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Thursday 5 March 2015

That moment of hope and optimism

With each tick of the clock time unfolds and brings in a new moment into our lives. Some of these moments bring hope and optimism that give us the power to rise above any obstacle and face any situation and come out a winner. These moments of hope and optimism come to us every now and then but we are at times too busy to notice them and turn them into spring boards that would propel us to new heights of success and achievement. I write these lines drawn from my experience and reflect upon an incident that happened many years ago that not only gave me hope for the future but changed the lives of so many people around me.
I was fresh out of college and into my first job as a trained engineer. Life was hunky dory and there was not much to complain. On the professional front our company had got a big order and to fulfill it the owner took a heavy loan to buy the raw material. Then suddenly due to a financial crunch the company defaulted on its loan installment repayment as a result the lending agency gave our company a time limit of 60 days to repay the loan or the office premises that was hypothecated would be impounded. The financial situation became so grave that the company had no money even to pay the wages to the workers.
My boss left the job and I found myself as the head of a business unit that seemed destined to be doomed. Overnight the lives of a few hundred workers had gone topsy turvy. This was the toughest situation of my life. Having no other option and with no money to pay the workers the management decided to lay off all the workers and close down the business unit. The task of breaking this bad news to the workers was deligated to me. That evening I had a lengthy discussion with the leader of the workers union who showed his dismay at the proposed shut down and lay off of the workers. The toughes job would be to break the news as so many people would lose their jobs and livelihood. Then it started raining and I offered the union leader a ride on my bike to his home. When we reached his house his four year old daughter came running towards us and  smiled at me disarmingly. She playfully held my hand and pulled me inside their home and asked her mother as to who I was.
The mother told her that I was her father’s friend friend from the factory and it was due to me that the child’s father could get her all the nice clothes ,toys and eatbles.
Looking at the trustful look on the innocent face of the young child disarmed me and the trust that her mother showed for me gave me a strange feeling of responsibility towards them. That night I could not sleep instead I kept thinking if I could do anything to help change what was about to befall.
I worked up a plan and took the union leader into confidence and had a meeting with the management. I presented a plan to the management in which the workers would work with the raw material and complete the order. As the management did not have the money to pay the workers they would share a part of the profit with the workers and pay the wages after completion of the order. For the workers it would mean that they would not be shunted out of work and could gain monetarily upon completion of the order. The management would not lose face due to lack of fulfilment of commitment.
It would be a win-win situation for both the workers and the management. After a long discussion both sides agreed. The innocent faith of a young child and the faith of her mother had propelled and instigated me to come up with this plan of hope and optimism that in the next sixty day would transform the fortunes and the destiny of so many household.
The entire workforce worked 24X7 as a cohesive unit .The men worked at the factory and the women set up a community kitchen that took care that no mouth remained unfed.

Needless to say the order got completed on time and in the span of 60 days the seed of hope and optimism that had been sown in me had grown, bloomed and blossomed into a full grown tree that sheltered and protected so many lives. 

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