Love, Death and Vodka | A FEATURED STORY

Chapter 25

It was Friday and Tanvi went home to enjoy her weekend. She decided not go anywhere and just drink her hearts out. She wanted to call Abhi too but that could wait. She planned to start her weekend early.

She prepared a new cocktail from the 'The Bartender's Black Book' with available ingredients and enjoyed it while watching a new movie on Amazon prime and called it a night around 10.30pm.

As early as 1.30 am her phone rang ceaselessly and she woke up in her dizziness to take the call.

"Hi Sanjay, what's up?"

"Tanvi we have a production issue. The clients are in a frenzy. Vikram is out of station and Ramana is not responding to our calls or messages. You need to come to office."

"Whaat? Sanjay I'm drunk, I can't come now. I can't keep my eyes open. I'll not be able to concentrate. Just try calling Ramana only. Bye."

"Tanvi just come down its emergency and it's only two of us here. I stopped all scheduled jobs for now. You need to come. I can do anything related to Unix but Ab initio is your forte."

"Sanjay please we can't do anything now. It's production for God's sake. I can't randomly change code there. We need to do version control and SDLC cycles to put code there. Besides how can you say it's an Ab Initio problem? It could even be a DB issue. We need DBAs not me."

"See this is why we need you I did not know that I should look at the DB side. And I know about SDLC ok I'm not that stupid. Just come Tanvi. "

She kept quiet for a while, Sanjay thought she went back to sleep and kept shouting.

"Tanvi...are you there? Wake up...Come on goose head wake up?"

"Shut up Sanjay. I'm still here. Just thinking. I'll be there. Not sure how long I can stay awake."

"Hmm your words are slurred but we don't have a choice. Look I'll call my friend; he is a general physician intern. He'll tell us how to stay awake."

"ok sounds good.I'll book a cab and be there in 20 mins."

"Cab is waiting for you down. Just get into it."

"Wow. You thought of everything except the DB. Contact the SQL Server DBA and find out what happened. Before that tell me what failed. Is it the data load or the file transmission? Nah don't tell me now. Just find out where the jobs failed first, then contact the DBA if its load failure. What is the Support team doing? Speak to them and create a ticket. Drop an email to the client and ask them to suspend all online transactions. Thank God, its weekend we won't have many online transactions today. However, we'll get files for Friday's ones. Tell me everything when I'm there."

"I think most of this is done.Support team was alert and created the ticket. I'll check the ticket for details. Will it tell us if it's a DB issue? I'll speak to client about suspending online transactions."

"Hmm hmm yes it will. Catch you in half hour."

She disconnected the call, got up and stretched herself. She pulled on a comfortable capris pants and a loose top. She wore a sweatshirt and flip flops.She quickly brushed her teeth and just finger combed her hair. All the while she kept her eyes closed. She took a bottle of water and kept drinking it. She had electrolyte powder (Electral) and added it to her water bottle. She read somewhere that electrolytes were essential to keep one hydrated after night long drinking.

She took her house keys, water bottle, cell phone, her wallet and her id card. She would not require anything else. She locked the apartment and boarded the waiting cab. She was vigilant enough to check if it was her company's cab and took it.

Sanjay intercepted her in the reception area and handed her a sheet of modafinil tablets and a pack of sandwiches. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him with rounded eyes. If not anything Sanjay was very efficient.

"Take it after eating. It will work after three quarters an hour. I hope you'll be alert to work till then in all your drunken glory.Single pill will keep you awake for about 8 to 12 hours. I think I'll take one too. God knows how long it will be before we hit the sack." He wondered.

She wolfed down on her very big, greasy, yummy chicken sandwich. She was famished.She popped a pill once she reached her workstation and sat down to work. She was groggy, her head was pounding and she wanted to plop on a pillow and get back to sleep. She was supremely irritated. She hydrated herself with lot of water.

After about forty minutes, she supposed the drug kicked in. Her senses were very stimulated. Though her body called to rest, her mind was active. She quickly broke down the whole issue into multiple smaller issues. There were three of them here and two clients working from onshore continuously on call.

The clients were purely functional persons and they helped her with required approvals and get things moving from one team to the other.

Ramana came to office leisurely at 11am and spoke to them. He was surprised to know about the depth of the problem and pleased with their progress. He quickly called the leadership team and updated them too.

It was global issue and many teams were equally affected. Right from their Group Leads to Senior Managers all were on floor to mitigate it. Her data warehouse was pronounced safe. Tanvi and Sanjay were praised for their proactive work in containing the damage. Now that Ramana was around things became much simpler.

Finally, at about 3 pm that afternoon the issue though was not eliminated, the damage was contained from all sides. They must go through recovery but for now everyone relaxed. Tanvi used all her old files that she archived earlier that week to restore most of the production data. Now they only require Friday's files to be uploaded again. The data loads were to be run manually.

The pill was a miracle. Nearly fourteen hours of continuous focus and there were no hangover effects too. She hardly felt hungry but frequently had to visit the loo. She took lots of water too. She wanted to find out if the pill could be used long term and every day. She could feel the pill wearing off. Her senses were sagging and fatigue hit her. She wanted to rest. But she had lot of things to do yet.

She was so tempted to pop another pill and continue her work. At the same time, she wanted to leave for the day and sleep the whole of Sunday. Just then, Ramana pinged her to manually trigger a load job.

She planned for a short break while the job processed, "I need energy man. I need food. Come Sanjay, we'll have something to eat."

They found nothing in the office cafeteria so both headed to the nearby deli. She ordered a meat sandwich and Indian Caffe au Lait.

"What is still left to do? We need to execute those jobs manually, then check the logs, do the sanity check and update those spreadsheets. I can think of only these."

"Hmm hmm that's it. Hey Sanjay, what if I pop one more pill? I can feel the after effects. I want to sleep very badly, can't hold off any longer. Can you ask your friend?"

"Sure Tanvi, but why do you need one more pill. If we can sustain for a couple of hours then that should be sufficient right? I'll ask him. Even if he says its ok, don't take it. You were drunk and now continuously working for nearly fourteen hours straight. I think Ramana should take it from here. He had a full night's sleep. It's not our headache any longer."

Tanvi nodded her head. While Sanjay called his friend and asked about the pill, Tanvi licked her plate clean and drank her coffee. She checked her phone for messages and found nothing interesting.

"Ok he says we need to have a minimum of six hours sleep between two pills. So don't take it," he informed and moved out of the deli after paying for them both.

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