Forever NIITian

There is always a next time, they say, but I am not sure about it. So, I was one of those who felt bad having missed out on the ReUNIITe 1.0. For one reason or the other, it was looking like I might have to miss this one too, however, I kept telling myself that this time, I am gonna make it happen. And touchwood, I did J

While I have been part of the mailing list of this group since the beginning, I wasn’t a part of any WA or Telegram groups and it was Renu Samuel who finally got me added into these, approaching the event. The constant chatter kind of helped and I confirmed to Hari about attending the event. Of course, there was this golden opportunity to meet up with many people who have been instrumental in shaping my career; and the big bait of being able to meet up with the pillars of the NIIT like RSP, VKT, AT, PR etc., once again! I was excited at the chance and while I knew very few of the people chatting away in the group, I still decided to attend the year end party. Suffice to say, as expected, the year is ending on a high note just because of this one event and the wonderful moments it gave J

I am amazed at the people behind the event and the extremely high energy and the enthusiasm they have put in behind this whole stuff. It was as professional an event as the NIIT annual days of the yonder days; the feel was pretty much the same, especially with the presence of the people who used to drive the annual days back then.

As I sat through and listened to the various anecdotes, and the down memory lane type of quiz, I realized how each and every one of us had contributed to the organization, called NIIT. For many of us, it was our first corporate job, the bridge between our academic life and the industry. We were young, and luckily found the right place to get moulded. Reminds me of this scene from Aamir’s movie PK, where he asks whether people come with a ‘chaap’ to indicate what religion they belong to. I think all os us who have been part of this organization, actually walked out with a ‘chaap’ of being NIITian J It is like how babies are incubated in a mother’s womb, but we have to cut the umbilical cord at one point. But that does not in any way take away the bondage that the baby and the mother shares. Such is the link that all of us have with this organization called NIIT. Which is why we are dubbed as Forever NIITians; in every walk of life, wherever we went, whomsoever we interacted with, when we mentioned NIIT, we could easily see the respect that the name commanded!

Thinking back, to me, NIIT gave me an identity, it honed my skills and confidence, strengthened my abilities and pushed me to pick up new ones which I otherwise may not have. NIIT in many ways, was way ahead of the times, the courseware and the teaching methodology, I still consider, one of the best to this date. My daughter, while doing her engineering was struggling with a few topics and I dusted out my NIIT courseware, to try and explain RDBMS and Linked List to her and she was amazed. She quickly ran through her topics and “downloaded” all the relevant courseware from the loft and kept referring to it. Nothing and no one can explain these concepts better than NIIT courseware and NIITians even today. That reminds me of the joke, that for NIITians, a pointer would always be a PTR, and counter always a CTR😂

The other aspect of NIIT that amazed me was the women empowerment that I saw all around from top to bottom, while even today many others are still struggling to dispel this disparity. The absolutely innovative and ingenious sales and marketing techniques, the unique connect with people (students and parents), the incessant push to make sure people achieved targets beyond which they believed they could, etc., are a few things that I can never forget. I still remember how as a faculty with sales targets, got us brainstorming; and we started making cold calls around the Residency Road centre. And that is how I stumbled on the LIC deal one day. The people I talked to in the big, stone LIC building at the end of the M G Road, lead us to their regional office and thus came the corporate order for the Swift course!!!!

I also had a tough task of teaching the various subjects to two batches of Korean students. They hardly spoke English, their laptops were installed with Korean version of Windows, and they were feeling terribly homesick J

My success depended on finding out where they could find sticky rice, to figuring out where they could fix dental and haircut appointments, and buy second hand bikes J Teaching Java, VB, ASP, and more was easy, but English was tough!!! They ended up teaching me little Korean, which I still remember. And with time, I learnt to decipher the error messages in their Korean Windows laptops. The one solace for me was the World Cup Soccer, hosted by South Korea that started during the course, that was indeed a common language we had !!! Overall, it was fun and a big learning for me and perhaps that is how I ended up with an excellence award that year and true to the NIIT tradition, quit the same year as well J

However, the strong foundation of commitment to work, the quality output, the never say die spirit, the camaraderie, the team spirit, the drive to achieve team goals, and expecting the unexpected, are all qualities that I still credit this organization with. And as I heard RSP speak at the end of the event, I realized that perhaps, on that count, nothing much as changed. They were still the same people who could drive people to achieve unbelievable results and think ahead of time, which is why the organization evolved with time and is still standing tall. So, glad and proud to have been an NIITian and will always thankfully remain a “Forever NIITian” !