Lockdown Diaries: Part 1

It was around November 2011, when I got a call from one of my school friends, Sanjeev Das. He stays in Asansol and he called me to inform that the recently established Asansol-Durgapur Police Commissionerate wishes to get a website developed and if I would be interested. We were a very small business at that time and an opportunity of this kind was like a Godsend for us. The very next day I left from Asansol to meet the commissioner, Mr. Ajay Kr. Nand. It was a brief meeting of about 45 minutes and in the end, he asked me to get back to him with some mock-ups of the proposed website and a proposal. The next week I was back again to Asansol to present him our proposal. Thankfully he agreed to our proposal, liked our mock-ups, and asked to get started with the work. The only catch was that we had to deliver it with full and updated data by the Middle of January.

It was a tough deadline but we knew, we had to deliver and we did it right in the nick of time. Later on 21st January 2012, the honourable CM of West Bengal, Ms. Mamata Banerjee inaugurated the website. The relationship that started with ADPC in 2011 has continued to date as we keep giving support to them in Web & Mobile Applications. Mr. Nand was later transferred but we still keep a very cordial relationship and even spoke a few days back after the Lockdown got implemented. 

In early 2019, ADPC was headed by Mr. Laxmi Narayan Meena. As is the usual norm, we always kept cordial relationships with all commissioners of ADPC and Mr. Meena was no different. In fact, our relationship with Mr. Meena continued when he got transferred as commissioner of Bidhan Nagar a few months back.

This is where the flashback ends and the real story starts.

Working from home has its own set of challenges. One of them is managing the hardware systems. With no system support other than some remote help, it gets extremely difficult if the computer or laptop crashes. And that’s exactly what’s been happening with many of our employees. With remote support, some were able to get back to work but a few others were facing a lot of difficulties. When the Government of India decided to ease the lockdown on 3rd May and started allowing IT/ITeS services to start operations in a reduced manner, we thought that though we will continue with Work From Home, we can at least try and get the spare machines delivered to the homes of employees who were facing difficulties.

Based on this plan, I applied for E-Pass through the Government Portal on 4th May. We waited for 4 days but the application remained in the status quo. Finally, we decided to write a self-attested latter on the reason for vehicle movement and asked our driver and one of our system admins to go to the designated 4 places and deliver the items. We, of course, ensured that both were taught about social distancing measures and also to wear Caps, Masks, and Gloves to ensure safety. Sanitizer was kept in the car as well. Earlier in the morning today, our driver left with our car to deliver the machines. He went to Behala first to pick up our system admin and from there they went to their first destination, Keshtopur.

And, our car was caught by the police. Both our employees got tensed and with police saying that they have done illegal work of trying to break lockdown, things went a bit crazy. The attending police officers were not ready to look at the self-attested letters and nor were they interested in looking inside the car to understand the reason for our team being on the road. The police was adamant and seized the car and made both our employees wait at the police station.

As time passed, both of them got tensed. There were frantic phone calls made by them to me as well to my co-directors. Whatever we told them didn’t cut ice with the police. We then thought to call up one of our landlords who happens to stay at Keshtopur and requested him to try, if he can help us to wriggle out of the situation. In the meanwhile, we contacted Mr. Meena since we knew that Keshtopur area falls under the Bidhannagar commissionerate. Though he was personally busy, he ensured that a call is placed to the Police Station at Keshtopur and within 5 minutes, our car was released and both the driver and our system admin were free to move out. It was a huge sigh of relief. Though we lost close to 2 hours in this situation, finally getting both our employees out from imminent mental breakdown was a big relief. It was only possible because we had direct access to the commissioner’s office and that was only made possible because we provided personalised service to all his software requests. Just another example, that you provide the best of your services to the best of your abilities and one day the return will be back in kind. That’s exactly what happened today. A big Thank You to him from the entire team of Brainium and a big round of applause to our teammate, Sujit who made the facilitation happen.

After this incident, our driver and system admin went to 3 other places, namely, Kankurgachi, Saltlake, Garia, Bagmari, and BT Road, and they were not harassed anywhere and they finally returned home before 5 PM. It was an adventurous 10 hours for the two of them but all were satisfied at the end because the work was accomplished and our production team will work at 100% from tomorrow.

It was a show of great team spirit and an equal commitment to getting the work done at all odds which makes today’s work so noteworthy. It would have been easy for both of them to return home right after the Police Station incident but they showed great spirit in continuing with the commitment of delivering the hardware to the planned places before returning home.

I did have a great laugh with my driver Bablu after he returned and he was equally happy to actually go out and drive after 45 days. All in all, it was a khatta-meetha experience but as the saying goes, All is well when it ends well.

Good luck everyone. Stay Safe and Keep Smiling!

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