Writing stories without characters: The Building of Systems
By Udayaditya Dwivedi, Sr. Manager- Product & Marketing
Long, long ago in a dusty city somewhere north in an ancient nation, lived a young man. Let’s for this story call him Yudi, although his real name was too long to remember and too difficult to pronounce. You can imagine him looking ‘hot as sin, the kind that makes you stop in the traffic and get hit by a car’ kind or the kind which makes you recite quotes on ‘how external looks are irrelevant because internal beauty is all that matters’. You may imagine him as the kind which causes happiness wherever they go or the kind which causes happiness whenever they go. This story is minimal about Yudi, but the grand adventure that he took.
The adventure starts on a busy afternoon. The young man was sitting, his mind racing back and forth on what lies ahead. Demented by uncertainty and fidgeting with the certainty, he gets a call from what we call destiny. A king from a small kingdom, having his capital very close to where Yudi lived wanted to meet him. There was an open position in the court, and Yudi, initially hesitant, decided to give it a go.
Yudi was met by a Vizier when he visited the kingdom. This Vizier was long with a thick beard, and he spoke in hushed tones. Kings of that era used to ask flabbergasting questions. They used to ask where the courtiers to see themselves in 10 years when the fickleness of life and the tides of time makes commenting on the next ten minutes impossible. They used to ask why the ‘to be courtiers’ had done what they have done in the previous years as if free will is accessible to one and sundry. But not this Vizier. This Vizier asked this young courtier to open his heart to him. He asked him about his deepest fears, his lost loves, and his views on life. The Vizier wanted to know the deep troughs of the man's heart and not the cusps of his brains, and somehow Yudi got in.
And at that moment, I swear Yudi thought he was infinite.
Yudi joined the court, part of a young group of magicians who wrote in scripts and languages unbeknown to the common man. They were the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels… The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They pushed the boundaries forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, Yudi saw in them the genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who actually do — Yudi thought of it, Steve Jobs stole it.
The king was on his way to expand the kingdom. He wanted to carve out for himself something of the scale that Alexander of Macedonia would look like a feeble comparison. Hence, the work allocated to this young group was simple. They had to, with the spells of the indecipherable language, help in this expansion. Things in the kingdoms should run smoothly. The grants should be given, the taxes should be collected, and the materials should reach the ones who need it. This, my dear reader, is where the adventure actually begins.
You may, at this point, be thinking where this fairy-tale is going. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. The young group of magicians worked through the day, and many a time through the darkest nights to churn out the spells that kept the kingdom going. The small kingdom grew in size. The journey was long and arduous. The kind Frodo took while delivering the ring. And yet, since the very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun, Yudi really enjoyed with whatever he experienced a day in and day out in that young kingdom.
For the kingdom, the magicians did several wonderful things. They built mechanisms for other trade partners of the kingdom to carve out new silk routes. The kingdom had a lot of work which started happening automatically, under the cast of these spells. The money rolling out and the money coming in could be automatically recorded by spells, multiple documents that were manually written were created by a whiff of a wand. They started working on newer enchantments which will soon be available for all to see. They helped keep a check of the thugs which wanted to dupe the young king (Chalo mana, not so young :P)
All along Yudi kept a list of things he had never been taught at school. He had never been taught that it’s alright to make mistakes and it’s alright to fail. The kingdom took some new endeavors where the land was treacherous and the fort’s wall too thick to breach. And yet these losses were never fretting upon in the kingdom. The king, in all his good humor, kept humming the ancient words of wisdom which said-
“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be King.”
- (again, Yudi thought of it, J.R.R. Tolkien stole it)
My dear reader now that you have learned what Yudi was up to all this time do understand that this new year comes with a string of new challenges and surprises. While multiple new enchantments (new LMS and two new platforms) will soon be available for you to use, the magicians are trying to predict the future. They derive learnings from the days gone by (more prediction and analytics). The regular operations, especially disbursements, will soon happen a lot more quickly and there will be again a string of automation charms cast out by the magicians to help eradicate any human labor where it is not needed.
And to you, I leave with these lines to sing to yourself the next time you charge on your horse, wearing the shiny armor to win yet another bastion for this kingdom:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
- (again, Yudi wrote this, Invictus and WE Henley stole it)