Mafia and me

Mafia has always been a game close to my heart. My juniors from college introduced me to the game, and I vividly remember the Mafia marathon we had from 2011–2012. We ushered in the New Year playing a long game of Mafia. Twelve odd college students, across years, packed inside a hostel room meant for four. Those were the days!

This was during my undergrad, when I studied at Sastra, in Thanjavur. Even after I became an alumnus, whenever I used to visit my college, I used to try and drop by the hostel and maybe play a game if possible.

I carried Mafia over to Bangalore, to my design college. During our first day orientation, I introduced the game to all the hostel students when we were having dinner. It was a great hit, and surprisingly, most of my friends had never played (or heard of) it before! :D

Fast forward a few years. I’d graduated, moved back to Chennai and joined the marketing team at Freshworks (erstwhile Freshdesk).

In 2015, Chennai, my home town experienced some heavy rainfall, and was flooded. No one knew what was coming. On the night of December 1st, since it was raining incessantly, we decided to go to one of our teammates’ house and crash there for the night. It was raining like crazy, and we were blissfully unaware of what we were going to wake up to the next morning. We were playing video games (Rayman Legends, to be precise) for a while — that was until the inverter gave out. We decided to call it a night, and went to sleep at maybe 2am.

I was the first to wake up, around 6am and I noticed something strange. The network on my mobile was not available. I looked out the window, and it dawned upon me that the rains had not stopped yet.

We decided to go back to our office — the one place, we presumed, which was bound to have power (and hopefully, mobile connectivity). Luckily, when we ventured out around 7am, it had stopped raining for a bit. But as we navigated through the roads, we realized that this was something bigger. There were so many people on the road that it looked like a scene from a zombie movie! And everyone were clueless, because no one had any connectivity on their phones and everyone was cut off from the world.

That was probably the first time it hit me real hard, how dependent we were on the Internet and in general, technology.

Once we reached office, we were quite literally stranded there. The IT park, SP Infocity, where our office is situated, had become an island. We realized that this was a crisis situation, and the floods were pretty bad. And we had no idea how long it would last.

It was a real test of survival for all of us. We sent a group of our employees who were in critical roles, to go work remotely from different locations outside of Chennai to ensure business continuity. Meanwhile, the Chennai office had practically become a haven for those who were stranded. We converted it into a communication hub, and tried to help as much as possible in being the control room to the feet-on-the-street who were running around the city.

All of our customer-facing team members who were in the office were doubling up for those who weren’t, and pulling multiple shifts and working round the clock. It was great to see team spirit at all an all time high; with junior members going the extra mile to do their job, despite the situation we were in.

The one week that we were stuck there felt like an episode of Lost (or Gilligan’s Island, for those from a previous generation :)) but we were able to keep ourselves motivated and pull through. During the course of this one week, whenever people were taking a break — either from their work, or to eat lunch or dinner, somehow, somewhere, it naturally came together.

A group of my colleagues started playing Mafia in the cafeteria. I couldn’t help but hear the word and joined them.

It was truly a great way for us to get to know each other, and work together as one team. The game was instrumental in not only bringing people together during a crisis situation, but also ensuring that we stuck together even after things became normal.

Over the course of the past two years, we’ve been playing mafia games after our work was done (sometimes starting at 9pm and going on till 9am — a half day marathon) and trust me, it can get pretty addictive! With a bunch of interns and campus hires joining us at different times throughout the year, we always had a group to play with.

We even had our CEO drop in on one our games one night! All the interns who had just joined then were pretty much in shock. :D

Sometimes, when the size became too large — we played a hybrid game where we had two factions — the Mafia and the Wolves and had a triple threat match up with the villagers in the mix.

Maybe it’s something about my face, but regardless of whether I’m a mafia or not, everyone ends up voting to kill me. :P

I usually try sticking to data and prove using probability why I am not mafia; but math usually makes people want to kill more. :(

Work hard and play hard — Mafia has been a true testament to that.

A little over six months ago, I moved from the marketing team to the HR team at Freshworks. One of the things that I am involved in is the employee onboarding program for new employees.

I’ve been running an experiment; introducing them to Mafia. It serves as a great ice-breaker, and in a matter of minutes, 10–15 people can easily get to know and bond with each other.

My aim is to create the best experience possible to the people who join Freshworks, and give them a long lasting first impression on their day 1. We’re trying out different things, tweaking stuff as we go — but with only a handful of Mafia sessions with new employees, I think we’ve got a winner. :)