What its like interning at EnAble India

– Rajath Francis

You never know what to expect when you go someplace for an internship. Thoughts lurk around your mind wondering if it’s going to be a fine, peaceful and jovial place to work or an “I want to get out of here as soon as possible” kind of place. Well, Enable India proved itself to be the first one for me. Fun, creative and a challenging place to work. With out-of-the-box thinking people who can make your life and workplace fun to be with, what else can one expect? Its one thing to be completely working under one person, but it’s quite another to work under three to four people. At Enable India, there isn’t a specified job description. Free and got some work which has to be done? Well, it’s all yours. Whether its Shruthi’s data entry or writing weekly reports for Vishnu or solving aptitude based questions for Julian, it’s all your cup of tea. That’s right, if someone asks you what you do at Enable India, you know what to say.

Work and workplace, both are two ends of the same spectrum. Now, when one says that he or she is working for an organization which empowers the disabled, a typical image flashes in our mind, one of people pushing wheelchairs or conducting seminars to boost a physically challenged person’s morale or something on similar lines. But, step inside this place and in a matter of hours you realize the difference. Dealing with employing and training people with disability, EI only pushes these people, giving them the confidence that they are very well capable of doings things on their own. Coming to people with disabilities, a common man’s thought would be of someone who works just to get his daily butter and bread. But, go through the very well structured impressive and professional resumes of these guys, and you might just want to swap your lives with them. Now, sitting in the main office for days together could get a bit monotonous, so EI gave me an opportunity to break that. As a volunteer to help in one of the most prominent software companies, EMC², for a program organized along with Enable India, it was just a one of kind experience. If you intern at an organization like Enable India and tell people that you didn’t spend time with disabled people, well, that’s going to be a shame. So, while volunteering at EMC² for the “Diversity and Inclusion” event I got the opportunity to help and interact with about twelve candidates who suffered from profound disability. Interacting with these people was fun in itself. Talented, humorous and fun people they were. Even if you choose to remain quiet thinking that you might be disturb them, they’ll bring up a topic and pull you into a lengthy conversation. The candidates were not the only ones worthy of praise at the event. Dedicating their life and savings to see a successful future for their children, the parents were the main guiding force and strength for people with disability. All together, the “Diversity and Inclusion” event at EMC² was a memorable one. Things just don’t end there. ‘Asvas’, a dedicated place only for the training of candidates with disability. It was here that I was sent along with two other friends of mine to gain insight on the field of tactile drawings. Tactile drawings, a method used specifically for visually impaired people. Using different textures so that people who are visually impaired can feel and make out the difference, the methodology behind this was explained. But as the popular adage goes, “practice makes a man perfect”, and so we were also given the chance to work with the volunteers from Thomson Reuters in designing tactile boards.

If I begin to describe Enable India and tell you how good this place is, then I’m surely going to run out of words. My knowledge on words which describe something as awesome, magical, mesmerizing, brilliant, amazing, splendid and stunning are just limited to the words you just read. Enable India is all that and more. Getting an opportunity to work for such an organization is something which is going to remain as one of the best things in life for me. Each person here, and all of them that I met while I worked here, taught me how to go about and see life in a different perspective. If I feel low and skeptical of my future, all I have to do is think about those amazing resumes which I dealt with to brighten me up and get me all optimistic. They teach you that nothing is far away from your reach and everything is well within your grasp. If they can achieve great things in life despite all their shortcomings, then anyone can. I’m not sure who says this, all I know is that it’s from the movie ‘Turbo’, but this quote is truly an inspiration, and it goes like this: “No dream is too big, and no dreamer too small”.

(The views and opinion expressed in this article are those of the author & not necessarily those of EnAble India)

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What they don’t tell you about an internship at EnAble India

Kavya Srinivasan

1. There is never place to sit:

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and the EI offices will tell you that when you find somewhere to sit, make sure you just stay there. Don’t ever leave, don’t go to the bathroom, don’t so much as move a muscle. You will lose your seat.

The likelihood is high that the chair you’re sitting in already belongs to someone else anyway. “Oh, but Esther sits there..” “Actually, that’s Shivaprasad’s sir spot…” In these cases, the correct procedure is to ask when the owner of the chair will be back. You may be pleasantly surprised to find someone is on the field for a few days, and your worries will be temporarily gone.

I’ve spent more of my internship looking for somewhere to sit than I have actually sitting.

2. Didn’t get a job description? There are no job descriptions.

It takes you a day or two to figure this one out, and it’s a big secret at Enable India. Every one does everything. Thought you were going to work on one project? You have another think coming. Your skills are at editing, you can be sure that you’ll be involved in something software or business related. You’ll do phone calls for sourcing no matter who you are. Everyone is fair game for data entry.

I mistakenly went up to Shanti in the first week saying I’ve got some time on my hands. Never again.

3. The best thing about the day happens at 11 and again at 4: Coffee.

You’re eyes are getting a little heavy. There’s a general air of too much going on. You check your watch, and discover that it’s coffee time. Suddenly, it’s all good. The whole office pulls out little coasters from wherever they’re hidden the rest of the time, and for a few minutes we all slurp our tea, coffee or green tea companionably. And we munch our biscuits. And then we go back to our lives.

This isn’t just coffee at EI, it’s a symbol. It’s the grand equalizer. And is therefore taken very seriously. Otherwise impassioned meetings pause for coffee, sourcing calls stop for coffee, everything stops for coffee.

4. Get used to no one checking your emails.

Saying ‘how-do-you-do’, that’s a formality. Shaking hands, a formality. You know what else is a formality? Emails. No one reads them, no one replies to them.

You devise your workarounds to this, and this is highly confidential and relevant information if you want to work at EI. This is how: First, send your email. Then, send a text message about your email. Then, go up to wherever the concerned person is sitting (god knows how this is done, since everyone’s sitting in a new place every day). Tell this person to check their mail. And pray.

5. You’ll fall in love with the place, the people and everything. You will regret any internship you did before, and every internship you do after.

There’s a magic to this office, and there’s no other way to explain it. You learn, and laugh, and make friends. Every single person at the EI office has made my life better in their own way, and I hope I did the same! It’s a crazy place, overrun with wonderful, passionate and caring people who make you glad you’re alive and got to meet them.

(The views and opinions on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent EnAble India)