Rafiq Columbus comes back again!

Two years ago I had written this stage play, with "creative" inputs from Shashank, Hiren, Sumukh, Siddhartha and Palash. (with the exception of a curt facebook/linkedin profile, none of them is a citizen of the web).

It was a farce on the travesty that is "management" in the software industry.
The ingredients were the regular "management masala": proposals, timeline, schedule, scope, resources, planning, risks, execution, delays, disaster, delivery and closure. Nothing that a typical corporate head has not seen.

It's been two years since. It seems that we ended up creating a "timeless classic" (*ironic smirk*). Whoever said "The more the things change, the more they..."

So, the timing of the topicality considered, I realized it'd be nice to put the play up here.

I never got to thank Shashank, Sumukh, Hiren, Siddhartha, Palash and Ghazala properly, for all their humility, humour and help. :)

The Cast's character sketches:
1. Shashank Abhyankar: "Rafiq" Columbus MBA - THE Man
2. Sumukh Byndoor: Chamakdaar - "Assistant" to the Team Lead, Teelu Khan, engineering maniac, technology to management wannabe
3. Siddhartha Banarjee: Joad Toad - The tester on the project, socially incompetent but work wise worthwhile.
4. Hiren Lakhmani: Teelu Khan - The Team Leader, everlasting bum licker to The Man.
5. Palash Sinha: Mansik Dimag - General purpose fainting machine, first a developer, then the support guy.
6. Ghazala Ansari: Queen Isabella - The stakeholder, sponsor of the project, serial nail filer.
7. Shaurya: Sootradhar - The voice over.
8. T.J. Shankaran: Plays himself in a nice cameo - T.J. + Sid combine were rocking through some hard harsh late nights when the play was originally written. His cameo breaks the fourth wall for a bit and provides a much needed plot point to move the story forward.
9. 30 freshers: unnamed, experience-less, disposable "resources" who drown and die without a mention and deserve it.
10. 300 experts: who were needed, but, were "never there".

A note about the new version:
1. I edited some copy, added a few lines here and there
2. I changed Hindi to actual Devnagari script. No more transliterate confusion.
3. I had originally written it using an online scriptwriting service (Zhura.com), since then it has closed down and converted to something I do not enjoy any longer. I am going to migrate to Celtx now. Before that I wanted to test how best to migrate scripts out of there into a better shape. It's a pain. So if the post does not appear properly, I'll also attach a pdf version. Seriously, formatting this again across applications is a effing pain!
4. It's kinda contextual, caustic and 20 pages long. Don't read it.
5. There may still be typos. If you find some, please please please do tell me.

Till the next post then...
S.