One of the most interesting things happened last friday, something which could actually result in a lot of business loss for the company in which I happen to be employed. There was a complete power outage in one of the plots that we operate from. The generators and power cables etc are kept in the basement of this plot. The rains on thursday night had lashed out pretty strongly and Haryana being the way it is, with no proper drainage system in place, the water flooded our basement. It was 3 feet high with the major equipment completely soaked in water, resulting in emergency shutting off of the power supply. The UPS could also not last for long.

When I reached the office, most of the ppl were standing outside as nothing was working – no PC’s, no AC, no lighting. Everyone wondered for some time abt what to do next (of course the ppl handling the crisis were already at it). It was obvious that the power would not come back so soon and when it does it would take some time to stabilise things. The power was there in other plots but ppl cdn’t really work even there, since the central hub of the company was down. All unix servers, mail servers, proxy server were down, cutting us off from the entire world. It’s such a handicap in this age of electronic means!!
Anyhow strategies for making the best of the opportunity started pouring in. I was all for a Jaipur trip (provided we started on time) or a guitar session (have kept my guitar in office). Someone wanted to watch American Chai at DT Cinemas, Gurgaon. Have already seen that movie in a film festival last year. It’s another one of those where a typical NRI of Indian descent is confused about his “culture” and eventually realises sooner or later that it’s very much a part of him. Ultimately we watched Matrix Reloadedat PVR Gurgaon. The hall is superb, the movie is not. Various upcoming malls at Gurgaon add to the modernistic sheen of that place.
So we had a blast and came back to office, only to be told that the power outage is here to stay for some time. These guys were lucky all this happened on a Friday, with a weekend buffer otherwise imagine the number of wasted manhours!! I must have heard the term BCP (Business Continuity Process) umpteen no. of times that day! Lot of ppl went back home and attended to things they never get the time for on weekdays (that includes sleeping :-P).
In all, such things though in rarity, should happen .. it’s a good team building exercise as we all could make out :-).