Prithviraj Chavan, Valves – Domestic, Mumbai, wed Punita on 25 July 2008.

Let us wish the couple a long and prosperous married life!

Let us wish the couple a long and prosperous married life!

Let us wish the couple a long and prosperous married life!

Mr. Milind Parab receiving the award from Mr. A. K. Banerjee, Vice President, Valves Business Group

Milind gets a trophy, a certificate and a gift voucher from Landmark.

Congrats Milind!

Mr. Rahul Don Rudy, International Sales, Chennai, won the CFTTC Table Tennis tournament held on 15 March at ECC Chennai Regional Office. The other corporates that participated in the event included IndianOil Corporation, TVS and Sundaram Finance.

Congrats Dude!

With bus drivers gaining notoriety for losing control of their vehicles and ramming into objects that had the misfortune to be present there, one cannot but feel sorry for the people of Chennai whose stomach churned and bowels turned at the sight of a bus cruising the roads with a banner tied to the front, openly proclaiming ‘LOSE CONTROL’! Alas! They may not have known that it was just a title given to our ‘One-day Picnic’ at the Temple Bay Resort in Mahabalipuram!

At the resort, the sight of a swimming pool whose blueness seamlessly merged into the blueness of the ocean beyond, welcomed everyone. No wonder they had named it “The Infinity Pool”. After consuming the chocolates and gulping down the welcome drinks, people promptly broke into their own groups and loitered around the lawns. Housewives furtively checked out the jewelleries while pretending to exchange pleasantries, kids ran, shrieked and tumbled gleefully, bachelor boys stood by the seashore and smoked, savoring the beauty (of nature) on display and husbands stood by their wives, all the while wishing they had remained bachelors.

All of a sudden the event organizers must have realized that this was not going as per their plans and hence announcements were made requesting everyone to assemble, which as expected, did not work. But the lady seemed pretty determined and eventually succeeded in getting everyone under the shelter erected on the lawn. Then followed the ‘Ice breaker’ event. No, it had nothing to do with shattering blocks of ice with bare hands, for it was just an introduction session where each one gets to introduce himself or herself with a suitable word that best describes them, attached in front of their name.

‘Rocking’ Rahul shouted one; ‘Awesome’ Ashutosh cried another; ‘Pagal’ Pradeep hollered one and ‘He-Man’ Hari thundered I. But the guys who spoke after us seemed to be more honest and realistic in describing themselves and hence we came to know of ‘Smirnoff’ Srivatsan, ‘Sandpiper’ Sriram and ‘Bacardi’ Balaji among others. Venkatesh Parthasarathy got into the mood and introduced himself with glee as ‘Alcoholic’ Venkatesh, before his wife had the smile wiped off his face by letting everyone know that she was ‘Killer’ Krithika.

Now that the ‘ice’ was broken, we all got together for a game, which saw people being clubbed into teams of six and their feet being tied together. After that the teams were expected to perform a sequence of procedures, which appeared as cakewalk to our team. But unfortunately, during the very first level, one of my teammates pant came off while we were busy crawling on the lawn as a unit. And that loose pant of his made us lose valuable time and also the prize. The team of Pradeep Shrivastava, Vivek Gupta, Venkatesh Parthasarathy, Tilakesh, S. H. Prasad and Ashutosh won the first place.

The second event, held exclusively for the bachelors had us worming and wriggling trying to pass a set of beads through a string that passed inside the shirts and pants of all six people in the team. By the time our team managed to pull out all the beads, the rest of the teams had completed, the results had been announced and the prizes had been distributed. Sigh! The prize went to the team of Shinod, John Rajan, Ravi Shankar, Sarith and Harshavardhan (Son of Ms. Mahalakshmi)

Up next was a musical chair event for the couples, which the newly wed couple of Sundar and Deepa won. I then got back to lazing on the lawn with friends. When I lighted a match stick at one end of a small hole on the ground, a little crab angrily shot up its head at the other end scaring the living daylights out of ‘Gentle Giant’ Venkatakrishnan who happened to slumber near by, causing a lot of commotion and mayhem.

Before long, it was time for lunch and beer. After a nice lunch, people warmed up to a few games including the Thambola. This was followed by our dance performance. If people say ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ then a video must be really worth lots of them. So you better take a look at our performance rather than me writing about it. And don’t miss to take a look at this special performance from Tilakesh. Though I was the one who had the guitar in my hands, both Balaji and Ajith ended up playing guitar with their respective violin and saxophone. Whether they did it on purpose or the beer got the better of them is a debatable topic! But anyways, the dance number turned out to be a huge hit and we were flattered to hear that the audience had wanted an encore, which we politely refused!

Girish Natarajan’s cute little daughter Ananya celebrated her third birthday with us by cutting a cake.

Then came the event for the housewives, where every team of two was given a dismantled ball valve, which they had to assemble within the stipulated time of three minutes. Lifelines were provided in the form of hints sealed in envelopes. Quite a few teams did manage to assemble a few parts but were left wondering what to do with a small shiny piece, which they had no clue where it fitted in the scheme of things. It turned out to be the ball!

I yet again got back to lazing on the lawn but this time Venkatakrishnan kept a watchful eye over me and threatened to squeeze me into a crab hole if I bothered to disturb him!

The evening session saw a flurry of activities ranging from Frisbee, beach volleyball to a number of games organized by the event coordinators.

With the daylight slowly dying out, darkness started to creep in, indicating that it was time for the stage performances on the lawn. There are certain disadvantages when you are taking part in a play, for all you get to do is to sit in the backstage with your costumes on, listening to the hooting and shouting from the crowd, all the while wondering what is actually going on. Enquiries made later revealed that Mahalakshmi, Krithika, Sundar had sung songs. A wonderful dance performance by the twin daughters of Ms. Bhama Suresh too had taken place. Then when our time came, we got on stage and gave the audience a lot to cheer about with our play ‘Ultanic’ which was a spoof of the movie ‘Titanic’. I was the unlucky guy who played the part of Jack with the misfortune of romancing another guy, John, who had dressed up as Rose! Naresh played the part of the ship captain. Ajith was Rose’s uncle. The drama too was well received by the audience, the credit going to Ranjith who had scripted the play and Sriram who had supported him by rendering the live dialogues.

With the play being over, we came to another interesting event of the day – The fire walk. A three-foot bed of burning charcoal was laid out for the people to walk across. As a preparation, people had to dip their legs in a bucket filled with solid blocks of ice before they walked into the fire. I somehow felt that bearing the stinging cold of the ice blocks was far difficult than walking across the fire. May be the next time they should make people walk across blocks of ice and heat their legs as a preparatory measure! This thrilling event was followed by dinner and cocktail even as a group of artistes performed traditional arts on the stage.

A whole day of fun and frolic, thanks to Ms. Bhama Suresh, Ms. Mahalakshmi and Mr. Kumaran from the HR Team, came to an apt end with most people including our Vice President Mr. A. K. Banerjee along with his family, getting on stage to shake a leg as the DJ belted out one smash hit after another, something that left me with a body pain and stomach ache for two more days!

- Hari Prasad. M

Ms.Krithika Venkatesh of VBG-IT was presented the ‘Employee of the Quarter – GOLD’ award for the quarter October – December’ 07.

One of our key customers in USA had the requirement for a dedicated website with features to help them track their projects on time.

Krithika was able to conceptualise the application well, which enabled her to work effectively with the software vendor and advise them at every stage of the project. She ensured that the application was error free and ready on time for the formal launch.

Congrats Krithika!
Ms. Krithika Venkatesh and Mr. Ramesh Nallathambi receiving the awards from Mr. A. K. Banerjee, Vice President, Valves Business Group.

Mr.Ramesh Nallathambi of VBG International Sales was presented the ‘Employee of the Quarter – SILVER’ award for the quarter October – December’ 07.

Ramesh handles project execution for orders from Japanese EPC Contractors. At one point of time, problem arose when a valve mounted with actuator transported by L&T got damaged during shipment. As they valve was needed urgently at the site there was no question of manufacturing a new valve. Ramesh co-ordinated with the concerned parties and ensured that the problem was sorted out at the shortest time possible and the valve was ready for installation. This delighted the EPC contractor and they praised L&T for the timely response.

Congrats Ramesh!

The duo won the award for developing programs for generating Quotes and FERT Codes, which in our Vice President’s words, can provide significant process improvement.

Let us wish the couple a long and prosperous married life!

Let us wish the couple a long and prosperous married life!