Last friday was the last day, for my colleague and close friend Neelanarayanan, shortly referred as neela, who has opted for a transfer to a different city owing to a real personal reason. We both joined this organization NCST (now C-DAC) on a same day. Since then almost 5 years have passed, and we had a good friendship between us. Understandably, he was emotional during the send-off.
He is atleast 4 years older than me. I did learn a lot from him. He had a lot of 'Practical' experience, and I guess he was a good manager, and a psychologist, by observation, practice and time, rather than by educational degrees. He had the ability to comment on many issues, right from politics to our technical domains and more interesting was the way, he would do. He was a person who took things 'lightly', even at the most difficult times. In his companionship, he would make you feel even the greatest things are indeed really a simple thing and sometimes vice versa also. This was applicable to everything from greatest concepts to greatest personalities. So, he was a sort of motivation for most of the times.
Though we worked in the same organization, we worked for different departments until 2 years back, where we both worked on a project that demanded both technical and great interpersonal skills as we had to deal with people from totally different walks of life and in different situations. This is where his immense 'practical' skills were of value to us and to the project.
Well. I did feel sometimes in his companionship, that I was living in an 'idealistic' world, and my knowledge being very bookish. But these days, I feel I am lot more matured with the worldly behaviours, and functioning, thus my bookish conceptions and thoughts waning.
