Work Happens When There's Passion
The current debate on seventy and ninety working hours per week is amusing. I never counted my working hours in my jobs, though I knew they were forty hours a week per the Shops Act and forty-seven and half hours per the Factory Act. Hours of work was my personal choice. I remember working around the clock on three occasions.
My first occasion was at my engineering college. We took it very easy with our Mathematics Professor, Rgahuprasada Rao. He was gentle, smiling and kind to students. He was brilliant in his subject and never followed us regarding homework completion. He was also our hostel warden. One day, to our surprise, he wanted to check our notebooks for the completion of the homework. Not a single student had done the homework. He went to the blackboard and wrote a physics expression: "Work happens when there is force. No force, no work." "Please submit all your notebooks with completed homework assignments by tomorrow."
We had a forty-day backlog, and we all spent the whole night completing the assignments. He visited our hostel at 3 am, surprised we were all awake, and checked our progress.
The second instance was in Bombay, where we had to set up a demonstration unit in VP Stadium for one of our prestigious products. We did not get power until late evening because it was an expo site. My friend and I started commissioning the unit in the evening. We sat on the ground with a water bottle, trying to decode the circuits. Getting the machine working for the inauguration at 8 am the next day was impossible. It was 2 am. As we struggled, we noticed someone standing by our side. My manager was standing next to us with a bag. He had four bottles of beer, two cokes, and one cookie packet in a bag. We stopped the task briefly and followed him to the 'Haji Ali' tank bund. The night was enjoyable, with the full moon's glory in the sky. We chatted, drank, and resumed after an hour. This shared experience of overcoming challenges in the dead of night brought us closer, reinforcing the importance of supportive relationships in the workplace. We completed the installation at 6 am and went home, feeling a sense of accomplishment.
In 2009, I had to establish a relationship between Bombay IIT, CDAC in Mumbai, the Ministry of IT in Delhi, and my organisation. While all the parties were willing, the closure was not happening. Each institution had significant legal challenges. On the day before the announcement, I had to travel four times between Mumbai and Delhi in twenty-four hours. The government official waited for me till 1 am in his office till I returned from Mumbai on the last flight. As I did not have a place to sleep, he took me to his home, and I slept on the couch after a late dinner his wife cooked for us.
Despite being a small fry in these organisations' food chains, I never had my working hours mandated by a manager. Instead, I chose to step out of my comfort zone to accomplish something dear to me. This decision, coupled with the quality of my work, my passion, and the guidance of supportive managers, helped me achieve my goals. This experience taught me the value of personal growth and the importance of pushing oneself beyond comfort limits, empowering me to achieve more professionally.
I never worked seventy or ninety hours weekly but stared at my wife daily.
