I met a very interesting character at Madurai. I have changed his name to maintain his anonymity (not under his request). His name is Kiran. In a masochistic way, he likes being considered as “Mr. Loser”. I will tell you why.
His Relatives call him a loser in life. Reason: He is not like the other bunch of boys with a handsome salary, working in a Corporate as a salaried professional, driving a Hyundai Santro (alright, alright, why do I always take a dig at poor Santro?), making investments, buying a fancy apartment in a decent locality and above all marry another professional or a ready-made homemaker.
His Parents don’t understand his simple philosophy of life. They want him to grow his hair rather than presenting a clean shaven head. They fear that the potential bride’s family might interpret it for the condition named Alopecia. Parents are quite normative ones and their concern is…Kiran will lose his saleability as his appearance and youth logarithmically decreases as he steps in to his 30s. Kiran doesn’t give a damn to what others think about him. His point is…if I’m not comfortable in my own natural sleeves, how would I be comfortable in someone’s sleeves?
Some of his distant cousins and relatives tempt Kiran with strong offers from software companies located in the nearby cities of Chennai and Bangalore. But Kiran is unperturbed. Again they call him a loser for passing on what they call as great opportunities in life. Nothing seems to perturb Kiran. He seems pretty much focussed at work in Madurai.
Kiran enjoys the weekend sojourns with school and college friends to the nearest hill stations or estates. He is very contented with the simple and uncomplicated life that Madurai has in the offering. When I interact with Kiran, i can sense that he is a self-made man with his own interpretation of life, religion and society. His basic values are quite universal and greatly surprises me.
So, what exactly does Kiran do for a living?
Kiran, like me, graduated during the same time. He is not an Engineer by education. He majors in English Literature. After dabbling around a bit with some electronics in the name of fun, he stumbled in to the world of Open Source by accident. With a great deal of commitment and overcoming persistent challenge from inner circle, resisting temptations for better offers, he has grown up to be the Chief Technology Officer at a local software firm. His growth has been acknowledged and he has been made a partner in the firm after six years of association. His company is not one among the most profitable ones in the region. But they do certainly hold values in common and I am sure they will continue to excel if they hold their basic values together with the test of time.
Now why do I bring this up here?
To me, strong characters like Kiran are rare to encounter. Especially in the software industry, where the temptation is high to switch over to a lucrative offer and much more unethical practices of luring employees to break the “notice period to quit”…Kiran seems like an epitome of difference. He talks briefly about this worrying trend in decline of work place ethics. Of course, it is hard to retain great talents within Madurai. Offers from nearby Metros and migration of the cream to those cities will make it even more hard to retain talent in the city of birth.
In spite of all these things, I ask Kiran…
Me: Don’t you get angry when people call you a loser?
Kiran: (smiles) I don’t take their words too seriously.
Me: Interesting
Kiran: Only when you fight back with the normative ones, you tend to become weak. I simply ignore what they say.
Me: It is really hard for me to do that.
Kiran: May be it is my nature. I like being called a loser. If I’m already a loser…I don’t have anything more to lose. I like the challenge. It makes me more focussed on my pursuit. A pursuit to do better things in my career.
Me: What is that you consider as an achievement so far?
Kiran: When the guys that I have trained earlier or been associated with…think about me as a person that created a difference in their life…I consider it as an achievement. It is my way of bringing about a difference in other people’s life. I love this responsibility at work and will continue to do so.
Me: When do you think this liberation of mind occured in you?
Kiran: I don’t know. May be my undergraduate education of English Literature that exposed me to some thought provoking western writers or may be it is my own interpretation of religion or life around me. It can also be the philosophy behind Open Source Software movement.
I can clearly see a character in him. His professional values are pretty universal. To learn life on his own by spending most of his time at a small city like Madurai is quite amazing!
As I leave…I think…some birds are migratory while some birds are resident type. Such is Life!
NOTE: Kiran considers himself an Open Source Software advocate with no fanatical attachment to a particular technology. He is comfortable with C, Python, PHP and Perl and tweaks the Linux OS for a living.
P.S:
How do I know “Mr.Loser”?
We belonged to the same residential locality and used to play Cricket together. Things have quite changed in a decade or so.