The Pied Piper

Once in a while there comes along some one, who sort of adds color and enriches your life with their infectious gregarious personality.

When I joined the new company, things looked very different from the previous one. Teammates seemed more professional and more punctual. The managers were more hands on and more approachable. But what was missing was some fun. The bonding, the camaraderie and all that makes yout time in office a li’l enjoyable. The place was like a graveyard. They would come in and start working right away. They would think long before talking to each other. There was a deafening silence. Looked like some one was running a tight ship around. All in all it was like a dead-pan.

Then, along came Rusty. First some etymology about the name. Rusty is christened for someone who has had a bad hair day at VLCC. It’s so bad that it always looks like there is some dust settled on the head. It looks so natural (i.e. the “dust”) that you’ll think that some dusting would help. Later as the "dust" wears out a li'l, the hair looks to have caught some rust. Well, eventually the rust goes away but not the name.

It didn’t take him too long to shake up the uptight people. I guess even they were looking for an outage. He had a kind of black humor in his frolics. The best part was he didn’t think twice about making fun of himself. He always would have an anecdote or two about his goof ups which would have us in splits.

From the “free” beer that he went to have in the bud plant, to the time a cop held a gun at point blank. From the “extra small” photocopy of his PAN card to the time he sent his friend’s resignation without his knowledge. From the way he rescued my bed from simba’s omlette to the way he rescued himself from the ferocious bong girl. From the way he would say “Gucci” to all the girls’ names he just could not get right. From the blunder of the blue car to the faux pas of “stealing” the waiter’s tip. There is just no end to this!

But jokes aside. He was a guy with a big heart. He had all his morals/values in place. There was no pretence or malice in his actions. He was in a way, very self-righteous. He would go to any extent to help people. He was a very hard working and quite brilliant at it. He is every manager’s dream come true.

He quit last week. In his farewell speech, he spoke very passionately about work and life in general, in his characteristic humor for a few minutes. He spoke straight from the heart. Then I think he got a li’l overwhelmed with the situation and stopped. When he was leaving, people just flocked from all the teams around to wish him well. And my entire team just walked with him voluntarily till his car. I’ve never seen this happen with anyone before. That’s the kind of influence he had on all of us. The void wouldn’t go unnoticed.