Progress, Cricket, Careers
Frank And we are live. Ritesh, good morning to episode number whatever of Coffeehouse Chronicles. The idea in this is that we talk about stories that we can relate to, where we can learn about other people’s lives, other people’s cultures, and the context in which all of this happens. So, Ritesh, what is in your inbox for us today, this morning for both of us in Bangalore? What time is it in Bangalore? 11:30 now, isn’t it? Yes. It’s 8:05 in the morning over here, Saturday the 25th of May. Ritesh, what’s in your inbox?
Ritesh So, thank you, Frank. I have three topics or things to discuss with you. First one is a story or the tale from my childhood or when I was growing up. And then one is cricket, a little bit of cricket. And then finally, the things that are happening with me in my life as a professional and in my career.
Frank Okay, so childhood, cricket, and professional. So, when we come to the cricket subject, that’s going to take probably a good eight to ten hours because I know that Indians are crazy about cricket. You also actually changed the game considerably. Yeah, you people are responsible for this. So, that’s going to take about eight to ten hours. The rest of the topics take the other 20 hours that we have in the day. So, we’re going to be speaking for the next 24 hours. Sounds fun, Ritesh. Let’s have a go with your childhood story and what happened there. Tell us about it.
Yeah, so before I go for my childhood story, I just wanted to bring up that I didn’t get this recording pop-up notification, but I can see that it is showing that recording from your end. I have the recording button here, but I’m also actually processing another recording which I did a few minutes prior. So, I hope that we are… No, I have the recording button. I hope it works.
Okay, I have to repeat this again?
Yeah, okay, maybe.
Ritesh So, see, maybe this, the thing I was going to tell you, it is from before 2000 or maybe 2001, 2002. So, my village is one or two kilometres from the main highway. We call it National Highway NH. And when I was young, maybe five or six years old, that time the road was not that good, the road that connects from my village to the NH. There was some construction work going on, but it didn’t complete for three or four years. So, what I was… We used to see that it was not a concrete road. It was made of mud. And people used to go like it was… This was the only road from our village to the main highway, and then we could go to the cities or a small town, we call it like a block, and all. So, every rainy season, there would be a lot of rain, and that would cut that road.
So, what my villagers would do, they would announce in the home, like one person, he comes in the evening time, maybe when we are having dinner, that time he will come, and they will inform every home that tomorrow, we have planned to go and repair that road. It was self-drive, like some people, they will initiate this work, and they will tell that one person from each home will go and help them. So, all of the… This was very… It’s like a festival kind of thing. People would do morning, they would take their power, what you call in English, I don’t know that, surveillance and everything, and they would go. And it was very, very connected work. People used to… It brought our community together. And our village, you know, the Indian society is divided into castes and everything. Especially we don’t have different religious people from different religions in my village, except one. But one family, they live in my village, they are from another religion, but you will not feel that they are from another religion. Everything they do is like normal, the people they live in the village. So, they would go and they would work and they would make that road.
Especially, see, in that rainy season, people cannot go from… They cannot use their bikes, scooters, or even their bicycles. So, they used to make that repair because some students, they used to go from my village to another village because we only have a primary school in my village. For higher education like matric, or we can say that 10 plus two or matric, they had to go to a different small city. So, it was like a very, very… We used to become… I used to see that the people, they are going and constructing the road. After some years, what I see is that everything has gone good. We have a very good road. It is made of Alcatra or with tar, we call it. And the road is good. There is a bridge for the places where there was a cut. School, still we have primary school in my village and the high school or middle school is near to my village only. It’s hardly one kilometer, one and a half kilometers, and everything is good. But I feel that the connection, the community work, that is missing. Previously, there was no lot of fights. There were fights, not in my village, but in my village also, it was due to personal issues and it is due to some hierarchy level issues. There were some fights, there were some arguments, but people used to come together because they had the same problem and they wanted to solve it.
Now, I feel that connection has gone broken. People don’t care about social issues. Maybe this is the case of social development or something in the societal development is happening. And you know that Indian society is a collective society, but it is becoming an individualistic society and people care about their problems. And while I was thinking here, living in Bangalore, even you cannot know your neighbor or the person who is living next to your apartment or next to your room. And you don’t know even if you are living in this apartment for years, and they don’t care about your problems and you don’t care about their problems. But in our problems, in the societal problem, suppose there was no electricity in our apartment, all the people will go and come together and can say that there is no electricity. Same thing in village areas, what I see is that those people suppose there is no electricity because it is connected to some grid and there is no power. People will not come together and say that let’s call the grid, inform the higher authority that there is no electricity. No, they will make an arrangement. They will have a generator, they will start doing things, but they are not coming together and people have lost that connection. That one I wanted to bring here and maybe it is a good thing. People say that when you start looking for your problems and you don’t look for the collective problems, that time the society goes up. This is one argument people give. So other is that people are not coming together and they are fighting for the societal or the collective problems.
So why I wanted to bring that up, right now the Indian election is going on, there were two types of things that people are trying to bring. Your problems, that I have problems because there are no good roads, there is no development in the schools, my children are not getting good educations and they are not getting jobs, there is a job issue. These are some problems at the individual or at the lower level. Some people try to say that our country is growing up, the economy is becoming better. People from other countries have different opinions about India. They think that India is growing and that is the higher level of issues. So people have to think about which issue you want to consider. Maybe you can consider both issues but which you are going to give a priority to. So this was my thought to bring this story because the social bond is getting fractured. Even in my village some people they don’t know the son or daughter of that man or that neighbor. Previously this was not the case. Maybe I don’t feel that our population has grown so much as India is growing and I don’t think that earlier there were 400 or 500 people. Right now we can see that 800 or 1200 people will be there in our village. So the population has not grown so much but the connection has broken and so this is the societal thing or social change is happening in our surroundings.
Frank This is so interesting and so important because when I speak to people who have travelled to other countries where there is a significant difference in the standard of living between Europe and the countries they have visited, the impression, the general impression that people come back with is they have far less but they are much happier. And you just have confirmed this and it really brings home the story how to balance what people think is progress with this human need to be connected that we are social animals. We need people to speak with each other and to relate to and do things together and now this whole artificial intelligence hype that is going on is going to transform this even further and that there is the danger that people think that we will be controlled by robots that may or may not happen but I think that people will become lonelier even down to individual families that you will find individual members of the family sitting in their own rooms staring at a big or small screen and connecting with somebody who is many, many miles away that they have no relationship with and not really develop a relationship and they don’t actually talk with their own family units anymore. So that is an interesting development that you have observed. Now Ritesh, what can you do to reverse, not to reverse this trend, but to maybe highlight this. Do you, does your generation, do you or do your people see this? Do your friends see this and that you try and compensate this somehow or what do you do? Because you cannot stop the development. Yet somebody very high up who is infinitely more powerful than we are is just going to say we need a highway from Delhi all the way down to Bangalore. It’s going to be a 10-lane highway and we’re going to build this no matter what, end of discussion. And you actually have no way to compensate for this or to fight this. So what can you do to keep this social cohesion together?
RItesh Okay, so Frank, really I feel hopeless in that situation. If I go home because I’m not living in my village and occasionally I will go home. Once again, I want to tell you a little bit. Previously what used to happen, people would come together, sit there like there’s no, it is a village, right? Suppose they came to my door, like my home, not in my home. There’s an open space, there will be a chair and everything. They are sitting there, they are having tea or they are talking. They are only talking about those things and having discussions and things like political things, social things and some issues generally. That was the case. Now that has gone up, completely stopped. No one goes to someone else’s door and sits there and has tea or they are talking something because it has become individualistic and you can’t bring them together. Previously there was, we have canals in our village, it would come and give us water and we could irrigate our farms and people used to go together because they had to divert the water and everything. Now there is electricity, they have motors, they use groundwater. They don’t have a thing about the situation and they can use groundwater to irrigate their farms or their field. So that has gone up. See, when I talk with those people or the people I used to think that they have completely changed, they don’t think this is such an issue and the level of thinking is different. What I feel that the person who thinks and has a lot of problems than the person who doesn’t think about all those issues and I cannot go and make those things. Now what I have learned that whenever I go, I will meet my friends, talk with them who have done schooling with me, especially my matric lessons. We have friend bondings, we don’t talk and text every month, maybe every day or month but generally whenever we meet, we discuss, talk and we have talked about this one that how the society has got changed and what we can do. We have talked about having plans to form an NGO and all the things but we don’t have the capability and the level of the place in the society that we can do. But we talk about that issue, how we can. I remember one incident in my college when I was in 10th, there was a person who passed from our school, government school. I did my 10th in government school. He did his schooling, then he did engineering, then he went to the USA. He has earned some money and he has a better position in his life. He came back and he created a competition in our college. Everyone participated based on their class and their grade. And not grade means that if they are in 9th grade or 10th grade and we got money. They gave some prizes, some books and there were some winners like who came first, who came third and up to 10th ranking. And it was a great impact on us that we got some money from someone. Maybe we won or we did good. So we thought like that also that if we have something, like not me only, we have a group, we can go and conduct such events in our college or in our schools. And that will bring… This is our thought that we should work together to bring those things. Some people are still trying. Some people are preparing for the UPSC, BPSE, public service commissions and it takes a lot of time. But we have thought that we cannot reverse the situation that has changed the society. And maybe that is for the better or that is for the good of the society. But there’s nothing more I can do.
Frank Well, that’s an interesting thought. I think it’s a topic that we’ll come back to. It’s probably a recurring theme in our conversations. But let’s move to something that does unite the country. IPL, the love of cricket. So for the uninitiated, we will assume that people know what cricket is. It is a sport. It is somewhere between baseball, softball, and nowhere else. It is a team sport in which you have two teams that you have a batting team and you have a bowling and fielding team. The batting team wants to get as many runs as possible. A run is a point and the fielding team and the bowling team they want to stop the batting team from doing this. And then there is a cricket pitch which is a narrow strip of grass. I don’t quite know how many yards long and how many yards wide but basically that is the gist of it. It’s an English sport. I think it was created in England in the 19th century sometime. It is now a global sport and somehow the Indians managed to take it to a higher level. They made it jazzier. They made it colorful. They reduced the time. A test match could run for three or five days and I remember as a child in Australia in the middle of summer and there is actually nothing more relaxing than to listen to a cricket commentary on the radio. It is pure Zen. So that’s the introduction to cricket. Ritesh, what’s your version on this and what is your story here?
Ritesh Yeah, so when I was young, so my uncles, they used to listen to the commentary on the radios and people used to say that if you want to learn English that you have to listen to this English commentary and there was a lot of craze. Even if we see the cricket on the television, there was a passion for listening to the commentary on the radio because you can feel the emotions. The person is speaking and everything. So it was better than watching because nowadays the commentary is not that good and not better than the person who used to tell on the radio. But this has changed and if you see that the cricket has become very commercialized, it is more about a commercial thing than the game right now. And so because of that they have started this IPL. So IPL is nothing but the Indian Premier League. Other countries players can participate in the events but there is a cap that in your team five players can be from other countries then the rest of the four will be Indians and all like that. And the teams, how they have created the teams, it depends on the bigger cities like there is a team in Bangalore, there is a team in Chennai, there is a team in Delhi, there is a team in Lucknow, there is a team in Kolkata, and there is a team in Mumbai. Then there is a team in Rajasthan Royals, it is for Rajasthan, there is a state, and like that we have teams and it starts with the 20 overs. This is for a shorter period and they had this was the invention in India that the person who was the chairman of the ICC they told that we are going to start a game for 20 overs not the 50 overs it is very long and people don’t want to spend so much time because they wanted to continue this game and they started and right now the IPL is the biggest money-earning event and it is happening in India. Right now the semi-final is done and where I live in Bangalore this team has never won an IPL trophy.
Frank Okay, someone has to be there.
Ritesh And you know that I’m not a supporter of this team. How the supporters change like the fan followers it depends on the reason like the reason that team belongs and depends on the players who is playing in that team and so this is for the Bangalore and all the people from Karnataka especially they support loves this team and I remember when I was in college when I was in I did my engineering in Bangalore and we used to have a TV on every floor of my hostel and there was a lot of shouting people used to support both the team because the person who is living in the hostels they were from all over the country and they used to support different teams than the person who is supporting the local team and they used to shout a lot of there was a lot of lights and all the things there will be some what you call security guards and everything then the management decided no we are not going to have these matches on the floors they kept one TV out of the hostels and this was the open ground and people used to make a lot of noise the day there’s a local team and there is a Chennai the two teams they have a lot of rivalry and because these are connected states and they have a lot of issues and it has come to the game and they used to make a lot of noise if the team loses and then there was a phrase coined in the local language that this time the cup is not ours next year the cup will be ours and they would never win that cup.
Frank Okay so this is just to put this into context so the IPL is the premier league is it like soccer slash football where you can move up the league and then there are different divisions so you have a top division a middle division and maybe a third division you can sort of move up and down this or how does this work?
Ritesh Yeah so it is different than that see we have some matches eight matches and in eight matches at the initial level you have to score points depends on how many wickets for how many with how many wickets you have won the match with how many runs you have won the match that depends on the scores how many runs you have scored in 20 overs and the person who chased and everything so there will be a point there is a calculation I’m not really I don’t know the how they calculate and it depends on that points so after the points calculated after eight matches I think eight matches only yeah so they will calculate that points the upper four will go to the higher level we call it semi-finals qualifier the lower level is qualifier then the semi-final then the final so the out of four they went four up three will go three up the highest scoring highest point pointer team will go in the quality semi-final I think and the last two they will fight so it depends on the number of scores so based on that number one team will go to the qualifying match then they will fight with the other team and if the two teams the wins they will go to the finals so what happens is this time it happens in every season but this time what happened the two teams the biggest rivalry the team who has fight one is Bangalore and the Chennai so they had Chennai had a higher point than the Bangalore and there was a condition that if the Bangalore team beats the Chennai the gap should be 18 runs so they are scored the Bangalore the first batting was Bangalore’s batting they scored 220 runs in 20 overs.
Frank Which is a respectable figure.
Ritesh Yes yes for the 20 overs it was really good people were thinking that they are going to score 20 runs 200 runs and the Chennai will win easily because they have 18 runs bandwidth because if they are not winning the match but their gap is within that 18 runs more than 18 runs they will less than 18 runs they will win so this was the case so what happened the day of the match the match started then there was rain for few minutes and everything changed.
Frank Oh dear.
Ritesh And they scored 20 runs in the last way 20 or 25 runs in the last overs and they scored 220 runs then they started chasing and they were really they were going to win the first drawback was that they lost a wicket in first over and the zero was zero runs.
And normally if I if the strategy is right you send your strongest batsman at the beginning of the innings so that they can accumulate a lot of runs and as you progress the ones who are not as strong batting they sort of come towards the end so you so they lost one of the best batsmen at the beginning of the innings.
Yeah so well they started they started scoring slowly slowly and then when it went to 17th over there was one more wicket as a crucial because there was a lot of wickets they lost but there was a crucial wicket then there was a score of 25 runs I’m not talking about the actual run they have to win the gap yeah if they win in the gap they will they will lose but the point will be more for for them and they will go for the semi-final team they will fight and then they will go for the semi-final so this this happened and there was a success everything the team captain Dhoni Mahendra has won the one day first after 84 we won second time the World Cup he was the captain so he is very respectable and this this IPL is going to be his last IPL but they don’t want then he is going to play for the next year so he scored six and the next ball he has to score he he scored six but it was a catch and if that that was a six then they have won that match the next over it was like a normal bowler and they they tried to give one run to run and they won so the Bangalore team won it was the first time in the IPL that the lowest scoring team the first six match the first five or six match they lost and after that they started winning and they came and the last year champion the Chennai team was last year champion and they have made they have made to go out like they made to they made they have shown the doors for them and they were there was a big celebration in Bangalore it was like a it it is like they have won the IPL trophy the whole Bangalore there was a lot of firecrackers there was people came out of their apartment they came out of their homes they came on the roads they celebrated everything five million people the the the the noise must have been phenomenal the celebration must have been out of this world.
Yeah yeah.
And people used to make fun like they are not going to give win and there’s a lot of comment see every every fans will make comments and then they started making comments that it always gives satisfaction when everyone says that you are not going to win and we win so it it is like that.
Frank Absolutely well congratulations Bangalore for for achieving this result the IPL season is actually quite short isn’t it it’s it’s taking three months I think they need to start yeah yeah because I remember because I think the significance of of Indian cricket really came home to me during COVID when I started hearing reports when Australia closed its borders even to its own citizens that there was a quite a few cricketers Australian cricketers who play in the in the in the Indian teams they actually could not leave India because they couldn’t get back to Australia because the country had closed its borders and we were stuck in India and I thought okay so why do you want to actually play for an Indian team and then I started looking at this and I thought you know how I mean I knew cricket was big but how much it had transformed in India that was that was new so so so Bangalore you’ve won you’ve won the trophy you’ve celebrated and you’re going into into a stronger position next time how does this work or how does this affect the Indian national cricket team who is going to play somebody else in some time soon.
Ritesh Yeah yeah so people say that if their favorite player is in the national team they will support for them otherwise the person who is everyone has likes and dislikes they don’t like some players and if they are playing and they are not scoring and they are doing something bad there will be a lot of backlash on them and a lot of comments and everything sometimes last years we lost our World Cup final right so it was a lot of backlash on the person who scored 100 but he took all the runs balls so there was a lot of backlash and people started scolding and you know that they are passionate about this and you know this they started schooling they started protesting and everything this player didn’t do well and this one that one what happens there will at the end people will say that see if they are doing good and we celebrate them if they are not good doing good or they lost then we have to accept that one this is the comments every time it comes but some passionate fascinated followers they will always do and they will always score so they have to they have to listen them and they have to accept that because they are they are getting a lot of money and if their people are praising them and they are giving praise they have to accept that scolding and they are they have to accept their dislike also so they have to accept and you can see that and why people are coming here because there’s a lot of money especially in the IPL you know that 210 millions rupees they are giving for a person or players to play in their team like that maximum and depends on the euros.
Frank Yeah that’s quite a that’s quite a substantial amount of money sports and politics always never seem to be far apart from each other and I was just thinking on on a national level when India plays Pakistan on the test series they used to be these games used to be played on neutral territory usually in Dubai but I’ve learned recently that you played Pakistan recently a couple of months ago and the matches actually took place in India so then so or was it in Pakistan so so can you can you explain the politics of cricket in these two countries from your perspective so is it the political class who make an issue out of it and and the normal population doesn’t really care because they just say okay we’re playing Pakistan our team’s going to win and the Pakistanis do the same and they say our team’s going to win and then the best team wins or how does this play out on on the population?
Ritesh So Frank I’m not aware of so Frank I’m not aware of that last match where it was played but what happened that you remember that Sri Lanka team they went to Pakistan and there was an attack on them yeah after that the all the teams they went that we are not going to go and play in their home grounds and because of India and Pakistan have very bad relationship in the terms of politics people are really good and they they want to play together and they want to know about their what is happening because especially if you speak correctly we are the same people at the at the end and everything the people they speak live and eat everything is same same might be there is some changes in this 75 years and even the Punjabi you know that they speak the Punjab was divided into two parts and people speak they speak their Punjabi and all so everything is good but this is a kind of war it’s like one country over the other country because we have fought three four wars together and there’s a lot of tension on the border so they people at the general people or the people people live in the country they cannot show the that love in the wars at the fight in the wars the fight in the grounds like that it is like that and if you are in the and ICC ever whenever the match happens the biggest revenue happens in this match India and Pakistan and they they always wanted to play these matches on the bigger ground that more people can come and play so the UAE is a place where everyone can come Pakistanis and Indians and they can play and they will generate a lot of revenues and this happens and there’s a lot of hit you can say there’s a lot of ads all the Indian brands they will start making ads and the degrading them and they will saying that they never won the match and everything like that and especially if you look at the statistics they have won more matches from us older matches and all but their team used to be top class but now the team has gone down and because of the politics and everything involved in their cricket board even in Indian boards it is controlled by politics politicians and all but the game is fair at the top because a lot of competition but you you see that everyone like if you the day the match is happening with India and Pakistan even the person who don’t know them even he don’t know the matches they will go and watch I remember in my childhood we used to have electricity there was a sometimes four hours five hours electricity was used to be there people will go and charge their battery they will take battery on the what you call the they will give money for the one hour one day or two day and they will bring battery and then put in the this was also a good connection in the villages that they will put a TV in the field people will come and watch that matches and it was really good and it happens today also if you look at the offices when there is a match between India and Pakistan no one works even the bosses they they can’t say that you were you have to work and all sometimes some of the companies local companies the Indian companies they will give holiday on that day that go and watch matches and they will arrange a big TV and all in the offices to watch matches such as the power of cricket that it can actually bring an entire nation of 1.3 billion people to a grinding halt when two teams fight it out on a on the cricket field yeah that’s quite a quite a quite a show I actually need to catch up on the test schedule maybe you can help me because I’ve got divided loyalties Mary being English so I have to support the English national team but me having grown up in Australia I might want to support the Aussies as well.
But you know that the Australian team they do a lot of sledging there. That means there’s a lot of fight has happened in the past because of all those things but now this has started in Indian team I will also some people they say and do for the other players.
Frank Yeah but but it always seems to be the same same nations so we’ve got India Pakistan Australia England the West Indies Sri Lanka South Africa are they part of this show or that seems to be sort of less less a cricketing nation and a rugby nation I’m not sure but no yes going to South because of course in our winter here the Australian team or the English team would go to a warm country so it would go to New Zealand or to Australia or South Africa they go to the southern hemisphere and in in the northern hemisphere summer you would find them the European teams hosting a test match for the southern hemisphere nations I’ve lost a little bit of track so do you know which country is India playing next in any series.
RItesh I think recently the there was a team selection I’m not sure for the I think recently they have selected a team for the tour I don’t know it’s tour for tour or something there was a lot of questioning that why you are selecting this player because they have not scored well or something like that so there was but I’m not sure that I will let you know that which one they are playing but they have selected people so they have selected the players and there was that all the players are coming from the one orangey we have local every state has a team and that team they will select a person then they will they will come to the national level based on their score and everything so it was like that and they have selected so there are a lot of questioning that you are selecting why you are selecting this player and all so but people criticize that our BCCI also that how they are selecting there is some favoritism and everything in the team but it happens in all the teams.
Frank So Ritesh given that we are the founding people of this podcast series should we make it a rule for any person who wants to join us in the future that they have to be cricket literate they have to understand the game otherwise we can we can say that if they’re in India they will know that yeah you know that our tier like our front office people they come from USA to every month three months to have planning and one of the after planning we had a party so there was a big screen and there was a game was going on so everyone is explaining that this is how it works and how it is happening so there’s a lot of interest and things but yeah okay so anyone listening if you want to join the Chronicle House the Coffeehouse Chronicles then you have to be cricket literate otherwise Ritesh and I will explain the game but be prepared it’s quite quite a different set of rules okay final story Ritesh to wrap up today’s scenario is something from your working life can you first of all actually very very briefly tell us what it is you do and what it is that you have been asked to do.
Ritesh Yeah so I’m a technical writer there’s nothing to do with the writing thing a writer but I write things okay okay that’s yeah so I cannot claim that I write stories and everything so what we generally do we write documents to help others to do certain things especially what happens that some of the platforms or some of the we I’m working in the right now in the software domain so some of the things gender helping some other someone’s to do things is more costlier than the giving some documents and they can do themselves so this is the main objective of the technical writing technical writing documents we are helping them to do certain things without getting help from the others this is the main thing so for the technical documentation technical documentation you can say that is to enable them to do things themselves in that domains certain things comes like release notes suppose we are releasing some features in the document software some other end users should know that what is coming and how they can what is beneficial and what is in plan and like that so these are the documents some are the user guides how to use certain features certain things how to perform certain tasks these are the user guides some are the cube no cube gates to suddenly generally give the brief of the platform and do some logins and the certain things then comes the more technical documents like the we have backend teams they perform certain tasks and for them we need a document so that they can go and think take the information about that things and do the things so based on the roles what what roles they have and they can perform that task so those documents we write and and some there’s something called API document API is nothing but there’s some application programming interface that is the connection between those systems and generally they they will pull the data and all the things so those documents we write then there’s some other documents like project documentation it happens that too which feature is coming what is the benefit and all the things there’s a lot what I’m not involved but that should be a greater help or there will be a greater helpful in my career path is that doing the research market research and all the things I have not done and those things I do and and there is some technical writers who write video scripts also so suppose we want to give information about the platform so we can write scripts and generate a video it also comes in the technical writing domain some people call the content writer content writer is different they are not touching the technical stuff but they write generally so these are the things I do and my desire and my wish was that I should move in the product domain because product is a very very good career path and all those things and for that the role I am in that I cannot go and become certain higher level in the product domain so I have to become a product analyst then I have to go for the product owner or I can become a product manager also in the past because I see the people who are in product management role they are working for 20 years 25 years and then they have reached that role so they have started in that area and now you wanted to go for that and I have asked my manager also and he told that he was always ready he was telling that if you have bandwidth you can take a certain work and and work but but they were not giving me work they were saying that go and work with someone else start learning there and everything and if you are comfortable then you can go and do so recently they had a open role and I told that I wanted to because I’m interested in everything so they told that no this is the we are looking for someone who has knowledge of the certain domain and everything they are senior level of product analyst and everything then recently my manager came and told that you are not you go and take some work and start working on you can give some percentage of your bandwidth and you start working then my product owner came and told that our manager has told him to you are interested and you want to work then you can come and join the meetings meeting was always for me that I can join but I was not giving importance because I was working somewhere else and it was like what you call what you are going and participating I was not giving any value to the meeting I was going and listening to the conversation and everything but now they have assigned some tickets to me and they told that you can pick whatever you like I have access to the our map roadmap and I can take our ticket and they have assigned one ticket and one more ticket there’s no work a lot of work in that but there will be coordination how it works and everything I will get to know and then they told that you can pair with our own of the product analyst and you can work with him and you can give contribute to with him and then in the future if they see fit or if I have bandwidth I can allocate more of my time to that area but what I am thinking that I will spend a lot of time because what I do I have fairly I’m comfortable and I can give a few hours to complete those tasks and everything so I want to give more time and learn these things and let’s see what is what is going to happen.
Frank So does your company does your environment and then sort of transport this to to other companies to the Indian working culture is it possible to have a career path and to progress forwards or is it more project related where you just move from one project to another project and does this extra work that you are doing and does this new responsibility that you are being given also have any financial consequences will you get a higher salary different benefits how how how are we to understand for those who do not work in India how are we to understand this this general work culture.
Ritesh Yeah so as of now there will be no financial things and everything people generally in India the work culture is different in the USA and India so a person in USA can he he can have an experience in any maybe in the you also you can as you are the example so he has a experience in some other domain he can go to the some potential employer and then say that I am seeking this one I have this is the capability he will show his capability he will clear the interview and people will do will not care about that which domain he has worked and what was here his role and everything they will give they will hire him they will give some time period that he has to perform and he has to show his capability but generally it does not work in India most of the time most of the Indian companies are the service based company some companies are the product based and they have a real genuine product and they look for the people they hire for the people who has for the experienced person because if I’m going to some other jobs I will not go whatever whatever I’m getting as my salary I will not look for the job which has lower salary I will look for the role that have same salary or better salary than that so generally when they hire an experienced person they look for their background they say that what role we have worked what was your capability and what was your contribution and everything and based on that they will hire even you have every knowledge everything they will not give you a new role and so what what you have left so if you are in a company you try to if your manager or your boss is we call it manager and I have here no one says boss but it is like that they they they give you extra suppose my colleague someone is working and he left a job so if they they say that potential that this person has potential he’s part of the team he can work and get they will give him a promotion or they will give a new role this is the main process where you can go up in the ladder but this is not like that I came fresh in the car from the college and I want to join a product manager it never happens it happens only in the startups small companies where you can be an analyst where you can be manager and everything and where you are changing a job we can say that I performed as manager here and there and I have a capability and capacity then you can move fast but if once you are gone in a domain if you want to go up you have to just it is very hard to go in different domain and start some people they do there is some chances but generally it never happens and we wanted to change this culture Indian culture but we don’t see it happens.
Frank When you when you graduate from university is it easy to get a job?
Ritesh That time it was not an easy task in our college what happened the domain which the engineering I have done I feel really surprised that I have done aeronautical engineering aerospace my background is aerospace is new.
Okay yeah.
And there was a lot of passion we are going to work as a scientist everything like that when you come when four years completes you look for a job that I need a job I can’t survive without a job how many especially in India parents gives money for every month and you have to call so when four years is done you will feel sorry to call them and ask money yeah generally that you give money to themselves you don’t have to ask them so this is this is the case so what happened that Indian colleges the companies will come to the colleges for the placements okay and most of the Indian companies are service-based companies they will come and hire mass hire we call it so they will hire 200 people 300 peoples and they will hire it so some of the companies they came some of the companies they don’t consider our domain some of the companies they consider our domain but there is no success and they are hired very few people five six peoples then we did a what you call there is a there is an opening and hundreds people will go for the interviews you call it walk-ins yeah and we did and that one we prepared one of the service-based company I got selected Capgemini was my first organization it is a very big company it is it is from the France only actually and there’s a lot of one lakh twenty two thousand employees are in India so they hired us for the project which belongs to the this was a service-based only project we are working for the company they are doing documentation and generally in India see you will have very less say to which project will be assigned they will mass hired especially I say Infosys TCS and those company will hire they will give six months paid training there will be a contract of two years that you cannot leave the organization for two years like that this is the Indian companies and you have to do six months training and then you will assign a project based on your grades and everything and based on the requirements also some they got some project and they need a certain number of people and they will send some people to that project and they will start working within an experienced manager and some employees and based on that they will get promoted and everything so some of the businessmen or some of the companies CEOs what they say that Indian the graduates are not having the adequate knowledge or what you call a skills to be employable that’s why they are giving six months training and how they are going to get that money they will not increase their salary for two years they will increase five percent ten percent like that so a person he has to work for two years and that’s how they try to take the investment they have done in training and everything yeah so if you look at the persons who are working in TCS and Infosys the salary grade is very lower than the persons who are has started from the startup and everything.
Frank Yeah okay lots of lots of future topics in all of this I just made a note here because in France we have the Olympic Games in a couple of weeks and key industries have already announced that they want to go on strike because there’s better working conditions and better pay and stuff like that and our thinking is well we have probably very good working conditions here in Europe one should go to other places to see what it’s like there and then we can talk about salaries and striking and so on but those are all cliches Ritesh we actually managed to contain the cricket discussion in under 24 hours fantastic comparison about how society has transformed since you were a child and the first glimpse into a professional view on working culture and working conditions in India based on your own experiences fascinating topics Ritesh thank you very much for sharing these stories with us today we can continue those plus other stories down the road and hopefully we can get other people to join this series as well so that we can have a more diverse discussion and it’s lunchtime for you so you’re probably going to get some lunch just to give us an idea any idea what’s on the lunch menu today?
So it’s so I’m living in paying guest PGs so there will be many I don’t remember what they’re making but it’s a free Saturday same thing.
So we’ll talk about it next week yeah.
Ritesh thanks very much.
Yeah thanks Frank.