September 2004, was when this journey started all of sudden located in the heart of Pune,in an unknown world called BMC. BMC soon became my second home. Cricket, Football, Badminton and Work was all I did over these years and some people might definitely feel that I have sorted the above list as per priority :). Surely that wasn't the case....and I was not recruited in sports quota either! So let me start with Work first
Work
Workaholic - A workaholic or ergomaniac is a person who is addicted to work.
I had to find this definition on google to know eaxctly what is meant by this coz over the period of time that I have been here, I have heard a lot of people saying this to me. This might be a surprise to some, but yes. I have really enjoyed working. My managers over the years were really good in getting things out of me....the right way... and hats off to them...Girish G, Madhura G, Sandeep S and Rajesh K. I believe that one cannot flourish unless you get the right fodder and these people provided me with exactly what I liked and need a special mention here. My colleagues were the real motivating factor for sure. It's been a dream to be with such diverse people with great technical and non technical expertise. This is not really meant to sound like the Oscars, but here we go....
- Mahendra Chuadhari - Add value, I learnt this basic thing from you.
- Aniruddha Katkar - Dedication to work is what I learnt from you.
- Gunanand Nagarkar - Enthusiasm generates ideas.
- Devendra Dehadraya - Keep smiling all the way
- Rahul Saraf - Attitude is the key
- Madhura G - Good management
- Pradeep Bagul, Ajit Gadekar, Vijay Gholap, Pritesh Saharey ...great team players.
- Prasad Nirantar, Shekhar Londhe, Pradeep Rai, Ashish Modak, Sachin Patil - Dev and QA can collaborate and win
- Amol Chaudhari, Shantanu Thuse, Harshal - It was great to be your lead, you taught me a lot of things. It was good to interact with Noida people too.
- Lalit Shukla, Ashish Kumbhare; it was great to work with you.
- ..............................
Cannot include all the names, but thanks everyone!
Enjoyed:-
- Creation of TestHarness, making it flexible and scalable, long R&D and demo hours.
- Every bit of Java, C++, Silk Test, Perl, XML, XSLT, SOAP, RESTful webservices etc.
- INDigenous Ideas preparation and presentation.
- Automating the automation, building test automation from scratch in AO.
- Migrating from TestLink to HP QC.
Cricket
Cricket in BMC can be divided in external and internal tournaments. Personally I enjoyed external much more than internal....but I had reasons....
Probably one of the main reasons that kept me going....for all these long years at BMC.....As a college student I had seen a couple of matches played on Poona club with Hrishikesh Kanitkar in action. It was my dream to play at Poona club some day, lush green outfield, boundaries full of trees and an amazing pavilion. Thanks to BMC all this was possible and I lived my dream through, played matches....won few lost many....but the experience was out of the world. Practicing on PYC was another treat for me........7:00 AM in rain or sun.....and under guidance of Mahendra Gokhale......the ex fitness trainer for Mumbai Indians.....I couldn't ask for more....could I? Ofcourse I couldn't ball slow spinners as Mahendra sir wanted......but I did take every advice and tried to implement.......some did really work at the end on Infosys ground......but probably it was too late :)... It was amazing to play on the best grounds in Pune.....Deccan Gymkhana, PYC, Sinhagad College Ground (SCG with a lot of bounce), Jail ground (my favourite hunting ground), Tata Motors ground,Nehru stadium, Shinde HS ground and of course the injury prone Ammunition Factory ground......Is anything left? probably the one being built for Pune Warriors :)..... Hopefully i can stay fit to play there as well......
Fitness.....Cricket practice definitely built it...I can still run 10 kms in one go....couldn't ask for anything better at this age......resulted in a lot of stress release and kept me enthusiastic and ready for challenges in other spheres of life. Some great memories do linger around from time to time......like these......
- Mayuresh Wagh unleasing classics with both bat and ball and then taking brilliant catches in slip.
- Hrishikesh Deshmukh taking a leaf out of Sehwag's book and hitting balls out of the park, didn't know anything else did he?
- Kapil Kshirsagar taking a diving catch at point
- Abhijeet Gadgil and myself chasing 72 runs in 30 balls at Jail ground Vs Incat
- Amit V Sharma with his glorious cover drives, Dhiraj Dhoot's amazing shots, Shirish Sonawane's straight batted shots, Parag K's dole shole....
- Shripal Chopda with his left arm quick bowling with a smooth run-up rattling the opposition.
- Playing 40 over matches, specially Sunjanil's 375 runs off 40 overs
- Team spirit throughout and specially reaching the semi finals of Sports Nexus Inter IT on PYC
- Ranjit's sweep shot, Yogesh Somavanshi's bouncers, Aditya Dastane's glance,Rohit Dubey's "Gadgil Catch It", Sumit Srivastava's mid wicket hits would remain with me throughout.
- Amit Sharma's (Wipro) addition is a plus for sure.
- All the practice sessions......breakfast @ Good Luck..Roopali...umm.....just awesome!
As a cricket team we were always deprived of resources; in terms of quality cricketing skills and in terms of quantity of people. But we always gave it everything encouraged each other and played well against the top teams. The joy of winning against quality opposition with limited resources is just out of the world, the same feeling when Ireland won against England or the respect Ireland carried in 2011 world cup; respect coz they fought against all odds. I think over the period of years we were kind of this team, underrated but always with an element of surprise. We have not won anything major till now; but the experience has been just amazing.
Internal, I have already written some detailed blogs so will not write all that again. I really enjoyed it, winning and loosing. With due respect to the other teams I played for, I still feel am a part of Vikings. Vikings, I will definitely miss you! and the golden moments will be cherished for ever!
Football
It's been a pleasure to be part of BMC Football warriors over a period of 6 years now. The team has shown great character over these years. As i recall, in the first year we had won only a match in the whole tournament in 2005, and now we can boast of at least 5 championship wins. Jason and Michael (Vaz bros) have been instrumental in all these wins. Hats off to them and all the team for staying united. Football is a difficult game for sure, lots of injuries, play in rain and sun, but Jason and Michael have definitely taught many like me in the team on how to go about it. I have loved every moment of it!!
Some special moments......
- Michael Vaz dribbling at least 5 players to score numerous goal (in typical hockey "Ha Key" style)
- Jason Vaz taking on as Ad-hoc goal-keeping and saving penalty kicks (resembles Dhoni, isnt it?) at crucial times.
- Dugzy chickenwala with his Messi style runs (first person to use YouTube to the fullest)
- Pushkar Waichal, Tejas Saner, & Hari's awesome defending
- Ram, Chaitanya & Vineet as goal keepers, mid-field, defence...can fit anywhere!
- Travel from Noida to Pune, just to play football :-)
- Akshay, Louis, Clyde, GG, Harry, Mathews, Floyd.....Rishi's flicks....
- and of course Subbuism :-)
Badminton
I did not play Baddy with that consistency as that of Cricket or Football, but I made a lot of friends, learnt a few strokes here and there specially from Rajat and Abhijeet Gadgil. Shubhangi, GG, Sandeep, Chaitanya, Abhay....i really enjoyed playing with you in Shivaji Housing society as well as Modern complex courts. I played baddy coz it developed my reflexes and helped me in other sports.....Hopefully I get enough courage with my knee to again start with this beautiful game.
Over all these years I have spent most of my weekends playing either football and cricket...(opps...I worked on some weekends too!)....so that becomes full year activity....and I did this for nearly 7 years....assuming average life span of 70 years ...nearly spent 10% of my life and it couldn't have been any better.
Probably I should take the credit to have sweat the most for BMC!
Wishing everyone the very best.......now and always.......this is Baks...signing off!
Click link for pictures.....
https://picasaweb.google.com/abakre/10OfMyLife?authkey=Gv1sRgCMrt2PDyvu23MQ&feat=directlink