I know what happened

Work has been really hectic these days, late evenings and weekend working - days seem to be running so fast. All I hear is - defects, retesting, scripts, execution. 

On one such day, we were working till late evening waiting for a fix to arrive for retesting. Since everyone in the team was so tired, I offered for them to leave for home while I alone stay back to retest the fix. It wasn't that I wasn't tired but I didn't mind staying back a little late. Everyone but one more friend left for the day. 

In some minutes, fix arrived and we began to retest. During that piece of retesting, I noticed something else broken. I didn't believe at first look because that bit seemed to be working during the day - and fix was no way related to the now broken area. Chances of these two issues being related were so low - I tested again but same results. So I raised a new defect and called it a day.

After reaching home, the mind got little relaxed and I started to think about the new defect. Suddenly it clicked that I perhaps might have used wrong data and hence the wrong results. May be there was no defect at all. I texted a friend that perhaps in hurry and tiredness, I hadn't analyzed the issue properly and by mistake have raised new defect. I couldn't be sure of the data, but somehow became uncomfortable with the thought that next day everyone would come blaming that I had made silly mistake and impacted timelines. Build team would reject the defect next day - this looked more obvious, and my friend too instead of comforting said something on those lines that I felt more guilty. 

I got really upset on how things had turned - and in those thoughts, for a moment I did ask for God to intervene and somehow correct things.  As time passed, I convinced myself to face the outcome next day. 

Next morning when I opened the defect - it was indeed rejected as I had expected. But what I hadn't expected was that Build saying they hadn't delivered the functionality for testing - therefore we shouldn't be testing that area.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I re-read what they were saying - the functionality was working last morning and now they were saying it was never delivered.

Although defect was still rejected but there was no blame game - everyone's attention drew towards the fact that certain functionality was never delivered. Whole day meetings went on - but to talk why was code not delivered?

And btw - next day I also checked what data I had used. That also seemed to be correct  - perhaps I was worrying for no reason at all. 

After a week since this incident - yesterday I got a chance to speak to build team members about same defect, where they requested to retest again and also said that the functionality should have been delivered - and perhaps they had by mistake put comments that functionality was never delivered. There was something wrong which they didn't understand - they were really confused over how things had turned up. 

As we continued to talk on that defect, I couldn't resist thinking about the rescue operation that God had done for me. I was worried about the mocking that people would do, and here same people were making apologies for putting wrong comments.

These days at work, whenever the same defect is talked of - everyone is surprised on what actually happened but I smile because I know what happened. 

Thankyou Huzur!

Oh God !

Caz, as she likes to be addressed as, is a friend from work. Often Caz and I together have walked on way back to home from work. Our talks revolved around TV shows, Indian and English cultures, colleagues etc and not forgetting the most important topic – God. Out of all these topics, God is the one where she has patiently listened without any comments. On one such walk, Caz mentioned – ‘Sunil, I don’t believe in God.’
Respecting her sentiments, I decided that I won’t discuss this anymore. Probably that was the reason why she kept quiet while I talked of quotations, parables etc from scriptures or other sources. That was April 2009.

Not many days passed before we both had to work late nights. The project had gone really bad, and the only way to deliver it on time was to put some extra efforts. We both sat late hours, spent weekends, holidays in office trying to make code work. Every time she made some change, and I tested – result was a failure again. ‘Oh God! Let me try something else’, ‘Oh God! Why doesn’t this work now?’, ‘Oh God! ..’, nothing seemed to work – Caz’s face would go pale as mine. Her sadness and helplessness was obvious from her remarks – and to be honest my state wasn’t different either. Just that I tried to show my balance with my silence. Both of us were exhausted and finally thought of taking a short break.

As I grabbed a piece of Pizza, I couldn’t resist adding – ‘Caz you know?’
Caz – ‘What?’
I – ‘The other day you mentioned you don’t believe in God, and now you were taking His refuge is every single line. Were you making fool out of me? You…..’

I still recall smile on her face which accompanied one on my face.

From the same experience, I admit that being a believer (at least I call myself one) I never thought of seeking blessings when I felt exhausted. But one who called herself as a non-believer made efforts to include and pick strength from God. Her talks may not have sounded like prayers, but at least she called our Savior. And Savior too fulfilled His promise – Include Him in all your ways and He will make all your paths straight! Soon her prayers were answered and we found a fix for our problem. Miracles like this happen now and then, can’t say that I sat down to write a Miracle, instead an experience where I learnt that even if child rejects the existence of father, father still clings to the child.

I meet people who call themselves atheists, I meet people who call themselves believers, I meet people who call themselves religious, I meet people who call themselves spiritual - trying to distinguish themselves from the others. And I wonder where lies the difference? Does vision from Moon distinguish India or England?