Life @ OTS Part II
This story is about my short career in Sri Lanka before I left my country for good. It was a unique experience, one I never experienced again in my life. It was so left field that I must write it in full, warts and all, leaving it bare. I have a laugh about these episodes today when I look back, but I think you deserve me to share them with you. This experience, you may think, may have been painful to a candid youngster like me back then. Let me tell you; it was not so. It was the complete opposite. I am glad I went through it all and came out so good at the end. It is a blessing to be naive when one is young.
If you are into stories and series, links to the previous and related stories are marked in hyperlinks. Feel free to read them at your leisure. Telecommunication is an industry that has had a radical transformation in the last forty years. You may wonder what some of the legacy terminologies this story uses. If you are the curious type or a history buff, I have hyperlinked them also for you.
This is a long story; it will take 20 minutes to read for an average reader.
THE STORY BEGINS IN 1974
On completion of the apprenticeship, the instructor, Shirley Silva, escorted the graduates to the Instrument Room on the first floor of the Overseas Telecommunication Service (OTS) building. Some of us, among the twenty-five graduates, was nervous. I was the youngest among them, at 19 years with no facial hair, possibly looking younger than my years. For many young graduates, this was their first job, paying Rupees 350 (about $85) per month. A big deal back in the day. Welcoming us was Carl Schokman, the chief supervisor. Schokman, bespectacled, dressed in khaki shorts and knee-high white socks, lectured us on the importance of our roles in operating the sole international messaging network for the island nation of Sri Lanka.
A quick tour of the Instrument Room ensued. The senior telegraphists, entirely male, working on their machines, stopped work and were now looking at us. Some with welcoming smiles, some with staring and scrutinising looks. At this point, Schokman left, leaving us to continue the tour and subsequent onboarding.
“Yako buggers”, yelled one of the seniors the moment Schokman left. ‘Yako buggers’ in Sri Lankan meant uncultured bogans. With that derogatory name-calling, it set the emerging scenarios for my junior batch. The caller must have been pretty frustrated to pick on youngsters. Some of my batch mates felt unwelcome and upset. Naturally, one of them, upset he was, reported it to Schokman. All of this drama was beyond me, I was a cool kid, so the name-caller was the real bogan. Not me. I was comfortable under my skin.
THE WORK ENVIRONMENT
The Instrument Room operated 24x7x365. It was always on. It had four shifts per day, six hours a day times seven days a week. The staff rotated on shifts. The compulsory working week totalled 36 hours. Morning duties started at 8 am and finished at 2 pm, then 2 pm to 8 pm, 8 pm to 2 am and 2 am to 8 am. Six days a week. Sundays were on overtime with reduced workloads. The day’s work of six hours was broken into two parts. 3 hours of preparing and punching outgoing messages on teletypewriters to turn them into Baudot-Murray tapes in readiness for transmission.
Then the remaining 3 hours of work were to operate the network exchanges. One circuit, on any particular day on rotation. The network exchange range was limited to London, Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore, Aden, and Yangon. On working days, there would be approximately 1400 outgoing messages and about 1000 incoming messages for the country. Messages were a mix of business and personal. On top of the 1000 incoming messages, there were about approximately 600 to 800 incoming messages destined for other destinations using Colombo as a transit exchange. This workload was shared by about 30 staff members in the Instrument Room.
There were about six senior telegraphists in an adjacent area, Traffic Room. They, titled Traffic Officers, kept a tally of messages sent and received, the number of words, destinations and compliance with messaging technical protocols. In addition to control and auditing, they were tasked to keep a tab of transit messages to recover costs in Gold Francs, a valuable exchange earner for the cash-strapped country. The Traffic Officers were the secondary power block below the supervisors.
There were about five peons on duty also on shift. They carried messages and coded tapes from desk to desk, from outgoing trays to incoming trays, a critical service back then before automated workflows. One of their young guns operated the only lift into the building. Yes, back in the day, there were lift operators. The ordinaries were not trusted with the lift buttons. The lift operator, Adhipathi, a young lad, sat on a small stool by the side of the lift door, close to the buttons, with sole control of the touchpad.
The peons who could read English had become sorters, the crew that sorted and bundled messages in the Traffic Room. That was the highest rank the peons could aspire to if they were lucky enough. In that society, even though the dress code was dictated by societal norms, the sorters could wear long pants. The rest of the peons wore khaki-coloured short pants, an indicator of their diminished status. That was what was called upward mobility in the so-called socialist republic of Sri Lanka — peon, a fancy name for the gullible.
Telex services were operated by senior staff in a room covered with glass enclosures. For telex bureau services, a service centre operated on the ground floor that was open to the public. These two facilities required about another 10 staff members to function.
At the far corner of the Instrument Room was the Workshop. This was where faulty telex machines and teleprinters were repaired. Some of the technicians were condescending, imagining they were superior to the Instrument Room staff. Not all of them, though, I had many a friend from the Workshop who’d stop at my desk for a hearty chat.
On the second floor was the control room, a modern-day data centre that operated the core global communication hub for the country. The floor was out-of-bound for ordinaries like me. Engineering crews manned this facility.
English was the medium of communication. I was pretty good at it. I had no qualms talking to anyone, however senior or junior, without a second thought. I talked to everyone irrespective of their status, supervisor, or minor staff, treating them equally. I did not know any difference, being the crazy youngster and youngest of them all.
The supervisors were a mix of characters. Gamlathge was someone who could not smile at anyone and did not talk much. With his imposing Christopher Lee looks with no smile, his nickname was Dracula. Then there was Candappa, dark with oily looks and one who never wore shoes but came in rubber slippers to work. There was Wijemanne, meticulously dressed in white pants and shirts with smiling looks. Brian Lutersz, another supervisor, was bespectacled, soft-spoken and with white patches on his face. He wore long-sleeved shirts to cover his vitiligo disease. Then there was Elmo Pereira, who worked in the Chief Supervisor's office. His job was to type memos and the policemen on the floor to keep everyone in check. He never smiled at me, perhaps my daring clothes and carefree attitude provoked him. There was Mohamed Farouk, friendly and kind. Then there was Kingsley Pandithakoralge, my favourite supervisor, who understood me. Roy was the supervisor in the Telex room, dressed in white and did not hesitate to engage me in a conversation when the opportunity arose.
The rest of the workforce, senior telegraphists and telex operators, were generally a good mix of the Sri Lankan population. The majority was the Sinhalese from the south of Sri Lanka, the largest tribe in the country. There was a good dose of Tamils from all parts of the north and east of the island. There were a few Muslims and Burghers. It was a blend of the diversity of people in the tiny island nation.
Except for the telephone operator, Carmen, who operated the analogue switchboard, there were no females in the organisation's employ. With 24x7 shifts, in a backwater country in Sri Lanka, where safety for women could not be guaranteed, excluding women was the norm. OTS was no place for women.
OTS was run by hierarchical structures and seniority. The telegraphists who joined earlier thought little of the juniors, forgetting that they, too, were juniors one day. Some of the supervisors were not people leaders, having come up the rank and had trouble understanding youngsters who dared to do things differently.
The telegraphists worked many shifts, overtime work to supplement their income. Quite a few never went home, doing triple shifts and living in the OTS. Many of the senior staff were serious alcoholics who drank at the city bars during their evening shifts. They smelt of liquor, a gaudy smell emanating from the local brews, which I hated. Some of their marriages were in trouble because of their work habits and alcoholism. No wonder some of them virtually lived in OTS.
In the organisation hierarchy, there were supervisors. Then the traffic officers, there were the seniors, some of whom thought they owned the place. Then there were mid-level telegraphists who had joined some 5 to 10 years before us who did not hesitate to reach out to us. The next was us, the most junior batch, and the new kids on the block. Below us were the peons, minor staff, as they called them back in the day.
Many staff who worked multiple shifts slept in the dormitory on the seventh floor. The mattresses and pillows were soiled and dirty. The toilets evoked an awful smell. It was horrible — a modern-day health nightmare.
MEANWHILE, ME
I was a teenager in a well-paying job. Young as I was, the carefree kid at nineteen years and the youngest in that workforce, I could not take the job seriously. My interests lay in social life and not in a working career. I came to work in between my leisure. I was drastically thin but tall and fair by Sri Lankan skin colour standards. I loved hanging out with my friends and girls, going on weekend holidays, dance parties and all the mischievous activities teenage boys get into at that age. The money I earned, I could spend in any way I wished. It was a carefree life with no family responsibilities.
I wore my casual clothes to work. I had a collection of bell bottoms, jeans, T-shirts and colourful singlets; they were my only clothes. My colleagues took their formal appearances seriously and dressed in office attire. I was not interested in wearing office clothes. I was an odd lad, unconsciously daring to defy the office norms and dress codes by dressing in my swinging seventies clothes.
The work was fun and easy. I was friendly with everyone. During my free time, in between managing incoming messages, I read my books and magazines. Often, I amused my batch mates, throwing paper balls to kill my boredom, evoking a smiling glance from my buddies.
I was a part-time student of Accounting at Aquinas University College at the same time. I had started there as a full-time student way before I joined OTS. Working day shifts in OTS and attending evening classes at Aquinas was a serious business. I reached home at 9 pm on the nights I had classes. Balancing my social life, work life and study life was impossible. I chose my social life over my study life, giving up Accounting that year.
The shifts were rotated for everyone and given overtime, a few extra shifts per week. The overtime pay was minimal, some six rupees for six hours, about twenty-five cents in dollars, a quarter per hour. My leisure for me was worth more than that pittance. I started trading my overtime shifts with others in exchange for their day shifts with the seniors. Doing day shifts allowed me to enjoy my evenings and hang out with my friends' network outside OTS.
Two of my batchmates had been waiting until they were confirmed on their jobs to get married to their long-time girlfriends. They asked me to be their best man. Wow, I took up the challenge. I ordered a suit for 3 ($85 equivalent). In my first ever suit, I became their best man at 19. I still wonder why they picked me, a skinny young lad, as their best man. Was I friendly with everyone that they thought I could be an ideal best man, a guy they met the previous year? I was probably a jovial go-getter who knew nothing but to take life as a big joke — to be explored.
THE OFFICE SURROUNDS
The canteen on the 5th floor was our refuge and escape. That was where we took our tea breaks, smokes, and meals. The food and beverages were subsidised, and the union had some say in running the welfare canteen. It was the only site women could be sighted in that fortressed building of OTS. Women workers from the adjoining Central Telegraph Office turned up to meet their boyfriends from OTS and dine together.
On the 4th floor was the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication. The minister and his deputy’s offices were on that floor. I had a friend from that floor; he was Athula, the deputy minister’s son. When Athula visited his father at the ministry, he’d come looking for me. We were friends from our early teenage years when we hung out together whenever our fathers went away on conferences to various parts of the country with their accompanying families.
A FRIENDSHIP
Back in the Instrument Room, while I was going through these new work experiences, one of the seniors, Dharmapala, befriended me. He was ten to twelve years older, tall, bearded and smoked vanilla cigars. in turn, I reciprocated his friendship. He offered to arrange my shifts for day shifts; he was into doing overtime himself. It was a convenient arrangement, where someone negotiated and traded my rostered overtime with other seniors in exchange for their day shifts for me.
This strange, friendly relationship continued. As days passed, he’d take me out for lunch at various restaurants in the city. Despite hanging out with him, we were both like chalk and cheese. We had nothing in common, and there was a huge age gap.
Dharmapala took his liberties a step further. He came to meet my parents. Up to then, I had not given much away from my work environment to my parents. My father, the liberal soul he was, had given me much space to experience life independently. My mother, different and conservative, was listening acutely to Dharmapala, a senior in my workplace. Then came a bombshell from Dharmapala’s mouth. “Denzil smokes cigarettes in the office”. He went on to exaggerate further “Denzil lights cigarette after cigarette”. I was not a chain smoker. I felt so embarrassed. My father brushed off the comment, but my mother was unhappy and questioned me later about my smoking. There was no way I could deny it. That was the end of Dharmapala’s visits to my home.
Dharmapala continued to manage my shifts, allowing me to do my things after work. It was a fun life, hanging out with friends, partying, getting stoned and laid. It was the time of my life in Sri Lanka, with hundreds of friends and my father’s scooter at home, which I had access to occasionally. It was an ideal life for a nineteen-year-old emerging into a fancy world of adulthood with no responsibilities.
Bit by bit, it dawned on me that Dharmapala was trying to control my work life, whom I spoke with and what I should do. The fiercely independent soul I was, I resented it. I snapped one day, confronting him about the impact of his behaviour on my well-being. That conversation ended up with me telling him to leave me alone. That was the end of our relationship.
Dharmapala would not relent and be trying to be friends with me again. I started ignoring him. He put up scenes and tried to coax me and be his friend again. I was firm in my resolution to be independent away from his manoeuvrers.
Now post that painful episode, the challenges at work began to unravel.
TROUBLES BEGUN
Navigating the world of people politics in OTS was a craft that I was not good at. As any daring and confident youth would, I brought my whole, authentic self to work. I did not care too much about titles and positions. I treated everyone equally. This was probably something some of the seniors did not like in a tribalist society and culture.
Messages typed, transmitted, and received were done manually. Naturally, despite using machines, anything done manually has a certain human-error ratio. Messages were transmitted using underground cables on the high seas at 80 bauds per second. Often messages got garbled during transmission when signal strengths of these decades-old cable infrastructures fluctuated. Many business transactions were sent in codes between companies over public networks that relied on legacy networks. It was not easy to detect the differences between transmission errors and coded confidential messages in a period long before quality assurance algorithms were invented and adopted. There was no benchmark on error tolerances. Instead of coaching, some seniors used this avenue to harass the staff they did not like. I received many a memorandum from the chief supervisor’s office, highlighting minor, genuine errors. I did not care for these pieces of paper, which meant nothing to me. It was a command-and-control organisation mindset.
This situation continued. The next year, another batch of graduates joined. Almost all of them were a year or two older than me, but I found great buddies among them. The junior club was growing in OTS. Despite the excitement of new friends, my disillusionment at work was growing. I was languishing in this unhealthy place of work where many modern health and safety inspections would have failed miserably today.
Adversity results in resistance, and I was now resisting the whole work environment. It did not take me long to realise that I did not belong here; my destiny lay elsewhere.
PROTEST MOVEMENT
With the junior members of OTS, I started a protest movement. We started replying to the annoying memos in Sinhala, the official language of Sri Lanka. We did this to annoy the chief supervisor’s deputy, Elmo Pereira, who could not read Sinhala. Now, he had to engage translators to translate our responses. Some started signing documents and annotations in official logbooks in Sinhala. I thrived on mobilising this small protest movement, despite my Sinhala skills being inferior to my English skills. My friends became my translators, helping me craft responses in complex Sinhala words that were hard to crack.
In April of that year, during Sri Lankan new year celebrations, everyone in Sri Lanka lit firecrackers in celebration, an age-old practice. My friends in my home village took this fun activity to another level of pranking, lighting firecrackers under buses and cars. Drivers, bewildered with anguish, stopped their vehicles and rushed to examine their tyres. Seeing that it was a prank, they’d curse the prankers, unable to pinpoint who did it. My friends and I watched these silly episodes from afar, amusing ourselves.
DEFIANCE
With my anger boiling at OTS, I was gunning desperately to do something to show my rage against the establishment that was ill-treating me. I brought a firecracker to the office, planning to light it with a timing device. No one would know or be able to pin it to me. In a closed building, the sound of a firecracker would reverberate loudly. It was a show of protest by a 20-year kid to an establishment that did not understand its youth.
I connected the firecracker to an area that was unoccupied with a thread. it would take a few minutes for the thread to burn its length and reach the firecracker giving me enough time to exit the area. As planned, around 1 pm on the day, I lit the thread and moved away.
Lo and behold, as expected, the firecracker went off. There was a commotion on the floor. Some thought it was an explosion or an equipment malfunction. Some thought the huge airconditioner on the ground floor had exploded. Everyone in the building heard a loud noise. I felt like I was walking the moon, having succeeded in the only way I could protest, expressing my defiance. It took a while for them to conclude it was deliberately lit .
The supervisors would not take kindly to this act of subversion under their noses. They started an investigation. They could not easily identify a ck then . I was working on the day and fitted the bill of the prime suspect.
Elmo Pereira took on the role of the chief investigator of this incident. First, he gathered evidence to determine where I was around that time. Then, he interrogated me in his closed room for one hour, trying to get me to admit the offence using all kinds of pressure techniques. I did not blink, and he could not get anything out of me to pinpoint it on me. I could see his disdain at my defiance, but I was cool. The investigation concluded with no charges.
After that day, I was a marked man in OTS. It became increasingly difficult to manage my shifts and get day shifts. Some always looked at me with suspicion. Of course, there were many seniors and supervisors with higher emotional intelligence to see through me as a lovable rioter. I went on my ways, nevertheless. I was not in this job for money working on my exit plan from this organisation.
NON-ALIGNED SUMMIT, 1976
In August of that year, Sri Lanka hosted the non-aligned summit in Colombo. As the central authority in telecommunications, OTS played a significant role in this summit. The first satellite in Sri Lanka was installed with Russian technology before the summit. The whole of Sri Lanka came to a halt to host the biggest summit it had ever hosted internationally. Eighty-five odd heads of state or their delegates attended. Many co-workers were seconded to work at the summit venue, helping press reporters and media crews. I was not given any of these special duties on the basis that I was a troublemaker who could not be trusted. Being left out of this prestigious event, I was bloody furious. Fucking mad.
UNION ELECTIONS
The protest movement continued. The elections for the OTS worker's trade union were coming up. Disgruntled youth I was, I planned to contest the elections, mobilising the juniors. I had no experience in these civil duties and did not contest. Instead, we put a more experienced youth leader from my batch, eloquent in Sinhala, to contest. We knew our chances were slim, but it was our protest vote. Votes were counted in the evening, and as expected, we lost. The seniors voted against us en masse. By challenging the status quo, we unsettled the seniors, which was the intention — about my experiences in unions in Sri Lanka.
YOUTH BRAVADO
Not everything was confrontational with the senior folks at OTS. I had many friends among them. They appreciated my bravado, the lovable rioter in me. I will shell-shock you with one humorous episode that happened when I was with them. After a day’s shift, I walked into a room on the seventh floor where a small group of friendly seniors were having drinks and enjoying themselves. I guessed from their reaction that they must have been drinking for a while. I was just about to finish exchanging pleasantries with them when a couple of them egged me to remove my pants. I was comfortable with my nudity, having lived in a boarding school in my mid-teenage years, skin-dipping with friends when we travelled everywhere in Sri Lanka. It was not a big deal. Besides, not taking up the challenge and wavering would be seen as a sign of weakness, my defeat. I stood firm, pulling my pants down, letting them see my kinky skinny self, all my 47 kg, 26" waist in one piece without a second thought. The comical challenge and escapade did not bother me.
Youthful bluster has had many an advantage.
NIGHT SHIFTS
Working nights was an agony, forcing me to miss my hangouts and have fun. I put in sickies on Monday and Tuesday. Having exhausted my sickies, I turned up for work on Wednesday at 8 pm. After a boring night, the shift finished at 2 am. No buses from my office location were plying to my hometown at that time. I walked up to the dormitory but could not imagine sleeping there till morning on the dirty and soiled beds. I wanted to head home instead. The only way to get home, some ten kilometres away, was to walk to the central bus station at Pettah, the adjoining city suburb. I walked up to the Pettah bus stand along the main road, in the dead heat of the night and darkness, 1.5 kilometres. I was somewhat scared, passing suspicious characters and some homeless people. At the bus stand, I boarded a bus heading to Kandy, some 122 kilometres away. Despite being a long-distance express bus, it took passengers to nearby destinations during that unsocial hour. At an unholy hour, I arrived home past 3 am, tired and hungry amongst the annoying noise of neighbourhood dogs barkings.
MEDIA COVERAGE
Then, another investigation followed against me at work. It started with a newspaper alert in the premium newspaper in Sri Lanka on its front page. The article labelled OTS as incompetent. An incoming overseas telegram from France had an illegible error. The recipient went to the press, causing bad media coverage. This caused a frenzy at OTS. You may have guessed it. When there was trouble, Denzil’s name was all over it. I had signed off on the incoming telegram. I was an easy scapegoat because I could be classified as an inexperienced telecommunication worker. I happened to have dared the authorities very conveniently. An investigation officer was appointed by the Ministry of Postal and Telecommunications to investigate the incident.
I faced the investigation without fear and with support from some of the friendly seniors. The investigation revealed no fault on my part. Messages from Paris were sent through London, the only European exchange Colombo had. Investigations revealed that the message had been garbled between Paris and London due to a technical error. It was up to London to query and correct any quality issues. London transmitted the faulty message with no verification with their counterpart in Paris. Investigations concluded, clearing my name and any fault with OTS. I would have likely been sacked for incompetence ult. This scapegoat escaped yet again.
BREAKING FREE
That experience left me sullied, and I did not want to live my life in an office that brought me no joy. I continued on my prowl to change my job. I applied for a role in a foreign bank in Colombo, but there was no response. I was now looking to go overseas, targeting the UK, the go-to destination for many aspiring young Lankans. I convinced my parents to bankroll my likely expedition overseas.
In the meantime, my father’s Lambretta scooter became mine by default when he took a break from riding as part of his recovery from a heart attack. My father’s health situation changed my family’s outlook. I knew I had serious responsibilities as the eldest son, with a young sister and brother who looked up to me.
I continued my lookout to leave Sri Lanka and considered many options. I was so desperate at one point that I applied for a job in Nigeria. I did not think Sri Lanka deserved a left-field rebel like me.
While I was considering these exit options, came the opportunity to work in Dubai from nowhere. I took on the challenge with gusto when very few people had heard about Dubai, an emerging city. I left OTS and Sri Lanka in under ten days, foregoing my bond and breaking my employment contract with OTS, which bound me to serve them for five years. My father offered to pay the bond on my behalf to the government of Sri Lanka. How my break in Dubai popped up is an interesting story. Many experienced OTS workers left after me for the Emirates for work, but I was the first to leap to the then desert land, unbound.
Related story links:-
Training at OTS as an apprentice
The generosity of a colleague at OTS
EPILOGUE
Many supervisors and senior staff came to Sharjah to work in the local telecommunication company, taking early retirement from OTS a few months after I left for Dubai. I became good friends with them while working in Dubai. The erstwhile supervisor fond of his memos, Elmo Pereira and his wife Rhona became my good friends. Our friendship continued over many a meal and a drink but now on equal footing.
Everything was forgiven, some 3,500 kilometres away from where this story started. That was my redemption. All that happened in under a year since I left OTS and Sri Lanka.
I do not measure money as a measure of success, but this must be told in its humility. Within a year after I left OTS, I earned more than most of my supervisors from OTS in the Emirates. It was not a bad feat for a nutty youth who defied an age-old system back in OTS.
Life is to dream and to dare. By daring and expressing myself in the only way, I could, at that tender age, carve out a progressive and enjoyable career. My rebellion opened pathways to pivot a fantastic career in technology in five global financial firms spanning three continents. I am still kicking career goals and thriving in what I do, helping everyone I lead with my servant leadership skills. I have and continue to live a class-agnostic life, enriching others.
I am proud of ushering over 100 incredibly smart interns and young graduates I came across worldwide. I loved mentoring them, and they remind me today that I nurtured them in their forming years. I am proud that many of them are in or destined to be in leadership roles.
Although I chucked studying Accounting, after investing two years of my life and my father’s money at Aquinas, those skills have come in good stead in my work and personal life.
One caveat here, I do not claim to be the innocent youngster one may think I was. I had my faults and shortcomings. Youthful stupidity gets cured with time. By rebelling, I redeemed myself. For that, there are no apologies.
Subscribe to my stories https://djayasi.medium.com/subscribe
Images belong to the original copyright owners.
