It came like a bolt of the blue. Sometimes, you believe that certain things are permanent. Like the pillars in the office, the tree that grows outside my house, the mountains, they all look so solid that I cannot conceive of a time when they could have not been around, or of a time when they may actually fade away.
I believed the same of my manager. And he left yesterday. Packed up all his things for good, waved goodbyes and wished good lucks and faded away into the twilight....far far away from the cubicle next to mine, that I always believed was made for him.
I can recall as if it were yesterday, our first team meeting. A bunch of freshies , faces shining with eagerness, nervous about starting to work on a project of gargantuan scale, totally at sea with the industry and its ways, and him. Slowly but surely, we started learn our lessons, most of them sub-consiously. He was our Guru, literally taking us from technical darkness to light! The most powerful lessons we learnt from him however were the non-technical ones. The technique he used was very simple, yet very effective: lead by example! Like a sponge we observed and slowly absorbed every little act of his.Over the year, we incorporated his processes, worked like he did, even spoke like him!!He influenced the way we approached every little problem we solved even though he would never interfere in the way we tried to solve it!We were given a free run of the project, yet moulded like putty that retained its properties but got transformed into something meaningful. He made us 6 individuals into a loyal team!If we said that the professionals we are today is due to him, it would not be exaggerating anything.
Last week, I kept dropping into his cubicle to ask him weird questions, doubts to which I already knew the answers, gathering feedback that I didnt really need, trying to capture everything in my mind's eye.. while my brain shook my head in disbelief at the inevitability around the corner.
In tamil, they'd say "malay mathiri nambi irunthom"(which means, "we believed in him like we believe in the hills), coincidentally m~ was his name too!! And yesterday,he gave us the reins and continued on his journey. Words got struck like a big lump in our throats. We went around looking like lost puppies for a while, still reeling from the huge piece of mountain that was in our amidst until last evening when it disappearing into the clouds...
As they say " The show must go on", change is the only constant. The old order must give way to the new, like the seasons which fade into each other.
I hope they dont assign his cubicle to anyone. It belongs to him, I can still picture him there, nodding his head, drawing diagrams on the board to explain something, encouraging me to go ahead and crack the scene... just being there... like the pillar next to the cubicle.
