I often accompanied him on an afternoon walk when I visited Samalkha, there being little else to occupy a person's time out there.
"Let us go this way, Bala-saab !" Dinesh insisted, with a broad smile. One way being about the same as another, I assented, but asked him why he preferred that route.
"Oh, this way, Bala-saab, there is a girl's college !" he beamed.
Taken aback by this line coming from Dinesh, I teased him gently,
"And you a married man, Dinesh-ji !"
Dinesh was aghast ! He swiftly regained his voice and replied,
"No, no, no, Bala-saab, you don't understand ! I am doing this for
YOU !"
I fell silent, unable to cope with this final assault.
Upon another occasion, Dinesh called me at Head Office, while I was in the middle of several critical problems.
"Bala-saab ! Bala-saab !" he cried out "Invoicing has totally failed ! It doesn't work anymore ! What will we do ?!"
Rejecting the impulse reaction to succumb to the panic that Dinesh was broadcasting, I struggled to narrow down the problem.
"You mean the machine won't boot up ?" I asked.
"The machine ? The machine is fine, Bala-saab !" replied a perplexed Dinesh.
"Then the application won't run ?" I hazarded a guess.
"No, no, the application starts up without any problem !" he affirmed.
"Then ... what's the problem ?!" I asked, bewildered.
"It won't print anything, Bala-saab !" he wept. "And there are many
trucks waiting !"
This was a definite problem. I thought hard. One possible option was that a UNIX core file had been dumped which occupied all available machine space. This was the simplest solution, and was worth testing out. Since Dinesh knew no UNIX, I walked him through the process of logging into the machine with an alternate password and asked him to enter the directory-listing command, 'ls -l'
"Still nothing, Bala saab !" he cried out in a piteous tone of dread.
"Nothing ?!" I was taken aback. "You mean nothing's showing up at all ?!"
"No, Bala-saab, there is nothing there !" he wailed.
I cursed silently, and racked my brains again. This was trouble, and serious trouble, at that. Not only had the entire factory's inventory system come to a halt, this would actually affect the regular flow of trucks as well. I would have to travel out to Samalkha immediately (something I could ill afford to do, as all the other people who handled Factory systems were out of town at the time) if I couldn't find any other solution.
Travelling out also meant that I would not be available at Home Base to handle any problems that might come from any other location. In any case, the loss of a day was not something that I wanted, given my hectic workload at the time. The problem was intolerable, yet something had to be done to permit Samalkha factory to proceed as normal ! I pondered frantically for something I could do from Head Office !
I thought furiously ... a database breakdown ? Corrupted drivers ? A UPS failure causing a machine crash ? Hard disk problems ? Every probable disaster (and several remotely possible ones) ran through my head. Then I thought more closely of Dinesh himself, and how he might handle an emergency, and paused a minute.
No, wait. It couldn't be that simple.
He couldn't have done that.
No, even for Dinesh, this was unlikely.
Oh, curse it, it was worth a try ! Anything was, at this point.
"Dinesh ?" I asked.
"Yes, Bala-saab ?"
"Press enter" I said.
A moment's silence on the phone, while I wondered if he was thinking me mad for giving him such obvious instructions at a time of crisis.
"Yes, Bala-saab, yes ! It is working !" he beamed with joy !
I slowly collapsed back into my seat. From that point on, it was smooth sailing to remove the core file and return the system to normal. Given Dinesh's utter child-like simplicity and innocence, it was impossible to dislike the man, but he was capable of single-handedly confounding the entire department !
It was equally imperative to ensure that the users begin using the new tools as swiftly as possible, and not linger over the old material. And with these concepts firmly in mind, AKW began the complex process of converting Nestle to the use of Windows and MS-Office.
The conversion process began slowly, as the users all went through a one-day classroom training course on these new systems. Then, one weekend, AKW struck, moving from machine to machine across the building, and installing the new Operating system and tools (and, of course, deleting the old ones in the process). The rationale behind this was clear; if the users had no other option, they would learn the new system that much swifter.
Of course, hardware was a trickier point; AKW realized that users were basically of too child-like a mentality to be entrusted with new hardware. Therefore, he purchased no mice for any machines other than his own.
Monday arrived, and saw a host of users desperately trying to fathom the new systems on their machines. Faced with an absence of mice, they swiftly became masters of the Menu systems on MS-Word. Excel was a trifle easier, as AKW had resisted the temptation to remove Lotus 1-2-3 from the Finance Department PC's (a strategic decision, as he reported to the Head of that Department); the Finance users merely ignored Excel and continued with Lotus.
Marketing, alas, went into a tizzy almost immediately, when they discovered that the presentation software, PowerPoint, was impossible to use (lacking a mouse, but they hadn't figured that as yet). Worse, none of their old work in HPG could be converted into PowerPoint ! And of course, AKW had already taken the simple expedient of removing all copies of HPG from his users' machines. Sensing the potential of doom in this case, I had already taken a spare copy of HPG on a floppy, a floppy which quickly got into high demand when the users learnt of its existence. That floppy was borrowed from me more than practically anything else I possessed. Strangely enough, I began understanding AKW's concept of the user: none of these people actually seemed to bother to make a copy of the floppy for themselves, content to merely borrow it from me time and again !
The VP Finance was the first person who pulled rank to obtain a mouse of his own. Shalini was another who acquired a mouse for her own use, by the simple expedient of convincing AKW that that tool was necessary for her work in PowerBuilder. AKW remained unsure about this, but he granted the child the benefit of the doubt.
The rest of the users slogged on, mouseless, until AKW was finally convinced (by order from on high) to make a purchase of a few hundred mice for the downtrodden masses, but that was well over a year later.
That's enough travel ... now let's head back home