We used to have a novel name “The Village by the sea” during the school days. I will present a summary of it below as it may be still relevant to the current corona saga….
In a small village, there used to live a small boy named Chandu (name changed as I can’t remember the real name after 30 years of reading that novel). Chandu and his family are very poor. They have a small piece of land which they use for farming and somehow eat one meal a day. There are rumours that there is a big factory that will be enacted in this town and government will forcibly take away their land and they will have to starve to death. Day and night everyone talk about it. One day, Chandu gets fed up and decides to leave the village and run away from his situation. He takes a boat and lands up in Bombay after many days of sailing. Now he has no money and after many days of begging, he manages to get a job as a waiter in a small restaurant. He earns a few pennies there and lives inside it and works around 20 hours a day in that restaurant. After working there for 2 years, he realises that life is very hard, and he decides to back to his village. Finally, he arrives back to village and meets his family, who have become poorer by then. Village has changed, there are people and workers everywhere. Government has forcibly taken their land and they have no way to earn there living. Factory that everyone talked about is already constructed. Chandu had some savings, which he earned while in Bombay, so he decides to use that small amount of money to buy eggs and boil eggs and sell them under the banyan tree, in front of the factory. Since there is huge influx of factory workers, people start eating his eggs. Slowly he starts earning some money and opens a poultry farm and produce and boil his own farm eggs. More people start eating. Slowly he starts making butter chicken and supply it under the banyan tree to the factory workers. His business takes off and he can earn a decent living for himself and his family. With time, he gets married to a beautiful girl and lives happily ever after.
Moral of the story: Software companies talks about Agile, permanent jobs etc. But in fact, life itself is extremely agile, we don’t even know what will happen the next moment. Life itself is temporary but we look for permanent jobs ?. Hence, even if things don’t go our way, we should always adjust according to the challenges that life throws at us and look for opportunities. No one knows, what will happen tomorrow, but if we are Agile, adjustable, learning from mistakes, always learning new skills, we will be able to create new opportunities and sail through good and bad times…..Until then….Let’s wash our hands, adhere to the corona virus action plan by the government, take precautions, stop worrying too much about the future(and ruin our present) and listen and act according to the instructions given by Wife.
