June 18th 2007
Palam Domestic Airport
New Delhi
The airport was exceptionally crowded today, probably because it was summer vacation time for schools throughout the country and as a result I was not able to find a place for my luggage trolley. I was sitting there waiting for my flight announcement with my parents and they were bothering me with their repeated questions about packing everything, carefully keeping all my documents and all that. I thought one more question and I will blow up and my flight announcement at that very moment came to my rescue. It was time to go I thought and looked at my mum, she hugged me and I saw tears in her eyes. She was not crying she was happy and those were the tears of joy. All her life she had just dreamt of one thing, seeing her children off at the airport when they went for their jobs and became successful in life. Today I think her dream had partially come true.
I proceeded for the baggage check in and it was then that I realized my flight was delayed for more than two hours. Now I hate it when I have to stand in the center of a crowded lobby all alone and figure out how to kill time for two hours. I finally found a couch and settled down with Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul and started reading but couldn’t concentrate. The past five months and the flurry of activities that went on in these months kept coming to mind.
Time goes by real fast after getting placed if one is still in college. December turned out to be a month for non stop partying because all my friends one by one got placed and celebrations went on week after week and continued in the new year as well. January came and for two weeks everyone got busy with studies. This time it was a different feeling all together. Before this exams were always taken seriously as we had to maintain a good CGPA for placements but this time almost everyone was placed already and there was a different kind of relaxed feeling and a laziness which I had never seen in exams. Like other times we did stay up nights for weeks together not sleeping for more than two hours but most of the time went to bed chatting. Dinner like other times was not so serious and no one said please don’t play loud music. Exams came and went and so did the feeling that MBA was over. The very thought brought tears to our eyes. No matter how much I cursed the college, the impossible schedules and assignments, presentations and professors who loved taking our happiness away but I knew I was going to miss it all.
The two years of MBA had been the best days of my life. I had made some amazing friends and spent the most amazing time. These two years were full of learning, soul searching, introspections, some amazing revelations about overselves and emotional bonds. We came face to face with certain aspects of our own personalities which we had never known earlier.
I was not sure if I will ever be able to do what all I did during my MBA. Nostalgia overtook everyone in the last month. Everything was forgotten and everyone started planning how to spend the last few days of our MBA and maximum time with our friends as much as possible. No one slept or studied. We stayed awake nights together just chatting and looking at old pictures and reliving the past two years. It was not easy to let go off the relationships that we had built in the past two years and the college which had become like a second home, so much so that none of us missed our real homes.
February was the time when most of us had decided to go out for trips and my group decided to go to Amritsar, Wagah, Vaishno Devi. It was quite a long trip and I didn’t want to miss it for anything. Last few days of togetherness and time had come to say goodbyes and head for our home towns, which, in my case was Delhi, so I didn’t take a lot of time to shift back to my home.
A major concern now was what to do till I had any information on my joining. After two years of non stop activities and a very busy schedule it was very difficult for me to sit at home and do nothing. I decided to work in a company to kill time and joined in the first week of March. Two months went by smoothly though I was waiting anxiously for my joining but no news came. Till April I was fine but it was in May when I started getting really restless and I would have called the head office myself if I hadn’t received my joining notice on the twenty ninth of May. It was all ok before that and I was happy cribbing about not receiving my joining date but hell broke lose after I got my joining date. I had to do so many things that I thought I wont be able to complete all the formalities till seventeenth, it was the day I was to leave for Chennai.
Today sitting here at the airport waiting I couldn’t help but smile when I thought how worked up I got when I had to collect all my joining documents from my college and complete the paper work. And I live in a family full of hyper active people who always get worked up at the slightest of provocation so it was very difficult to discuss anything without arguments even if it was the timing of my flight or how to fit all my bags in the car.
At five forty five finally I heard the announcement that I was to board the flight so finally got up and headed for the gate.
It was raining and that is why the flight got delayed in the first place but I was happy about it because the weather was unbearably hot from the past one week. As I boarded the flight I thought about the new journey that I was embarking upon. As soon as I settled down I started feeling really sleepy so dozed off and before I knew I was in Chennai.
My first thought as I came out of the airport was I hope the place is close to the airport as I was tired of sitting. My entire day was spent in sitting and waiting for something or the other to happen. But I was proved wrong. As I headed for the pre paid taxi I realized a lot of rickshaw guys approaching me and saying something that I did not understand and then it dawned on me that I was in a place where Tamil was spoken and I knew nothing of that language and I panicked at the thought of not being able to make the taxi driver understand where I had to go. I was lucky as he knew how to speak English and my day was saved but also told me that the place I was supposed to go to was 35 kms and will take at least two hours and I groaned but I had no choice.
He said he took many shortcuts and that is why we were able to reach forty five minutes earlier than we were supposed to and I could not doubt that simply because I didn’t know the geographical ABCD of Chennai and the thought of getting lost in an unknown city at night was terrifying enough for me to believe the driver.
I finally reached the Polaris campus tired and battered by the potholed road at around eleven I was too tired to notice how my office looked like that too at night and was greeted by four guards who to my dismay did not understand English or Hindi and I did not understand what they spoke and finally one gentleman came to my rescue who knew English and asked me if I was the management trainee and I said yes. He then asked one of the guards to carry my luggage to my room and asked me to follow him to the reception there he handed me an I card and a small sachet which had a green chilly and a toffee and I was confused as to what it was and asked him and he just smiled. After that I went straight to my room or rather a dormitory as it was a huge hall which apart from me had thirteen more girls staying there, who were all asleep. He left and I found a bed slumped on it and slept but was woken up in the middle of night because I found myself shivering, weird though but it was true the AC in the room was too effective for comfort and I did not have a blanket while the others did and that is why they were so blissfully asleep and I was chattering I tried to sleep with a single sheet but to no avail. I remember staying awake till three o clock and I don’t know when sleep took over me finally....
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
CHAPTER 1-THE DAY THAT WAS....
December 26th 2006
Gurgaon,
Haryana
5:00 am
It’s still dark outside, raining and very cold. The winters up north are famous to break spirits of people who are not so familiar with it and never before experienced them. I am lucky as I was born in Delhi and have seen twenty three such winters so I m quite accustomed to them. But today it is cold even for me and since it is raining and the sky is grey. Now, I am very optimistic kind of person and I like bright sunny days but the dull weather outside is doing nothing to lift my spirits. The dark clouds and the lightening skies every now and then are giving very ominous signs that it is going to be a very long and difficult day.
I am struggling to get out from my bed as it is not easy to leave the comfortable warmth of the bed and step on the cold marble floor, even if it is only to switch the geyser on. I drag myself out and the cold hits me like a slap, shivering I go to the bathroom and switch the geyser on. This is the routine which is followed every day religiously in winters. Any one who has a class early in the morning gets up at six, switches the geyser on and goes back to sleep only to get up an hour later and get ready for the class. But today I am unable to do it. The house is very quiet; the other seven people living in the same house with me are still asleep, totally unaware of the storm brewing in the skies and in my head.
After a few minutes of pondering and lazying around I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee. Today is a big day, I said to myself. I felt gloomy and low, the past two weeks went by quickly, it was an eventful week with the college fest and placement going on simultaneously, and it had become hectic. I witnessed the extent to which we could stretch our limits. Nobody I knew had slept for more than three hours in the past one week trying and managing the various events in the fests as well as attending the pre-placement sessions of various companies visiting the campus for placements. It was weird contrast that we were living, in the morning we would dress up in chic business suits, look like managers and attend placement process and in the evenings we would be running around, shouting, trying to get the work which was assigned to us, done. Particularly in my case I was made responsible for certain dance performances for the cultural events and being a participant and a choreographer, my life was all the more difficult. In the evenings my house would get converted into a dance studio as we would have different groups rehearsing in the three halls that we had in our house. We lived in this huge bungalow and our house was famous for its parties not only for people who lived there but others as well who wanted to throw parties even if they didn’t know us but they surely knew about our house s they would come and request if they could organize one there because we had ample space and they didn’t.
But all that was over and I was jolted back to the present by my alarm ringing in my room. It was the first time in my life I had woken up before the alarm went off. I rushed to my room to switch it off, fearing that I might wake up someone else. By now I was fully awake and the thought that I had a job interview was hovering in my mind, sending shivers down my spine every now and then.
Usually on the day of an interview ones day starts with a confusion about what to wear as people want to show up in their best of their formals, exhibiting their best of their behaviors, but today I did not feel that kind of an anxiety. I thought what the heck it is just an interview I will wear what I feel like, I don’t need to dress up for that. I opened my cupboard and stood for a full five minutes in front of it wondering what to wear, something which could reflect my state of mind. I was tired of all the placement talk going on in the campus for over a month now. Though I had not really attended any of the interviews before this one, I was getting tired of all the big talk about a dream company and a pay package and what not. After being an enthusiastic participant in all these discussions initially I had slowly become a silent spectator. Not that I did not care about where I will be placed but I was beginning to get exhausted. After all how long can one go about speculating, hoping, imagining, and praying about where one wants to be and what one wants to be. My state of mind and my anxiety can be understood only by someone who has been through the MBA grind and the hell called placement process.
To add to my miseries I felt soreness in my throat, beginning of a viral infection, I thought and groaned at the thought. No better day to fall ill than the day of your interview.
Finally I chose what I wanted to wear and went to the bathroom. Six o clock and I thought I have ample time.
What is usually a one hour session of getting ready for the college was over in just fifteen minutes. I did not even bother to wear my contact lenses (that was in case I m rejected I might need to cry and then obviously I wont wait to remove my lenses and cry). I was surprised at my own laziness.
After I was ready I thought what next and headed to the kitchen to eat something as I did not want hunger cramps during interview. Bread butter would do I thought.
I collected all my files and gave myself one last look in the mirror. At times I laughed at this entire process of getting dressed and then going for job interviews with a folder in your hand, standing in the lounge waiting of your turn for interview. Me and my room mate used to used to call everyone dressed in formals for the placement as “Jeetendra” of old Hindi movies who would go for interviews everyday for want of job and scanned newspapers everyday for vacancies and would knock the door of every possible company for any kind of job as he was in desperate need for a job, he so poor he does not even have money to take a bus, poor guy has to walk and is on the verge of falling down on the road because of exhaustion and heat. We would fall on the floor laughing after drawing such similarities between the hero and ourselves the only difference being the hero did not know where he was going and we knew we were going to our office and appearing for a known company. But today that kind of hilarity was missing from my situation as I did not want to draw any similarities between myself and anyone else.
Normally whenever any one from our flat went for any placement interviews we would hug that person and wish her all the best but I did not want to meet anyone today before going. I don’t know why but I didn’t want to talk to anyone or meet anyone. Not wanting to wake up anyone I stepped outside in the porch. The rain had stopped but the sky was still grey. Whatever little spirits I had went down further. Cold, rains and grey skies was a deadly combination to dampen anyone’s spirit especially on the day of an interview and when the person is aware of a violent flu knocking on the door.
The routine today was slightly different as I was supposed to go to the company office for the interview which was not more than two kilometers from where I lived. Easy I thought. But I was wrong. The cold prevents not only people like me or animals from venturing out in such weather but even the brave rickshaw walas and so none was around. Walk I said to myself, it will help me clear my mind but the fog and mist not only dampens spirits but clothes as well so I had to find some way to reach the place without getting damp and wet. Finally after at least twenty minutes of waiting I found a rickshaw. Now walking in the fog is a different thing but sitting in an open rickshaw and braving the chilly winds is a different ball game all together.
Udyog Vihar, I told him and after a minor argument about the exorbitant amount he was charging I gave in. I did not want to get into any arguments at eight in the morning.
On my way I met other candidates from my college going for the same interview. There was an amazing phenomenon that I observed during placement season. No matter how close friends one was with someone , at the day of the interview they are always competitors, and god forbid if only one of them got selected they even became enemies but for some time. All that of course was temporary and never hampered friendships in the long run infact it strengthened it because at the end of the day one will still demand a party at pind baluchi if any one from a group got selected and still hug him/her, cry the tears of joy and do everything that friends normally do in case of a good news. And it was the same feeling when I saw some of my friends, dressed to kill, all set.
“Tees rupiya” said the rickshaw wala as I reached my destination. I paid him and headed for the gate where I found a tall, burly guard who asked (read ordered) me to sign the visitors book.
After taking directions from the guard I headed for the place I was suppose to go and came to this big glass door and anybody noticing my face would have known I was visibly impressed. It was one offices which people dream about and when I say that I don’t mean that it was beautiful or anything but it gave me a sense of urgency, an urgency to become someone successful (and I really cant explain why I felt like that). Though it was how office a multinational should be big, swank and with a good ambience. Christmas had just gone by and I could find Christmas decorations everywhere, Christmas trees, dolls, Santa, mistletoe, stars. Everything spelt cheerfulness. Good sign I thought first sign of brightness and cheerfulness since morning.
All the people who had come for the interview were asked to wait at reception area. Me and others from my college started discussing the day. In between my conversation with others I stole glances to check out the office not wanting my friends to know that I was nervous as well as eager to get in this organization. Right in the center there was a water fountain which I don’t know why I really liked, maybe because most B-school students are shown such rosy pictures about the corporate world and they start thinking its all about swank offices and smartly dressed people.
About twenty minutes of waiting a lady walked in and said “hi I am Cheena, can I have your CVs”. She was our facilitator from the HR department. Dutifully we gave our CVs and then began another session of waiting and anticipation. Sitting in a glamorous office in the comfortable warmth away from the cold and wet weather outside would have been a very inviting thought but for some reason it just increased my anxiety and nervousness, and that was maybe because today my fate was going to be decided which prevented me from feeling comfortable. For some reason sitting there I felt if I don’t make it today I won’t get a second chance.
There was no particular reason as to why I was so in awe of POLARIS but during our numerous trips to the convergys dhaba to have awesome paranthas and coffee to escape the boring mess food at night with my friends, we used to pass from this office so many times. I remember calling the road on which this office was situated as the road to our dreams. Big names like TCS, Genpact, AMEX, and of course Polaris was situated and these were like dream companies for most of us. And today sitting in this office somehow made me think about all those trips and those instances when we would stand in front of these offices at night and say this is going to be my company. But whenever I passed through the Polaris Towers just one thought came to my mind, this company does not come to our campus for placements.
I don’t know for how long I was immersed in these thoughts when Cheena appeared again and asked us to follow her to a room which was a training room probably with like a hundred computers a blackboard and a speaker’s podium and all kinds of posters on the wall which said something about data security and data encryption. Being a non techie all that didn’t make any sense to me at all. Brace yourself I thought, here I was trying to get myself placed into an IT company which operated in the finance domain and I was a zero at tech and a core marketing student which meant negligible finance knowledge. Infact both the domains scared me at times. I am crazy I thought. My presence in that office did not make sense to me but still I thought my life depended on it and waiting made things worse.
Hunger and illness forgotten I kept waiting and praying and hoping. Cheena appeared again this time to divide us in groups of eight fore the GDs. Forty people, five groups and eight people in a group, I can handle that I thought. She said GDs will start in some time and again the process of waiting began. She informed us that we were suppose to go to the fifth floor for the GD. Mine was the third group which meant at least two hours will be spent on gds alone and it was ten already.
Going through the various floors I could not stop but appreciate the office, it was nice and I liked it. I had seen offices before BPOs mostly which were famous for being swish and swank and glamorous but that was only because the work that was done there was so mundane that people had to make bright offices to make people stay awake at nights.
We entered a small conference room and sat down and waited. After about ten minutes a guy entered the room, he was our moderator for the GD. He introduced himself and all I could remember after ten minutes was that his name was Mr Rajiv Sikka and that he was from Delhi as I was so tensed that whatever he said did not get registered in my brains all I wanted was to get done with the GD as soon as possible. But his way of talking was very friendly and did not have the attitude that we generally associate with very senior people. He gave the topic for GD and we began.
After about one and half hours all the GDs were over and we were again waiting for the results. The word results was terrifying right from class one and till this day. So someone walked and announced that the results would be declared after the lunch and we should proceed to the cafeteria for lunch. I was not hungry but I desperately wanted to distract myself from thinking about results and so I headed for cafeteria. It was a nice and clean cafeteria. The HR people had reserved a section for us so that we do not have to search for a place to sit and they provided us with lunch and I thought how thoughtful it is for a company to provide lunch to a group of forty people out of which more than half will be eliminated as was a rule with most GDs. They did not need to bear that cost but they did and it reflected the company’s values. If they were so thoughtful for a group of management students who were not their employees yet, how thoughtful will they be for the employees I said to myself. The food was good, a totally north Indian menu. After observing what I had seen up till that point I really liked the company and I thought it would be fun working here.
An hour later we were again gathered in the room and Cheena again entered. Deathly silence in the room, nobody dared to breathe. She said out of forty they have short listed eleven people for the next round and I could see people collecting their stuff already. She started announcing the names of the selected candidates, one by one and slowly (or it was only I who felt she was slow). After an agonizing five minutes and ten names she announced my name, the last name and I thought I could breathe again, I was in for the next round.
Now GDs were always fun but interviews were exactly opposite. Even during mock interviews in college there were times when I felt my voice was somewhere down in my throat, lost, unable to rise up to my mouth. So plainly speaking I was terrified of the interviews.
I was the fifth person to be interviewed and what an interview that was. I will never be able to forget it. It was either my confidence or the person who interviewed me was too good at his work because my interview went on for about fifty minutes and not even for a minute did I feel that I was nervous, he was simply amazing, started of as if it was a chat session and nothing more. He asked me all kinds of questions and fifty minutes were over even before I knew it. In the end all he said was “OK garima it was nice talking to you, wish you all the best”. He was the same person who had come for our GD, Mr. Rajiv Sikka, and after I came out of the room and on my way back to the hall where we were all gathered I kept wondering either he is too down to earth or all this friendliness is just a mask, this is not what I had in my mind when I thought about corporate big wigs, I always thought about them as merciless and full of attitude but this person was (or seemed) so different and friendly.
Wait and more wait came my way. The sad part was after me there were about six more people to be interviewed so I had to wait for a long time before I knew my fate.
After all eleven of us were interviewed we gathered again in the same lab like room and waited for the results. At around six fifteen Mr Rajiv sikka walked in and the room fell silent once again. He walked in along with cheena. He had some envelopes in his hands and all eyes immediately went on them.
“It was a great day”, he said and started off with how delighted he was to meet us and talk to us and appreciated our knowledge and our enthusiasm but recruitment was more about fitting square pegs in square holes in short right fitment and which is why we would understand why some of us have not been selected and his words sounded ominous and once again my anxiety reached fever pitch. Finally he said “now we will announce the names of the selected candidates. They are- Garima saini and” and after that he took two more names and for some minutes it did not get registered in my brains and it was only after Cheena asked me to come forward and collect my offer letter, I came back to my senses. I did not understand how to react, should I shout, jump cry what do I do and I started thinking what do people in college do when they get placed. I was finally PLACED in POLARIS. People around me started clapping and some came forward to hug me but I still did not know how to react. I went forward and accepted my offer letter from Mr. Sikka along with that he handed me a packet and a BIG chocolate and then shook hands with me. The chocolate by the way was not meant only for the selected candidates but for the ones not selected as well and I thought it was a really nice gesture to think about not only the selected ones but others as well. The other two people who were selected were my friends so we went into this victory huddle for some time and then Cheena and Mr. Sikka gain congratulated us and welcomed us to the Polaris family and it felt really good being called a fellow Polarite by him.
Calls kept coming, my parents, friends and relatives kept calling and congratulating for my placement. I reached my flat and my roomies hugged me and started giving me what we called placement bumps and our chatting and partying went on till two at night after which I was too tired to even talk to anyone. It was only after I was alone I dared to open up that packet and saw its contents. It had a small diary a pen and a pen holder along with my offer letter. I had seen so many people getting placed but saw none of them being treated like this by their employers, or being given mementoes like the one that I got.
These were small things though but still made me feel really happy and proud to be part of a company which treated its employees as family. My offer letter mentioned my joining to be between may and July and my joining place to be Chennai and the name made me a little uncomfortable as I had heard too much about the place being harsh on north Indians and the food and all but I thought that is just the induction part I was sure I will be in the Gurgaon office only ( I don’t know why I was so sure and wrong as well).I also thought it was not so bad and being a part of the corporate world now I was required to be mobile and all and tried my best not to feel bad about it.
The entire day was very eventful as well as hectic as I had predicted in the morning but turned out to be more positive and bright than I had imagined it to be.
With all these thought I drifted off to sleep. It would be a new day and a new world tomorrow.....
Gurgaon,
Haryana
5:00 am
It’s still dark outside, raining and very cold. The winters up north are famous to break spirits of people who are not so familiar with it and never before experienced them. I am lucky as I was born in Delhi and have seen twenty three such winters so I m quite accustomed to them. But today it is cold even for me and since it is raining and the sky is grey. Now, I am very optimistic kind of person and I like bright sunny days but the dull weather outside is doing nothing to lift my spirits. The dark clouds and the lightening skies every now and then are giving very ominous signs that it is going to be a very long and difficult day.
I am struggling to get out from my bed as it is not easy to leave the comfortable warmth of the bed and step on the cold marble floor, even if it is only to switch the geyser on. I drag myself out and the cold hits me like a slap, shivering I go to the bathroom and switch the geyser on. This is the routine which is followed every day religiously in winters. Any one who has a class early in the morning gets up at six, switches the geyser on and goes back to sleep only to get up an hour later and get ready for the class. But today I am unable to do it. The house is very quiet; the other seven people living in the same house with me are still asleep, totally unaware of the storm brewing in the skies and in my head.
After a few minutes of pondering and lazying around I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee. Today is a big day, I said to myself. I felt gloomy and low, the past two weeks went by quickly, it was an eventful week with the college fest and placement going on simultaneously, and it had become hectic. I witnessed the extent to which we could stretch our limits. Nobody I knew had slept for more than three hours in the past one week trying and managing the various events in the fests as well as attending the pre-placement sessions of various companies visiting the campus for placements. It was weird contrast that we were living, in the morning we would dress up in chic business suits, look like managers and attend placement process and in the evenings we would be running around, shouting, trying to get the work which was assigned to us, done. Particularly in my case I was made responsible for certain dance performances for the cultural events and being a participant and a choreographer, my life was all the more difficult. In the evenings my house would get converted into a dance studio as we would have different groups rehearsing in the three halls that we had in our house. We lived in this huge bungalow and our house was famous for its parties not only for people who lived there but others as well who wanted to throw parties even if they didn’t know us but they surely knew about our house s they would come and request if they could organize one there because we had ample space and they didn’t.
But all that was over and I was jolted back to the present by my alarm ringing in my room. It was the first time in my life I had woken up before the alarm went off. I rushed to my room to switch it off, fearing that I might wake up someone else. By now I was fully awake and the thought that I had a job interview was hovering in my mind, sending shivers down my spine every now and then.
Usually on the day of an interview ones day starts with a confusion about what to wear as people want to show up in their best of their formals, exhibiting their best of their behaviors, but today I did not feel that kind of an anxiety. I thought what the heck it is just an interview I will wear what I feel like, I don’t need to dress up for that. I opened my cupboard and stood for a full five minutes in front of it wondering what to wear, something which could reflect my state of mind. I was tired of all the placement talk going on in the campus for over a month now. Though I had not really attended any of the interviews before this one, I was getting tired of all the big talk about a dream company and a pay package and what not. After being an enthusiastic participant in all these discussions initially I had slowly become a silent spectator. Not that I did not care about where I will be placed but I was beginning to get exhausted. After all how long can one go about speculating, hoping, imagining, and praying about where one wants to be and what one wants to be. My state of mind and my anxiety can be understood only by someone who has been through the MBA grind and the hell called placement process.
To add to my miseries I felt soreness in my throat, beginning of a viral infection, I thought and groaned at the thought. No better day to fall ill than the day of your interview.
Finally I chose what I wanted to wear and went to the bathroom. Six o clock and I thought I have ample time.
What is usually a one hour session of getting ready for the college was over in just fifteen minutes. I did not even bother to wear my contact lenses (that was in case I m rejected I might need to cry and then obviously I wont wait to remove my lenses and cry). I was surprised at my own laziness.
After I was ready I thought what next and headed to the kitchen to eat something as I did not want hunger cramps during interview. Bread butter would do I thought.
I collected all my files and gave myself one last look in the mirror. At times I laughed at this entire process of getting dressed and then going for job interviews with a folder in your hand, standing in the lounge waiting of your turn for interview. Me and my room mate used to used to call everyone dressed in formals for the placement as “Jeetendra” of old Hindi movies who would go for interviews everyday for want of job and scanned newspapers everyday for vacancies and would knock the door of every possible company for any kind of job as he was in desperate need for a job, he so poor he does not even have money to take a bus, poor guy has to walk and is on the verge of falling down on the road because of exhaustion and heat. We would fall on the floor laughing after drawing such similarities between the hero and ourselves the only difference being the hero did not know where he was going and we knew we were going to our office and appearing for a known company. But today that kind of hilarity was missing from my situation as I did not want to draw any similarities between myself and anyone else.
Normally whenever any one from our flat went for any placement interviews we would hug that person and wish her all the best but I did not want to meet anyone today before going. I don’t know why but I didn’t want to talk to anyone or meet anyone. Not wanting to wake up anyone I stepped outside in the porch. The rain had stopped but the sky was still grey. Whatever little spirits I had went down further. Cold, rains and grey skies was a deadly combination to dampen anyone’s spirit especially on the day of an interview and when the person is aware of a violent flu knocking on the door.
The routine today was slightly different as I was supposed to go to the company office for the interview which was not more than two kilometers from where I lived. Easy I thought. But I was wrong. The cold prevents not only people like me or animals from venturing out in such weather but even the brave rickshaw walas and so none was around. Walk I said to myself, it will help me clear my mind but the fog and mist not only dampens spirits but clothes as well so I had to find some way to reach the place without getting damp and wet. Finally after at least twenty minutes of waiting I found a rickshaw. Now walking in the fog is a different thing but sitting in an open rickshaw and braving the chilly winds is a different ball game all together.
Udyog Vihar, I told him and after a minor argument about the exorbitant amount he was charging I gave in. I did not want to get into any arguments at eight in the morning.
On my way I met other candidates from my college going for the same interview. There was an amazing phenomenon that I observed during placement season. No matter how close friends one was with someone , at the day of the interview they are always competitors, and god forbid if only one of them got selected they even became enemies but for some time. All that of course was temporary and never hampered friendships in the long run infact it strengthened it because at the end of the day one will still demand a party at pind baluchi if any one from a group got selected and still hug him/her, cry the tears of joy and do everything that friends normally do in case of a good news. And it was the same feeling when I saw some of my friends, dressed to kill, all set.
“Tees rupiya” said the rickshaw wala as I reached my destination. I paid him and headed for the gate where I found a tall, burly guard who asked (read ordered) me to sign the visitors book.
After taking directions from the guard I headed for the place I was suppose to go and came to this big glass door and anybody noticing my face would have known I was visibly impressed. It was one offices which people dream about and when I say that I don’t mean that it was beautiful or anything but it gave me a sense of urgency, an urgency to become someone successful (and I really cant explain why I felt like that). Though it was how office a multinational should be big, swank and with a good ambience. Christmas had just gone by and I could find Christmas decorations everywhere, Christmas trees, dolls, Santa, mistletoe, stars. Everything spelt cheerfulness. Good sign I thought first sign of brightness and cheerfulness since morning.
All the people who had come for the interview were asked to wait at reception area. Me and others from my college started discussing the day. In between my conversation with others I stole glances to check out the office not wanting my friends to know that I was nervous as well as eager to get in this organization. Right in the center there was a water fountain which I don’t know why I really liked, maybe because most B-school students are shown such rosy pictures about the corporate world and they start thinking its all about swank offices and smartly dressed people.
About twenty minutes of waiting a lady walked in and said “hi I am Cheena, can I have your CVs”. She was our facilitator from the HR department. Dutifully we gave our CVs and then began another session of waiting and anticipation. Sitting in a glamorous office in the comfortable warmth away from the cold and wet weather outside would have been a very inviting thought but for some reason it just increased my anxiety and nervousness, and that was maybe because today my fate was going to be decided which prevented me from feeling comfortable. For some reason sitting there I felt if I don’t make it today I won’t get a second chance.
There was no particular reason as to why I was so in awe of POLARIS but during our numerous trips to the convergys dhaba to have awesome paranthas and coffee to escape the boring mess food at night with my friends, we used to pass from this office so many times. I remember calling the road on which this office was situated as the road to our dreams. Big names like TCS, Genpact, AMEX, and of course Polaris was situated and these were like dream companies for most of us. And today sitting in this office somehow made me think about all those trips and those instances when we would stand in front of these offices at night and say this is going to be my company. But whenever I passed through the Polaris Towers just one thought came to my mind, this company does not come to our campus for placements.
I don’t know for how long I was immersed in these thoughts when Cheena appeared again and asked us to follow her to a room which was a training room probably with like a hundred computers a blackboard and a speaker’s podium and all kinds of posters on the wall which said something about data security and data encryption. Being a non techie all that didn’t make any sense to me at all. Brace yourself I thought, here I was trying to get myself placed into an IT company which operated in the finance domain and I was a zero at tech and a core marketing student which meant negligible finance knowledge. Infact both the domains scared me at times. I am crazy I thought. My presence in that office did not make sense to me but still I thought my life depended on it and waiting made things worse.
Hunger and illness forgotten I kept waiting and praying and hoping. Cheena appeared again this time to divide us in groups of eight fore the GDs. Forty people, five groups and eight people in a group, I can handle that I thought. She said GDs will start in some time and again the process of waiting began. She informed us that we were suppose to go to the fifth floor for the GD. Mine was the third group which meant at least two hours will be spent on gds alone and it was ten already.
Going through the various floors I could not stop but appreciate the office, it was nice and I liked it. I had seen offices before BPOs mostly which were famous for being swish and swank and glamorous but that was only because the work that was done there was so mundane that people had to make bright offices to make people stay awake at nights.
We entered a small conference room and sat down and waited. After about ten minutes a guy entered the room, he was our moderator for the GD. He introduced himself and all I could remember after ten minutes was that his name was Mr Rajiv Sikka and that he was from Delhi as I was so tensed that whatever he said did not get registered in my brains all I wanted was to get done with the GD as soon as possible. But his way of talking was very friendly and did not have the attitude that we generally associate with very senior people. He gave the topic for GD and we began.
After about one and half hours all the GDs were over and we were again waiting for the results. The word results was terrifying right from class one and till this day. So someone walked and announced that the results would be declared after the lunch and we should proceed to the cafeteria for lunch. I was not hungry but I desperately wanted to distract myself from thinking about results and so I headed for cafeteria. It was a nice and clean cafeteria. The HR people had reserved a section for us so that we do not have to search for a place to sit and they provided us with lunch and I thought how thoughtful it is for a company to provide lunch to a group of forty people out of which more than half will be eliminated as was a rule with most GDs. They did not need to bear that cost but they did and it reflected the company’s values. If they were so thoughtful for a group of management students who were not their employees yet, how thoughtful will they be for the employees I said to myself. The food was good, a totally north Indian menu. After observing what I had seen up till that point I really liked the company and I thought it would be fun working here.
An hour later we were again gathered in the room and Cheena again entered. Deathly silence in the room, nobody dared to breathe. She said out of forty they have short listed eleven people for the next round and I could see people collecting their stuff already. She started announcing the names of the selected candidates, one by one and slowly (or it was only I who felt she was slow). After an agonizing five minutes and ten names she announced my name, the last name and I thought I could breathe again, I was in for the next round.
Now GDs were always fun but interviews were exactly opposite. Even during mock interviews in college there were times when I felt my voice was somewhere down in my throat, lost, unable to rise up to my mouth. So plainly speaking I was terrified of the interviews.
I was the fifth person to be interviewed and what an interview that was. I will never be able to forget it. It was either my confidence or the person who interviewed me was too good at his work because my interview went on for about fifty minutes and not even for a minute did I feel that I was nervous, he was simply amazing, started of as if it was a chat session and nothing more. He asked me all kinds of questions and fifty minutes were over even before I knew it. In the end all he said was “OK garima it was nice talking to you, wish you all the best”. He was the same person who had come for our GD, Mr. Rajiv Sikka, and after I came out of the room and on my way back to the hall where we were all gathered I kept wondering either he is too down to earth or all this friendliness is just a mask, this is not what I had in my mind when I thought about corporate big wigs, I always thought about them as merciless and full of attitude but this person was (or seemed) so different and friendly.
Wait and more wait came my way. The sad part was after me there were about six more people to be interviewed so I had to wait for a long time before I knew my fate.
After all eleven of us were interviewed we gathered again in the same lab like room and waited for the results. At around six fifteen Mr Rajiv sikka walked in and the room fell silent once again. He walked in along with cheena. He had some envelopes in his hands and all eyes immediately went on them.
“It was a great day”, he said and started off with how delighted he was to meet us and talk to us and appreciated our knowledge and our enthusiasm but recruitment was more about fitting square pegs in square holes in short right fitment and which is why we would understand why some of us have not been selected and his words sounded ominous and once again my anxiety reached fever pitch. Finally he said “now we will announce the names of the selected candidates. They are- Garima saini and” and after that he took two more names and for some minutes it did not get registered in my brains and it was only after Cheena asked me to come forward and collect my offer letter, I came back to my senses. I did not understand how to react, should I shout, jump cry what do I do and I started thinking what do people in college do when they get placed. I was finally PLACED in POLARIS. People around me started clapping and some came forward to hug me but I still did not know how to react. I went forward and accepted my offer letter from Mr. Sikka along with that he handed me a packet and a BIG chocolate and then shook hands with me. The chocolate by the way was not meant only for the selected candidates but for the ones not selected as well and I thought it was a really nice gesture to think about not only the selected ones but others as well. The other two people who were selected were my friends so we went into this victory huddle for some time and then Cheena and Mr. Sikka gain congratulated us and welcomed us to the Polaris family and it felt really good being called a fellow Polarite by him.
Calls kept coming, my parents, friends and relatives kept calling and congratulating for my placement. I reached my flat and my roomies hugged me and started giving me what we called placement bumps and our chatting and partying went on till two at night after which I was too tired to even talk to anyone. It was only after I was alone I dared to open up that packet and saw its contents. It had a small diary a pen and a pen holder along with my offer letter. I had seen so many people getting placed but saw none of them being treated like this by their employers, or being given mementoes like the one that I got.
These were small things though but still made me feel really happy and proud to be part of a company which treated its employees as family. My offer letter mentioned my joining to be between may and July and my joining place to be Chennai and the name made me a little uncomfortable as I had heard too much about the place being harsh on north Indians and the food and all but I thought that is just the induction part I was sure I will be in the Gurgaon office only ( I don’t know why I was so sure and wrong as well).I also thought it was not so bad and being a part of the corporate world now I was required to be mobile and all and tried my best not to feel bad about it.
The entire day was very eventful as well as hectic as I had predicted in the morning but turned out to be more positive and bright than I had imagined it to be.
With all these thought I drifted off to sleep. It would be a new day and a new world tomorrow.....
INTRODUCTION
This is a little book about the day i got placed. It contains snapshots from my life in a B- school and the placement grind that we all went through at the end of our MBA...
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