By participating
in the last edition of Blogadda.com’s WOW (2018) prompt “Imagine
you are some one’s shadow for a day”, I choose to be the shadow of Mr. Satya
Nadella,CEO Microsoft.
Pic Courtesy:https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-is-writing-a-book/
As I have
chosen to be the shadow of Mr.Nadella, I am bound to wake up early and follow
him on his morning jog. I am not that person who enjoys waking up early but
willy- nilly, I woke up in the morning today. But now I don’t regret it. The
morning breeze seems therapeutic and the zeal in the boss of Microsoft is just
infectious. But the goody feeling about the morning quickly evaporates, as I fail to match up his brisk pair of legs. I am a panting
shadow of Mr.Nadella with the tongue lolling out and heart hell-bent on
exploding. These feelings are bound to happen, when you are a lethargic soul and haven’t
jogged in eons. Thank god Mr.Nadella has decided to stop the jogging for today
and now I feel relieved.
After having
a healthy breakfast that is sans Aloo
ka Paratha and Puri Bhaji (That
is essential for me for a breakfast to be called a breakfast in true terms) he
is ready to make a beeline to his office at Redmond, Washington.
The
sprawling Microsoft campus is just a sight to savor! It is perfect mélange of
concrete and nature.
As I am rapt
in the sightseeing…Mr. Nadella scoots towards his corner office. After
rummaging through the program list for the day, he makes way for the conference
hall for the morning meeting with his colleagues.
“We are
starting the day but we need this day to start a beginning…a beginning that takes us away from our competitors but close
to our customers and consumers. We need to design our culture on the dimensions
that empathize with requirements and needs of our customers. We must make the
best use of today to create a better tomorrow for ourselves and for our
customers and consumers. And above all, we should try everything today that
inspires next generations to strive for a better world. May I have your views
on making the best use of today?”
After this
influential talk he is all ears for his colleagues’ pieces of inputs.
I am just
there listening to the innovative ways of making a better tomorrow. The kahuna
of Microsoft never has the hubris (on
his face) of being the boss of a leading software company of the world. He is easygoing but assertive on occasions as well.
At times he is one of them and
at times he is the one guiding them.
Throughout the
day he has been taking views, making new plans, suggesting improvements in software
codes and not for a moment he felt tired. He was like a wellspring of birr and
verve throughout theday. But the fatigue in me is making me sleepy. I am praying for his day to
get over. At around nine O’clock in the evening(if at all it could be called an
evening) he leaves the office.
As he
reaches home, he asks the first question: Where is Zain?
Zain is his
son.
He goes to
the room of his son. He is sleeping.
Mr. Nadella sits in the room just looking at the innocent face of his son. A few moments later
his eyes brims with tears that he tries to fight back.
I am startled to see the scene but then as I am his shadow I get to know the reason,
instantly, reading his mind. Actually, his son is affected with cerebral palsy
since birth. And like any other father he would have liked his son to enjoy and
experience life on turfs that are called ‘normal’. The tears are of a father
who could design codes that made sense of many lives that could have gone awry
but his coding ability failed to create a normal platform for his own lad.
But next
moment, I see him full of aplomb and resolve as if some day he would surely
crack a code to trounce the devastating effects of cerebral palsy for his son
and the other progeny of Mother Nature through his dexterous coding skills assisted
by knowledge from medical field.
As my
contract given from Blogadda to be the shadow of someone is about to cease, I
come out of his house.
The whole day changed my perception.
Earlier, I was of
the view that only people from middle class like me have problems in life like:
an unstable job, yearly shooting up accommodation rents, spiraling out of control
medical costs… and these super -rich people don’t have any problems in life. I
mean what could be a problem in life for a person who earns $100 odd million yearly?
But I was wrong…the super- rich also have their share of problems and they are
fighting their own battles and at the same time devoting their energy to make
our lives easy.
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‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’
