Big Dreams

"And here we are today." concluded Sadique as he sat with Amit sipping tea. The two had been college buddies and had been through thick and thin together. After college, Sadique got placed in his dream company i.e. L&T Switchgear. He had got a job in his core field of Electrical Engineering. Amit, not as bright as Sadique, had to settle for a job in the software industry. Clearly, this was not what he had wanted. Still, both of them set out to make their careers with big dreams to chase.

Frankfurt

For the first six months, Sadique Khan worked as a production engineer in the Switchgear division of L&T at Faridabad. He was sociable by nature and won many friends in the office. His job responsibilities required a lot of interaction with his colleagues and he was comfortable in dealing with people. His manager and colleagues had high opinion about him. No wonder, after six months, the company nominated him for a six month training programme in “Advanced design of Switchgear” at a reputed institute in Frankfurt, Germany.

He was the blue eyed boy of L&T Switchgear. The company expected him to complete the training programme and transfer that knowledge to his colleagues in India, so as to give a boost to the R&D in L&T Switchgear, India. The training programme was tough and Sadique’s manager had full confidence about his capability. He was sure that Sadique would complete the training successfully and meet the expectations of the company.

Sadique was excited at the prospect of his first foreign visit. He had not expected this so soon.

Frankfurt airport was beautiful. He captured the bird’s eye view in his camera. However, he got the first shock at the airport, where the security officers after looking at his name started s...

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...essional to use local language in an organization, especially in official meetings. In Germany, my batchmates at the training programme stuck to English, even though their accents were funny. Each made sure that the others understood by confirming and taking feedback from them from time to time. But, I still think they are very self-centred people.

Amit: On the contrary, they may not be self-centred at all. That’s how things are over there. It’s just the way they are. That’s it. We’re not like that, so we find it surprising. In an organization, one has to accept such ‘inconsistencies’ and move on.

Sadique: I guess so. Truly, we both have learnt a lot during the past one year. On the same day last year, we were inexperienced lads from college all excited about ‘corporate lifestyle’ having all kinds of rosy pictures in mind. That was then. And here we are today.