Post my initial training at Tata Consultancy Services Limited, I went months without being assigned to any project. This was a common predicament for new hires back then. My daily routine was to keep waiting for a project interview call. Honestly, it felt fun to come to office, not do anything and go back home in the evening. In between, we (easily more than a hundred employees), would loiter around gym, recreation room, library, etc. But, the excitement of first job was still there. So, no one felt dejected even when we had zero calls for six months.

Cut to the chase, I carried a backpack that proudly displayed TCS at the front (all of us had received this bag as part of induction) during this phase. I was commuting through a public space in a local train on my way to office, when a soft spoken older (probably in early 60s) gentleman, started conversing with me. He asked me what do I do at TCS. I said nothing. I explained the situation of unallocation. He calmly listened to everything I said. Then introduced himself. He was part of Infosys from early days. He had toiled hard and was part of the sea of people who joined hands to bring Mr. Narayan Murthy’s vision to life. Now, he had retired and was still part of the advisory committee. It felt great listening to this.

He went on and said. The moment, the company starts paying you, your job has started. You cannot excuse yourself just because you are not allocated to a project. You need to find novel ways to repay the company that pays you. I felt inspired as well as a bit embarrassed. I thanked him for the advice and promised to utilize my time better.

When I reached office, I had no clue how to utilize my time better. But, the chance encounter had already lit a fire in me. So, I went through the books at library. There were at least a thousand books. I resolved to read most of them. Over the next four weeks, I read at least two books from each section. The sections were ‘Time Management’, ‘People Management’, ‘Capital Management’, ‘Self Improvement’, ‘Mobile App Development’, ‘Cloud Computing’, etc.

I also learnt to program in C#. I found AJAX as a concept, very interesting. I even got enrolled with the learning and development team, which helped us ingrain business etiquette. I even did a certification to learn the Insurance business domain. These learnings flash, even now when I discuss about insurance policies with family.

After a month in my resolve, I got a call for an interview from a project. My future manager grilled me for two hours. He started with a question, “What did you do in the past few months?”. Luckily, I had so many learnings to talk about. I kept on and on and had to be interrupted after 10 minutes. Then, he asked me to write pseudo code and drilled into my approach to problem solving. I believe, I answered well. I received a call back in the evening, that I have been selected for the next evaluation.

I was delighted, how a chance encounter could fill me up with so much positivity and course correct my attitude. This positivity helped me push even further. Even though not having coded much earlier, I learnt a new programming technology (WPF), and built a CRUD application as part of the evaluation. This activity also challenged me and helped me learn the nuances of imperative as well as declarative programming.

I have continued to take inspiration from this chance encounter, and most importantly, the idea of ‘paying back the hand that pays you’ is etched in my heart.