Me in Trivandrum

Until Feb­ru­ary 2005, I just know Trivan­drum as just any oth­er cap­i­tal city of some dis­tant Indi­an state. Sud­den­ly in Feb­ru­ary, then one of my senior man­ag­er man­dat­ed that I should go to Trivan­drum on per­ma­nent basis from Hyder­abad. Being a fresh­er in Soft­ware Indus­try, I had not much option. I could have cre­at­ed some cock-and-bull sto­ries like many of my oth­er col­leagues, but being a pro­fes­sion­al I refrained from doing so.Also with me were 9 oth­er col­leagues. Bhanu, Arun, Gopi were close to me and Pra­neeth, whom we wel­comed to ease our indi­vid­ual shares of our house-rent and oth­er 5, Sun­dar, Vijay, Rajen­dra, Suku­mar [ a psy­cho] and Nir­mal [ a weirdo ] who too made their mind to go to Mal­lu Land.

Phase I

Start Date: Feb 17, 2005
End Date : Nov 25, 2005

We alight­ed Sabari Express at 1930 hrs on Feb 18, 2005. Then we went straight to our com­pa­ny-pro­vid­ed accom­mo­da­tion, Rajad­hani, a 3 ‑star Hotel near Bak­ery Junction.Everyone looked strange.We were like aliens in Mal­lu Land.Surprised to see sweet chick­en biryani topped with pine apple slice, closed shops at 8 PM, very very calm roads which made us feel like mid­night at 9PM were just few of the surprises.Being a week­end, we went to Technopark, house for Soft­ware Indus­try in Trivandrum.We imme­di­ate­ly man­aged to get into a 2BHK in Kazhakut­tam near Technopark.Within a week after we report­ed to our new boss in CSP Trivan­drum, we start­ed hat­ing every­thing about Trivan­drum. This is just the begin­ning of our tra­vails.

After that I spent 9 months crib­bing, jog­ging ear­ly morn­ing on Technopark by-pass till Toy­ota show room, play­ing mid night crick­et, read­ing lots and lots of books, vis­it­ing the sur­round­ing beach­es, tour­ing places like Kanyaku­mari, Atti­ra­pal­li, and Cochin , expe­ri­enc­ing the Ker­ala cul­ture, won­der­ing the sur­round­ing coconut trees( wher­ev­er you go , coconut tree fol­lows you in Ker­ala) , curs­ing the hotels where we eat our food, curs­ing the auto wal­lahs who also demand the return fare, requesting(read:begging) all our vis­it­ing senior man­agers for a trans­fer close to our homes.In July Pra­neeth left us. We were least bothered.Then we moved to new house to think­ing to reduce our rent expense but were final­ly end­ed up pay­ing more in terms of bro­ker­age for a not-so-good house.Our math went wrong some­where and we real­ized the mis­take only after the dam­age has already hap­pened.

Then slow­ly our dark era seemed to end.In Novem­ber we saw decline in num­ber of projects com­ing to our depart­ment in Trivan­drum. So they start­ed reliev­ing peo­ple to oth­er loca­tions such as Chen­nai and Ban­ga­lore, but on short-term basis on the con­di­tion that we need to come back to Trivan­drum. First Bhanu was sent to Chen­nai for few weeks which got extend­ed furthur.Then came my chance Ban­ga­lore for 7 months [ One of the senior man­ag­er made it to 7 instead of 6, mak­ing all the short-term trans­fer ben­e­fits inap­plic­a­ble for me. But again I did­n’t both­er much because I was so depressed that, I thought the very chance of going to Ban­ga­lore is a great ben­e­fit for me] . I thought I was so lucky among the bunch( which lat­er proved very very wrong) after that Arun fol­lowed me with­in 2 weeks to Ban­ga­lore. So final­ly I got out of Trivan­drum on 25th Of November.While leav­ing, I thought I will nev­er come back to Trivan­drum out of my choice.

This is the end of Phase I.

After that I faced worst of my pro­fes­sion­al life in Ban­ga­lore. I was depressed a lot not only because of my fate in office but also by the worst Ban­ga­lore infra­struc­ture which took away gist out of my per­son­al life. I used to waste my valu­able evenings amidst irri­tat­ing traf­fic jams on Hosur Road.These woes cou­pled with oth­er dis­sat­is­fac­tions like exor­bi­tant rents for a mea­ger liv­ing spaces com­pelled me to rethink about Trivandrum.My skills and expe­ri­ence at that time were too inad­e­quate to find anoth­er job.So I nev­er tried seri­ous­ly for a job shift at that point of time.I start­ed appre­ci­at­ing best of Trivan­drum then.I final­ly made my mind to shift to Trivan­drum and suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged to get a nod from the man­ag­er who sent me to Bangalore.It was­n’t been easy too. But I some­how man­aged to go to Trivan­drum. Sun­dar, who also came to Ban­ga­lore along with me from Trivan­drum think­ing of nev­er return­ing again 🙂 was already there by the time I went back to Trivandrum.He went to Trivan­drum cou­ple of weeks ear­li­er than me when I was in my 20 days vaca­tion at my home in Vema­giri.

Phase II

Start Date: Aug 20, 2006
End date : Jan 29, 2007

I liked my life very much in my sec­ond stint in Trivan­drum. I rent­ed an inde­pen­dent 2 BHK in TKD Road, Mut­ta­da all for myself.I nev­er shared it with anyone.I used to cook all myself. I bought my Leno­vo Notebook.Even I start­ed this blog from that house and best of the best thing that had hap­pened to me: LOVEOFMYLIFE entered my life dur­ing that peri­od itself. The peo­ple whom I can nev­er for­get are Mr Philpose and his fam­i­ly. They are real good peo­ple. He, Aun­ty, Her daugh­ters, Smitha, a fel­low Infos­cion and Jas­mine, who works for Visu­al Soft in Technopark.They treat­ed me like their fam­i­ly member.If not for them, my sec­ond stint would­n’t have been so smooth.They used to help me in every aspect.They treat­ed me like their son.But for good or bad, this stint abrupt­ly end­ed in Jan 2007 when I was called from Ban­ga­lore again for short term onsite assignment.I sud­den­ly packed every­thing and head­ed to Bangalore.I pre­poned my engage­ment and wed­ding in the hur­ry to go onsite.But till today I am still here but thats dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

My asso­ci­a­tion with Trivan­drum end­ed on Aug 17, 2007 when I got per­ma­nent trans­fer to Bangalore.I have noth­ing belong­ing to me in Trivan­drum expect some items like huge 4X6 Duroflex mat­tress, my com­put­er table and com­put­er chair, which I am plan­ning to bring on 1st of Sep­tem­ber.

Over­all I had mixed expe­ri­ence with Trivan­drum. I made some good friends and I learnt many good lessons.It has left many marks on my life.Some best, some good, some bad and some worse!