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!!