It's farewell, again!!!

I, on a personal front, feel the best post on my blog till date is 'The effect of S'. You can bet anything on the fact that nothing can beat doing something for our friend. Well, that was a post I did specially for my best friend. And, today, I'm back with a similar post. You could even consider this as 'The effect of S - part II' except it isn't about the same person. It's rather about my colleague, and more than that, a good friend, Mrs. S. Today was the last day at office for her.

Ours was a two member team - comprising of me and her - here at offshore that was led by Mr. A - a perfect example for the term a-gem-of-a-person - at onsite (Guess, I would do a post on him in near future). Having said that, one could figure the importance of the companion. I still remember my first day in the project when our P.L., introduced me to her. He ended the meeting with this statement - "She is a very good resource who will be helpful and flexible." To this day, she lived up to his words.

I was new to this account. On the meeting, "She is [her name]," started our P.L. "and she will be your teammate." The moment I came to know that my teammate is a girl, I thought, "Okay, so that's it. How am I going to be comfortable here?". He then added fuel to the fire with the sentence, "She is married!". And that made me to think, "Okay, now how am I going to be comfortable with a married-girl-who-is-also-a-stranger-to-me?". But somehow, on seeing her, I felt everything would be fine, and I had a hunch that she will be fine, and make me fine here. Throughout our time in this project, she proved my hunch to be true.

Undoubtedly, she was the only reason for me to be comfortable in what could be called as new environment. On my first day, I was just sitting in my machine reading out some documents. I haven't talked to her after the meeting, leave off once to inquire about the link for the documents. Later that day, it was she, who came to me and called me for a break. From that day, we used to go for a juice break almost everyday. She also joined me for lunch with few of my previous teammates daily.

From that day our relation was slowly built up. I found her as a good-friendly-colleague. Our work wasn't that much hectic, and for that reason, we used to enjoy our time like anything. We discuss about movies, any recent weird incidents that happened elsewhere, our previous projects, our time in TCS and so forth. We used to go to the reading hall and the library everyday, and spent some time over there. Nowadays, I'm reading a lot of books (mostly self-improvement or business  or management kind). I would proudly say, she is the reason for that. Being so, she has made my reading time valuable, and directed me in a better way.

Sometimes, "A" used to come online and initiate a conference chat with us. We shared a lot - that comprises personal things (like our weekend happenings, movies, etc) mostly rather than official (we used to discuss task related stuffs only in the status call that we take up in the evening). We both enjoyed those casual chat with him. It's always nice to have a chat over something rather than work alone.

Her specialty is that she has a power of mind reading. She used to speak out the characters of our onsite coordinators (we had one more person working with us at onsite for some time) and our QA Analyst to me. She used to say how they would be and how they would handle things, with a great enthusiasm. And from our call with "A" yesterday, we found she was more than correct in her findings.

At times, she was more like a kid, actually. Just like them, she used ask so many 'Why-s' to me. I, to be frank, really enjoyed answering her with whatever information I had in me. Sometimes I had to Google to get answers for her why-s.

She used to listen to me patiently every time whenever I had something to say to her. She used to praise her husband a lot. By then I always felt happy for her (I know how difficult it is, nowadays, to find a good guy for a girl. I know the pain involved for I have two sisters). She used to share some funny incidents happened in her home. She used to complain her maid to me (that was the only problem she had in her home).

Since she is from Andra Pradesh, she doesn't know Tamil. One day, she explained me the way she used to interact with her maid. It was nothing but she used to talk 10% in Tamil, 10% in Telugu/English and 80% in sign-language. That day, she actually acted one conversation that she had with her maid in the morning. I couldn't help laughing out loud. That was one of my funniest days in this project. I owe her a lot specially for that :-)

And work wise, she was more than perfect. She was always committed to the work she does. She was responsible, and extremely helpful. Also, she had never said a 'no' to me for whatever I had asked her to do. Without her, I wouldn't be what I'm now in this project. She always pose a smile in her face. She was very much a down-to-earth person.

She had to put in her papers last month because of her husband's transfer to Maldives. The one month notice period she had to serve was the craziest of all. She used to count the days everyday with her fingers. He left for Maldives last month. During the past one month, she mentioned him often. That showed how much she missed him. She told that she was very much bored after he left her. In fact, during this time, she praised him more than she did earlier. She really had a tough time staying in hostel for the past one month. She complained about the mosquito bites, the food, and so on. Those times, I really prayed for the month to run fast.

Yesterday we had a call with "A" to have an informal, friendly chat. It went for more than an hour. We got to know more about him. At the end of the call, all we could do was to praise him even more. I feel I'm really gifted to be in this project only because I had to meet these two persons. Though it was only 5 months, we had a good friendly relationship which I hope would last long.

And today, her last day in office, she was happy rather being sad (No wonder, of course, she should be!!!).  After the usual farewell meeting, we - me, "X" (my colleague) and "S" walked down to leave for the day. "X" was kidding her all the way asking, "Ain't you feeling sad? you rather seem to look happy, or are you really feeling sad, and uh, are you going to cry?"

She replied, "I'm feeling sad for Suresh. He will be alone...."

That sums it all.... I will miss her as a good teammate, and above all, as a very good friend.