Mind , heart, body and soul :
Travelling abroad for work was a new experience for me. I was excited but there was some anxiety at the back of my mind. So many things to do. And if its the first time its a little mind boggling.
Had always stayed away from my parents but i would be away from my sweet heart for quite a while. That was new. She was away too and had gone home to her parents so i did'nt get to say goodbye.
I managed to get all the formalities done and here i was ready to travel to a far away land of which i had only heard.
I guess what comes to everyones mind when they think of the caribbean is sun..sand and cricket. But here i was going to barbados for a long term work assignment. That evening i was spending with at my uncles. Thank god for my aunt, she got all my clothes ironed and if it was not for her , my to buy list would never have been complete.
I bid adieu to the rest of the family and waited for my flight. The flight was long and uncomfortable. Stared at the GPS wondering when i would reach halfway to london.
Finally london arrived and i got out of the Heathrow airport to board a bus to the other airport, gatwick. The outskirts of the city was so pretty with everything green and neat.
It was a sunny day and london impressed me so much. Wow what a lovely place to stay. The flight from Gatwick to barbados was another long one but it was better than the one before. I dozed off till the announcment woke me up that we were going to land shortly to barbados. i pulled up the window slide and what a fantastic sight it was. i had never seen the sea so blue. and i could see the sandy beaches and the plane took a long bend to line up with the run way. I arrived and got my on arrival Visa. The climate was nice and comfortable and i boarded a taxi to Club Rockley where i would stay.
I chatted with the driver about cricket and how Pakistan fared when they finished their tour to the caribbean a week earlier. Club Rockley was a lovely place to stay. it was a golf course with clusters of housing colonies. Mine would be Moonshine. I got the key from a neighbour and crashed on the bed. The house was a nice one with all the amenities one could ever want.
I met my collegues in the evening when they came back from work. Most of them were already there and i had arrived last. So there began work of which i was a little apprehensive as i had never worked with a client (leave alone foreign client) before that.
We drove to work the next day in a skoda fabia. Listened to "ajeeb dasta hai ye". This memory would be the one to get drilled into my mind. Still remeber this till day when i think back of this trip.
The first few days were the worst. Setting up the software. Getting to know whom to get what from and i could already feel the pressure and demands of the client.
Weeks went by before i actually got to go to a beach. It was about ten minutes walk from home yet the first few weeks were all work and dinner at home and sleep. Anyway a weekend finally arrived when things were a bit settled and we got to go to accra beach. The torqouse blue color of the water, the bikini babes, the speed boats and the white sail boats were some sight. I was awestruck.
Months went by as i got familiar with the place. Began talking with the barbadians and getting to know them and their ways of living. Pressure at work was always there with deployables and deliverables always flowing in phases through various code drops. I was determined to do my best. To keep things nice and tidy and under control. the drive behind that determination would be the fact that i could not let an escalation go past me to offshore. That would be a let down for me. By my own high standards that i set for myself.
Whenever i got some time off from work i planned on visiting the natural beauty of barbados. I always wanted to be a world traveller. Miraculously i bumped into cilia. She was a beauty. A 1.4 litre lancer. moved with the grace of a balley dancer with a gear box as smooth as silk. And i would get her company to travel all over the island. First stop harisson's caves. A very popular tourist spot with stalactites and stalagmites. Took a train ride inside those murky yet captivating caves. there were portions of the caves which were'nt lit and were definitely unexplored. i wondered what would be hiding behind those pitch dark crevasses. Then was Crane beach which was a isolated beach on which a five start hotel served the most distinguished guests in Barbados. More beaches included the batshiba on the east coast which was a surfers paradise. Oinstins was the fishermans beach where the rhythm of calypso music would play through the night..slow moving dance, fish and beer was flowing. Lowrence gap was as hot as it gets. All the nightclubs and joints with ravishing women and smart men having a ball. However that’s not my kind of place. I preferred the Barbados theater in which I got to have great food and wine and a typical Barbados show follwed by dance. This is where things got very interesting. I met “I donno who” but she was the most attractive girl I have ever met. She was from Britain and had come to spend a vacation in the Caribbean. We danced for about an hour to groovy music . She was sporting and removed her shoes when she really got into the mood. It was a fantastic experience for me and after that she said thank you and disappeared into the crowd never to be seen again. Sorry to disappoint you guys but that’s all that was there and I swear J
Work went along as usual and things started getting tensed and critical as live date approached. Collegues started getting fed up with the pressure and some things started happenning which are best avoided in a workplace. This is where I was lucky to have amol and bhupendra. Sitting in the lawn by the pool and chatting with them after work would relieve most of the pressure. I started getting anxious to return and was hoping things would go thru without major issues.
Live date arrived and it happened to be my birth day. Well the birthday turned into a birthnight as we had the launch throughout the night. The nice thing I remember about it is a hug that I got from the huge lady Jackie. Happy birthday shounak.
About a month of post production support , lots of visits to the nearby beach were the last few days in Barbados. The day finally arrived and I was kind of relieved yet nostalgic. I bid good bye to my very good Caribbean collegues and friends with a promise to keep in touch forever.
And to this day I am very much associated with this Caribbean bank with or without will due to unavoidable circumstances and situations that keep happening in life. There is a belonging ness and a sence of ownership with Firstcaribbean bank. Am grateful for the appreciation that I have received by both big wigs and friends of the bank. And I hope the association continues and I meet them all when I go on my very opwn Caribbean trip someday.
The flight back was boring and I guess I was anxious to get it over with. Arriving in India was kind of odd. The place looked gloomy and quite downtrodden and I was reminded that unfortunately our beloved India was what it was. Was so happy to see my parents waiting outside and all I remember of that day was that I slept very peacefully that night.
There is surely more to come about me and the Caribbean…
