PRAVESH...

An Experience.... A fun filled learning experience.

           7th September... a hot and humid afternoon of Mumbai, I along with some other people from the office left for a so called out-bound training program of Mastek (the IT organization for which I work), called PRAVESH, which was to be held at a remote location of Raigad...The company’s motto behind the program is to make a Mastekeer out of us. Many of my friends have spoken about the program before; also some of the people of the group which went for the program probably knew exactly what’s going to happen, about the tasks to be given etc... I somehow didn’t want to find out about all the stuff coz I didn’t want to miss any bit of adventure or learning which was abt to happen... I was also excited to meet new people, I thought its going to be a little bit tough, but if u understand that everybody is unique and different, then it acts like glue amongst unknown faces... And at the end of it each person of the group turned out to be fantastic. Though some people may not agree to it but I felt so.
With all these we set out for Raigad. The journey towards the place was just about fine, nothing great abt it. When I reached the place, called 'empower activity campuses', I had a vibe ke ‘boss, this is going to be amazing’. Although some of my friends were skeptical about the place at first, but I was sure that the fell it’s gonna turn the other way in a little time. Then I met some of the people who had come from the Mastek's Pune office to join us, I had a good interaction with those people first up. Then we had our place to stay... "A Tent”, my fist experience of this kind... but luckily the tents were good.
           The next day was the start of it all... The facilitator called Marc impressed one and all in the first session of the morning called "the orientation". That session built upon the feel that the program is going to be fantastic. Then came a series of tasks and after each tasks we had a dissection of each and every situation that occurred during the task. I won’t go into the philosophical details... While performing each task I felt like a Roadie and felt part of the IT fraternity when we discussed abt the tasks... Rains during the tasks made them all the more difficult but much more enjoyable... The camp-fire and small fun games at the end of a tiring day were awesome and the volley-ball matches in the dim light were fabulous. A complete fun filled day after a long-long time.
           The next day brought the best experience of it all... the task given to us was to make a raft by ourselves and then take the raft into the water. We actually landed up doing river rafting. This is an amazing stuff for someone like me who doesn’t know how to swim. The success of the task gave immense pleasure, also because I was the leader of one of the groups. The same afternoon, i.e.9th Sept, It was time to say bye to Pravesh and to share some memories with the group and with a warm smile everybody was heard saying..."Stay in Touch". I could have never expected out of me that I m saying it to people whom I have known for only 2 days. That was actually the impact of the whole thing.
           Finally we were heading back to Mumbai and it seemed to happen in a flash of time. I was aware of the fact that the life would be in the same old routine the next day onwards, but nevertheless the trip would remain in the subconscious...What I pondered over after that was the learnings from “Pravesh” and found out certain things for myself. So, that would complete the essence of “Pravesh” from the organization as well as my point of view!!!

Cheers!!!
Yoursrohit...