Met an Extremist

19-3-2009

A Beautiful day in pune and was a perfect day for me, coz on this date I was gone meet my first date in pune (with Mr. Pradeep Soundararajan) an ‘Extremist’. Believe me guys he is the biggest extremist I have ever met in my life (yet).

Now, what makes me use the word ‘Extremist’ for Mr. Pradeep?
Mr. Pradeep is the limit of software testing, a package of huge experience loaded with lots knowledge. (Most of you who had a chance to sip a cup of coffee with him will totally agree with me.)

Coming back to my experience, it was really my luck and Mr. Pradeep’s generosity which made pune much more interesting.
Earlier to this meeting we had never seen each other, just the mailing process was on between us.
Now, we humans have a human tendency to make a sketch of a person whom we speak to or mail to (through their responses). I too had a sketch of Mr. Pradeep, a person with some 6’.6’’ height with some tremendous physic and would have a touch of attitude but, believe me it was a shock to me coz he was just the opposite, he was so cool, so calm and the best thing was no attitude. I found him as a friend, a friend whom I had met after a long time.

After 15-20 min we stepped out of the hotel room, in search of a restaurant. We both were new to pune so we took a help from the hotel watchmen and he told us about a restaurant which was about a kilometer (1km) from the hotel. The best part for me was, Pradeep Soundararajan decided to walk WOW!
The whole journey was about 20 min and this 20 min was like great coz sir (Mr. Pradeep) was sharing his stories (his first job, how he became the test lead and many more…). The stories were full of inspiration and this +vibes had charged me up, at that time if some one would have told me to climb Mount Everest then I would have done that in minutes. Great isn’t it?

This journey of 20 min finally got us into a restaurant. After placing some starters he made me do an exercise. The exercise was all about the conversation between a client and a tester where in, I the client who was suppose to narrate the requirement for a product and sir was the testers (cross questioning my requirement). The product was dinner, I mean requirements for the dinner. Truly speaking there were so many requirements flying and if these requirements were communicated with a normal consumer, and asked to consider all those points while placing an order believe me, he would never visit a hotel.

While the activity was on two gentlemen joined us. These two gentlemen were Raghu and Venkat two senior testers from pune. From that point of time the discussion started heating up it was like fireworks from both the table ends. After some hours, I noticed one thing that sir had different views with many dimensions for a single point, like we say every coin has two faces some what like that. On the other hand, sir was enjoying the fight between three mice which were sitting right in front of his nose.

The round of discussions continued for 4 hours some what around 11.30pm. We were about to round up everything, being a fresher thought this would be a right time to ask sir for last few words of suggestion (for me).
Can you imagine what sir would have told me (those three magical words)
“Best Of Luck”.
I interrupted him and said, I was expecting some thing else.
Sir: if you were expecting some thing which you know, then why there is a need of asking me.
This was very true.
And left for home/hotel.

The End…

Last few things…
Mr. Pradeep is a true extremist, a self motivating machine, a big charger and a visionary who can lead the Indian testers on a right track. You can say Mr. Pradeep should be the bookmark or benchmark for Indian testers.
OOPPS…
I forgot one thing to mention, while our discussion was on sir got a call from his wife at that point of time a random thought ran to my mind saying…
What a lucky lady (Mam), just bcoz she spends more time with sir as compared to what we had spend… (Just 4hours).