Surprised, emotional and speechless

March and April 2011 were two months full of action. It all started with LearningMate's Sales meet and followed by the yearly cricket tournament. Surprising, I was a part of the winning team and had no contribution towards the win. But we won. The world cup was on. India was doing very well like the deserving favorites’. Then there was the organization picnic which was happening after 7 years. Unfortunately I was not a part of it.

With so many things happening, there were two things that happened in the last week of March and early week of April that struck me. In both the instances I was surprised, emotional and speechless.

On 29th March 2011, we received an email from our CEO that Atul Sabnis (one of the founder members) was partying ways with the company. For that moment when I read this, I could not react to the moment. It was news that made me standstill for a moment. I could not think or react to what I was reading. I had never in my dreams thought that Atul Sabnis would leave the organization. I had directly reported to Atul when I was in my early Project Management days and there were some invaluable lessons learnd from him.
The organization likes to associate with At LearningMate, the world is a classroom. For Atul, the world was his office. Wherever we met, wherever we sat, whatever we did, it was always to do with LearningMate and work. He truly installed this concept of “The world is your office” and you can work from anywhere. It was amazing. It was very different from the traditional 9 to 5 approach. It didn’t make a difference for him if we were in office or anywhere else, what he was interested to the core is if the specified work was completed or not. While many called it indiscipline, those who really were able to work with it, thought it to be complete independence.
As much as his thoughts, the culture he drove was very open and growth oriented. He never showed the tendency of hiding financial or project numbers from us. He was always keen on teaching new things. I will never forget the MS Word training that he gave us at the Vile Parle Office and the personalized MPP training to Sandeep (even though I was not a part of it). Atul was an amazing and very warm host when we visited him in London. It was fun to walk through the streets of London. Atul was like a father, always guiding us and taking utter care of us during our entire London trip helping us navigate through the complex roads and train networks. He will always be missed.

The India cricket team was doing great. We reached quarter finals and had to fight Australia, the defending champions. I watched the complete match at home and enjoyed the victory to my best. The thought was, if we can beat the best of teams we are going to be the champions.
Like most other Indians, Cricket is something that I eat drink and breathe. I was just seven years old when we had won the world cup. While I don’t clearly remember what had happened, but it was joy and celebrations all around. I don’t think I realized how it was to beat a team like West Indies, who was in the peak of their form and reorganization, I was sure that something unbelievable had happened. It was something magical. Kapil Dev became an icon for lifetime. And on 2^nd April 2011, history repeated itself. We all have been talking so much about how critical it is for Sachin to win a world cup and all his records and achievements are in vain if he does not win a world cup. And it did happen. We won the world cup again. Sachin won the world cup. His achievements did not go in vain. We all were so happy for him.

Both instances were a huge surprise for me since I never expected them. I was emotional when I heard both the news. While Atul’s new saddened me from inside, I was in tears when we won the World Cup. And I lacked the ability to react to them when I heard/saw/felt them. I was speechless.
One made me sad while the other made me very happy.