Being Happy and optimistic I begin this article with mixed feeling. Happy, for successfully completing a revolution around the sun with my company. Optimistic, about the rest of the years to spend.
08 July 2011, It was a cloudy Friday, the day I was supposed to report to my company. Those days I was staying in a place called Domlur (Bangaloreans obviously heard of it) and my reporting location was in Koramangala. Since the mentioned time was at 8 in the morning, I along with one of my college buddies had to take an auto-rickshaw from Domlur-Koramangala. We had to pay a hefty auto charge only for travelling in Bangalore when the traffic was very minimal (that’s so common in Bangalore). Reaching the destination, we were too eager and little nervous waiting for everything to kick start. At first sight, the building looked like an apartment built using only match-boxes. Having said that I thought of diverting my mind by hunting good looking girls around (this is common too ;)) hoping for that charismatic girl to come with a magical wand and raise few eye-brows, sadly I ended up finding a few of my own college girls and started mumbling “ NOT AGAIN ”
Moving On, briskly placing autographs before our names in a sheet of paper like an upcoming Bollywood star, we all were given a temporary i-card. Later, we were asked to board one of the buses and we did just that blindly even without knowing where we are headed to. Choosing the bus which consisted of highest number of good looking girls (well, better than zero). I was overwhelmed to know that the so called “Match-Box” was not my workplace.
The bus drove for about half an hour and reached Sarjapur, Head office. In that thin period, many Indian languages were flowing non-stop around me. One I heard the most was “Neenga Tamila?” , “Endha ooru macha?” (no hard feelings, its fact :D). Luckily, we reached. Instantly feeling too proud to be a part of the company, I was blindly following the queue (like a sheep following the herd for grazing) and found the way to conference hall.
The next couple of hours was literal “Bheja-Fry” as a nerd-looking lady started off with her repeated induction words. Feeling too hungry and exhausted as I skipped my breakfast, I was desperately in need of a break. Right then, an astral sound came to my rescue calling for a brief tea-break. As soon as I heard that we are getting something to munch (for free), I left no time to join the line midway to make sure I get it before it’s all over.
Coming back fresh and recharged, I was expecting something better than pre-tea session. Luckily, a middle aged, smart looking guy came up with a fluent speech which was a distant dream for the former girl. Explaining about the expectations in the company, he succeeded in carrying my energy to float for next couple of hours. Besides the fact that the session was interesting, I was suffering from lack of heavy food for few hours. Naturally, when he asked us to disperse for the Lunch I was over the moon.
Honestly, I am one of those who believe that the best way of pleasing any guest is by the taste and quality of the food we serve them ;). Seems my company had similar thought and they came up with good food. They say “A lot can happen over a cup of coffee”. Infact, “A lot more can happen over a plate of food”:D. It was then, where I had a brief and formal chat with a few strangers from different parts of India and turned them into acquaintances. Post-Lunch, we decided to take a mini-tour around the campus to check the infrastructure, the view did not disappoint us. Only thing disappointing was my watch, which was crawling at snail’s pace in session but was accelerating at the speed of Bugatti Veyron outside.
Coming back from a heavy Lunch I was totally drowsy (I’m sure most of us were). Just like rubbing salt on the wound, the same lady was back with loads of documents. This time we had to do some paper work, signing on the bond, contracts and all the other important papers. It was too obvious session post-lunch, the peculiar reason would be that most of us were sluggish to go through every point mentioned in the bond/contract. The lady started off with her redundant use of words. If I were to collect a wheat grain each time she used the word “Professional”, I would have sold wheat in kilos for a month. Only one thing could have broken all this drama, Tea-Break (no prizes for guessing: P)
Having couple of tea shots, I was off with my drowsiness and back to where I was supposed to be. Though it was the same nerd lady, I was used to her by now and her presence or absence was not making difference anymore. After few minutes, she came up circulating a piece of paper which had our coming week’s schedule mentioned and it reminded me of my school time-table. Right then, a guy interrupted and gave us some valuable information about transportation, rooms and useful information about paying guest availability for Bangalore Freshers.
When he was done with his brief talk, we were provided with an upgraded temp i-card (with photo) which was valid for next 3 days. At this point, I started feeling it was too much to take for a single day as I had developed a severe headache too. Luckily, we were at the climax of the drama. After the session, I headed back to bus following the herd of sheep. Choosing the bus which consisted more number of vacant seats than good looking girls (which was more important ;)), I had a peaceful journey on the way back and ended the day on a happy mood.
