The Campus : Lighter & Darker Sides
Infosys has been very consistent in its construction of DCs (Developing Centres) all over India. It may not be area-wise (which varies from as much as 350 acres in Mysore to 25 acres in Bhubaneswar), but in its internal components. It uses the same brands everywhere in every little detail. Ranging from the Dell / Acer Machines to Crabtree bathroom apparels, it is always exactly the same.
Mahindra City DC is of medium size ( 129 acres ). It has 2 huge food-courts and 5 huge SDBs (Software Developing Buildings). There is a Guest-House (called ECC or Employee Care Centre) which can currently accomodate over a 1000 employees and is still extending its wings. This is one of the newest DCs that Infosys has constructed. You can still see bits of footpath being constructed here and there. But as a whole, I think the DC is well designed and well implemented.
For example, let me mention one of the implementations I'm talking about : As everybody knows, Chennai is very hot. Though there are a plenty of big umbrellas available outside every building, but is still falls short. Hence people allergic to too much sun are liable to catch sickness in the sunny days. I think, taking this in mind, the buildings are constructed in such a way that follows the same straight line (i.e. are collinear to each other). If you want to avoid the sun, instead of taking the straight road, you can just go through the buildings one by one till you reach your destination.
The map of the campus is very simple. It is roughly like the human rib-cage. The spine is the main road and the ribs are the buildings adjacent to the road. As simple as that ! Other than that, there are 4 gates, 2 of which lets the employee out to the Mahindra City main road which reaches the the Mahindra City entrance if you follow it in a straight line. As this is built in a similar pattern of Indus Valley Civilization, roads cutting in right angles and following square / rectangular blocks as building plots, it is easily mappable in the mind.
There is plenty of implanted greenery in and around the Campus, definitely much less than Mysore, but still appreciable. There are frequent long bamboo-bushes providing a soothing canopy-like shelter to the smokers. However, people enjoy a vast freedom here. Unlike Mysore, there is no security-man in every nook and corner giving a sharp whistle if you step down from the footpath and walk on the road, in the night-time you can virtually smoke anywhere (ofcourse not within the buildings). People bring food in their offices, sleep in their cubicles or keep chatting without any intervention from anyone to be scared of ! After all, this is not a training place anymore, this is a working DC (as stated by our BP-HR) !
There in Mysore, you would see young people everywhere doning one of the seven coloured tags (white, green, yellow, red, orange, blue, brown). But everyone here has only black tags, and a high percentage of them are middle-aged and hardly speak words ... moving as in a trance or a mechanical robot ! If you ever visited any of the food-courts in the lunch time at Mysore, you would have to literally shout the words to make it audible in 2 feet. But here the food-courts are very quiet, the silence broken time to time by the mechanical announcement of token numbers of food-collectors. Previously we all had the experience of standing in huge lines to get the food, but here they supply tokens when you pay, and then in due time your token number will be announced and you can get your food without any hassle. The system is very effective, but not implemented in Mysore ( I think ) bacause the announcement would have died within the continuous roar of the chatterings that trainees had.
Mysore DC, a residence to over 12,000 trainees was always vibrant with life. Here te first thing that strikes us is this void of Lifelessness. In the night, the whole place is deserted, hardly a person (in charge of some security or foodcourt attendant) or two can be seen roaming around here and there. Other than that, the buildings have only lights in the ground floors, and maybe some random cubicles are lighted here and there ( all the buildings are either transparent or translucent ). A gentle breeze playing with your hair, and the decorative fishes in the well-maintained artificial ponds making some arbitrary bubbling sound. Other than this nothing is visible or audible. When we reflect back into the experiences we had in the past six months, we feel so dull and morose. There is not even a single pretty girl who can be the topic of a discussion for atleast half-an-hour !
The food here is very costly. It would take atleast 50 bucks if you opt for a chicken item and 2 parathas, contrary to 28 bucks for he same menu in Mysore. In FC (foodcourt) 1, there is a outlet called Clay Oven, only where the food is edible for us non-South-Indians. In FC2, which is a complete huge building by itself, there is a good variety of snacks like pastries & burgers & patties, but hardly 4/5 varities of North Indian dishes.
We went through an initial phase of denial (from Bhubaneswar) and then frustration (in the news of the Bhubaneswar guys already getting projects of American Express in BCMD unit whereas our induction has not even been initiated), and finally forced acceptance. We have now grown on the fact that we have to survive here, and we literally take pride in saying that after this we can survive anywhere in any condition ! Nothing can be worse than Chennai ! If they now put in any damned place, it would be heaven compared to here!
This may not be the truth, but this is the only consolation we get. Nothing to do, other than looking for houses and watching TV in the AC guesthouses (which will unavailable from the next week as our bungalow dont have neither AC nor TV), and swiping in/out daily. We pray that we get some good heavy work that will distract our mind and make it numb from building any complexes inside and keep us sane for the coming atleast 12 months.
Sometimes, we wonder, "God, why me ??!!"
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I am sorry for the lack of the least humour in this edition of my report. I know, for general readers this is too boring and too much informative, but still I would urge you to respond to this so that I can have enough inspiration to complete my last part of the on-going accounts.
Coming up next :
The Horrible House Hunt
Regards
Vivek Panda
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