of the iPad V. 100.100. Comes with a built-in A/C and a chimney, just in case, you know.

22. @Steve Jobs – Dear Steve, if you are online and listening, please please let me have the iMac, iPod, iPhone and all other regular supplies of the iApps (This, as rhetoric to my request to God asking for the same sometime ago on FB)

Have a B-E-A-U-tiful day ahead,

@The Real God

You've reached the extension of Ram, Ravi, Manav and Koushik..........

Dear God,

Does that ring a bell? Right, that was the voice mail on the phone, the four of us shared for a long time!

Year: 2001

Location: Training room, Cyber Towers, Floor II

Occupants: Boss+12nos. and random

Room capacity – 1+4

Extensions – 1+3

Dimensions of the Trainers' room that we all shared and almost lived in back then. A cornerstone of the huge operations floor, that room epitomized learning and the learned.

Looking back, I can't believe we spent almost a year (or was it more?) in that tiny Trainers' room. That year saw a deluge of ramp ups and each of us including the Boss was laden with work. Some of us volunteered on Saturday and Sunday too. Somehow, the “5-day week” equation didn't look right.

Back to back sessions, sometimes across platforms/domains kept us on our toes all the time. Life at work seemed to be eternally dynamic. Preparation and after-class work just added to it. All we'd think of were classes, agenda covered on a given day and plan for the next day..

Oh! and how could I forget the paperwork!?! The best way to tell if you were a trainer was if you were on an island of papers. L1 and L2 assessments, galore! The countless excel sheets only gave us nightmares. At one point, the associate files had embraced each other to form a parasol in that room.

To top it, we had to work different shifts because of the paucity of systems and space. Everything from systems, seats and phones to space was shared. Koushik, the more Bossy kid only had to give the I-will-reduce-you-to-pulp stare and we'd readily make way :-)) To top it, he had introduced himself as a Kick boxer, our seeds were at his mercy.

Boss, and later along with Sanjeev, would put together the list of participants and divide the batches amongst us. The first thing we'd look for was the count of women in each of our classes. Almost always, one of us had to be disappointed. Yet again, Sanjeev had chosen most of the women to be in his class...We'd quietly slur a "Saala Sanjeev"!!

Boss had a unique way of communicating with us. I must admit he did that quite eloquently. A stroke through his hair followed by a "shoot" conveyed many things - "You are in deep shit, Mister", "Good God", "We should have done this differently" or "wait until your appraisal" amongst the many expressions exclusive to him.

At the end of every training programme, we'd exchange notes on the feedback from our classes. Not to mention the gifts we'd earn from each of the classes. A Shirt here, a table lamp there, wine glasses, Turtledoves, Chocolates, you name it and we had it. Our classes loved us.

Even as I write this account Dear God, I think of the times we jumped at an opportunity to do that extra bit. We never thought twice about how or when we'd get back home. The classes, the agents, the assessments were all we thought of. We truly worked as a unit.Joie de vivre was at its peak.

All in all, that year was the greatest and the most productive year of my life in the last decade. It will continue to remain etched in memories for a long time to come. That I still vividly recall having trained 10 training batches spanning a month each amongst other things is testimony to that. That tiny room holds a lot of significance in my life now, and will continue to. So many experiences, so much learning, so much of togetherness. It is very unfortunate that I couldn't carry a picture of that room when we moved out.

It took a lot of practice to record that voice mail. Creatively enough, while Koushik mouthed the entire piece, each of us took turns to announce our names!!