Blogging is a very good way to express yourself. I am using this platform to express what ever i feel like,,, but the law of communication says that a message sent if not inferred correctly and reciprocated (comments) is an incomplete communication. John Mayer says "Say what you need to say..." (supported by Meggs :)). Ive done my part its your turn now...
Enjoy reading.
It was good time spending with U My First Blog. Had shared the deepest of my secrets with U. I had never thought it would be so abrupt but it is. Its time for a formal closure.
Its been one and a half years since I started blogging and the blog now seems to have lived its life. Though there still lies some missing links like the Mukteshwar trip post part two etc etc, but then no one is perfect in this world neither am I. So couldn't complete it.
Once upon a time their was a lot of enthusiasm around writing on this blog but somehow that enthusiasm and the original inspiration has some where fizzled out.
It is like nearing the natural death, the time signals that one has to go now, it is the time when your relatives stops coming to your house, it is the time when existence is, but the motivation is missing.
My Next best thing could have been the last best thing of my life, if what happened today with me would have happened a bit differently. 3rd September 2009. Time 8:30 a.m.: The day was bright and sunny. It was the time for me to go to the office. I had never thought that such a bright day might end up in a bad shape. The office was as usual, nothing new. For people who dont know the latest in my office, here it is. We are still not having the licensed version of Microsoft 2003. So in our office things are going haywire. My boss was also upset of the fact that he was still not having a laptop to work on or a permanent place to sit (unlike us). In the course of the daily routine he had given me a cheque to be deposited in Standard chartered atm the last day, but due to pausity of time and lack of knowledge of the Gurgaon city I ended up deciding that I should deposit the cheque the next day (3rd september) definitely. So here I was in the evening of the day which was bright and sunny in the morning to a little gloomy in the evening. Time 7:00 pm: I just checked that I coudnt clear the NTPC interview, as the result showed on the net after a good two months. I was sad and then decided to go to sector 14 to have a walk and also deposit my boss's cheque there. God, as people say, has his own ways of teling that He is still there watching us. He makes all arrangements himself and makes everyone realize that he is there, somewhere. As I was about to leave Ashutosh called and we made a decided to meet at the sector 14 market. To my surprize when I reached there I came to know that he had also called Mayur there. We met and I bought some dayly stuff like soap etc frm the market. But as I was busy doing this, God was planning something different for me that evening. It started pouring like cats and dogs. Heavy shower poured from heaven. We decided to sit on the stairs of one of the shop and talk. It was a relief for me to be among friends that evening. The sadness seemed to be disappearing form me. We talked and talked. But the rains denied to stop pouring. I asked them to excuse me for a while so that I could get my phone recharged. In the lane on the market where we were taking shelter I could find no mobile recharge shop. I realized how difficult it can be sometimes, not to be able to find a such shop in in the most popular markets of the city. One shop was there, but on the opposite lane and for that I was to go through the heavy rains, so I decided to return to where Ashutosh and Mayur were sitting. We again got engrossed in chatting. I must confess it was raining heavily that night. The night which I would never forget. We then decided to have pizza at dominos. Looked in to the menu and ordered some pizza and pasta. Suddenly I realized I had to go to get my mobile recharged. Before this I had already fininshed depositing my boss's cheque in the SCB atm. I again asked the two to excuse me in the meanwhile when the order was being prepared. I was waiting for my delicious pizza to be presented to me, garnished with oregano tastemaker. I quicly had a look around outside the outlet. The rain was light by now. I took long steps and crossed to go over to the other side of the lane. It was still dark and people were few. I was thinking something in my mind while I was heading towards the recharge shop. I was to take a left turn from the last shop, and I was walking in leaps and bounce, not realizing that those steps could have been my last steps, last leep, or simply stating the last lap. As I approached the last shop from where I was to take the left turn, from the far I saw that there was a pillar almost 4-5 feet from the shop's entrance. It was dark there because there was no electricity, the rains started pouring heavily again. Beyond the pillar was no shed and it was all rain. I decided not to go through the rain but be safe in the shade while walking briskly. As I approached the front of this last shop I stepped forward, and to my surprise my right foot couldnt find the ground to rest itself. The next moment I plunged my self flat in a 6 feet deep square earth dug in front of the shop. I can only remember that when I took the wrong step I fell flat 6 feet from the ground. I was wearing my glasses and as I fell my face went in to something that tasted as a mixture of mud and water. In reaction as I stood up I again slipped in because of the liquid mud inside the ditch at the construction site. I was all coverd with mud on my body. As a took the step towards the walls of the ditch I slipped and lost one of my floters in to the mud some where. In my pocket were recently drawn 1000 Rs, my gifted ipod, my mobile. My wrist watch got covered by mud. I shouted for help from inside. While still understanding if I was alright, have I lost something? But with God's grace all my body parts were in place, later I realized that I had a sprained right wrist, some scratches on the left palm and a little bit of body ache. When I called for help people gathered around on the top and two mwn pulled me up straight holding my hands. I couldnt see their faces as it was dark at that time. I did thank them and then they disappeared. All drenched in mud with one floter on my right foot I managed to remove my belongings and collect them in a polybag given to me by a tresspasser. I let the water, pouring from the nearby shop's roof, to fall on me so that I could remove the excess mud from me. In this state I went back to Dominos and told every thing to Ashutosh and Mayur. They said, that I just had a narrow escape. Many people had died falling in such kind of unattended ditches during the rainy season. I thank God for saving me from any mishappening, I did have my Dominos pizza in that state which I will never forget. I might not have been their to have that may be. I am still wondering that had there been even a single stone some where in the ditch where I fell, it could have been fatal for me. I couldnt finally get the recharge done, lost a floter but most of all I saved my life. I am happy today that I am writing at this time. I have learned one thing from this: We never know what might happen with us the next second, our life itself is very short so better keep it simple and live it the fullest and have good friends around. Mayur dropped me at my house that night in his car. It was already late but I was now safe.
Last blog written in May huh! That’s a long time just like the last post written after a long break. Today just dropping by to give some updates though frankly speaking I am just documenting things as not many follow my blog,, (are you serious? Yes) and many of my blog followers already know all the details about me nyways. Look at the number of comments received since last year,, and this one for my blogging inspiration Ms Shruti, ur last comment was posted one year ago :(. An special award for posting comments goes to Meggs :).
I need to keep posting things and hope some comments will come this time. Ok so here is the gist of how my days have been ever since my last post in May. I joined Krishna Maruti on June 1 and things have been good. Spent my first month reading some half written policies and some good books. And I should not forget to mention the most important thing I did during that time,, dozing :D. That seems good enough work for the month and even better when after dozing for a month you get a hand full of pocket money (call it salary).Next good thing is that I have bought an acoustic guitar, which I term as the first good thing bought from my first salary. Wow! It’s a cute and interesting thing; I have learned some chords as of now and still trying to steal some time from my busy schedule to practice it. My music teacher is a foreigner, Mike Herbert. Why are you looking amazed? Yes he is a good guitarist. Actually there is this online site where I have got my email id registered and it is from here that I get some video lessons which can be downloaded. Mike's way of marketing his products (guitar learning videos) is really very cool. I have received a free set of some beginner videos and I receive a personalized kind of an e mail every 3 or 4 days where Mike (in real it is an automatically generated e mail) asks about my practice and if my fingers are hurting or not etc etc. So in all I am learning something if not nothing.Next interesting event was my Bday. Was it really interesting? No,,ooo,,ooo. All day I was in office and phone calls kept on coming at least once in one hour. The office ppl came to know about the bdday thing and there they were asking for treat. And you know how these office treats can be fatal to your pocket. In the evening one of our Senior Manager managed to get hold of 7-8 pastries, all egg less coz my immediate boss couldn't have eggs wala pastry on Tuesday. We ended up having some puff pastry which had layers (no cake/bread inside) like a Pattie with cream all over. Friends I must confess it was pathetic! Each pastry was of 50 bucks :O and no one liked it. In the evening I went to Pizza Hut with my room mates and had some pizzas after a long time. Initially in IMI it was a normal thing to be in such outlet and have a pizza. I was missing my IMI days when in amphi some one used to arrange for the cake and candles and cold drinks and what not. And then the halla gulla at 12 and then the most awaited and threatful budday bumps :D. For those who do not know how it feels like; it seems as if after giving sweet food (cake) to the goat (almost me) the goat is then taken in an open area and offered at the mercy of a bunch of people to carry on the ceremony further. And finally the goat is left with a sweet pain: P. Now the sad part of the story- the day ended with some VIP very important person forgetting to wish me. I think I need to make a complaint register for her. But I have to give a benefit of 'no doubt' i.e. I knew she had forgotten the date. Next best thing was the last Saturday when I met some of my long lost friends. Met Amit, Jaya, Jeetu, and my no doubt friend ;). Ok on a serious note, I got a bit worried that day and so I decided to directly go to Delhi. On Sunday I had the GAIL exam and I stayed at Amit's room. And guess what I visited Ms Shrooti's house for the first time. Do saal me to kabhi Madame ne bulaya nahi, I thought that I should myself give an attendance :D (Just kidding :P). I had a very good weekend after a long time. Next best thing is about a news I have got today which is still in process, fingers crossed. Hope things go well :) Not mentioning here, so ask me personally. And it is not just related to me :). Guess what !! Next best thing?? I am feeling sleepy,,, and that the only thing I am good at,, so just good night :D and God bless!
Look at my blog's last post! Was written almost five months back. Are you surprised? Kind of right? I am also surprised, as if I had left an important thing of my life for the past months. Today I got a chance out of my non busy schedule to write a post for my blog and for my blog followers (flaunting as if I have many followers). Good to see me back, I know you are thinking this only. Let us see what have I got to write today ,,, ummm,, have not thought of any thing though. Ok lets start with some thing interesting, how bout few facts about what has been happening around me for the past few months?
December: We urged our director to bring in the roll in process for the placement of the students. Our Image in the industry will dissolve (How oblivion he is about the image thing, even IIPM would be more popular a choice among MBA aspirants than ours).Has any one thought of hiring a consultant? We can have that option if required, don’t worry every one will get placed. And please for God’s sake, don’t compare us with IIMs or the XLs.
Make sure you behave properly else I will leave the class and just walk away.
January: placements started. Placement week saw 3 companies I guess coz of what we call as a slow down of the Indian economy and a recession in some of world’s biggest economies. I wonder how our fate is so not dependent on us. Some people in the west (USA) wanted to make more money out of the booming real estate business and then they thought of minting money which led to the subprime crisis and so on. Wow! Many banks and financial institutions minted money and got bankrupt. No one would have even thought of Lehman vanishing from this earth but the fact is there is no company named Lehman Brothers now. We in India are said to be still better off with Australia getting the least hit by the upheaval of the various economies of the world. Though less but the wound is still deep. One would never ever forget this year ever in their life especially not an MBA qualified like me for sure. Today it seems so funny to have cleared the CAT and come here just to get annoyed by some one else’s urge to make more money.
January mid: Roll in process got the final acceptance because IIMs or the godfather have also given a green signal to it. Mamta ma’am missed a whole class just to listen ,,,sorry, just to hear our concerns. With no after effects and follow ups. She never followed up with the higher authorities regarding the placement thing after she left the class that day, how could she have done that if the higher authorities were the source of her bread and butter. Placecom had started to have its worst night mares as the days moved ahead un aware of what was going to happen next. People started abusing and fighting with each other and not even the faculty was spared. Some one abusing openly in front of a faculty in the class or some one accusing the other of not disbursing the money made out of the venture started by 18 people of the class. Or even questioning the sanctity of values or belief of the other person. As if it was the silence of the storm which was yet to come which was speaking which actually led the original instincts of the people to show as clear as the rain drop. No one knew what was coming next. One of the placecom member resigned and other took over and yet another one who was the strongest contender of all got rejected by the higher authorities (he actually didn’t deserve to be a placecom, didn’t u see how he always made fun of the way the new members were working). It was a tough time for the new members. The old members did show in class a list of around 15-16 companies which were to come to campus (of which only SBI Life got converted). Placement week ended with no pomp and show. Unlike the last years placement, which ended in one day this time only one member of our team got thru during the placement week.
February: NGO visit started. Not many were eager to carry on with the internship but it was good for one reason. Our minds got diverted for some time from the bad thoughts of not getting placed. NGO visits were fun though. February ended with little companies showing their face to the FUTURE HR MANAGERS at the campus.
March: April: Some 12-13 companies came for the batch of 36 of so called top ten ranked college. On persistent efforts of the students a consultant was hired (5 months after FORE hired and around 3 months after IMT hired, just another information: IMT had hired 3 consultants to get its students placed long long ago). In the mean while frustration level of students not getting placed started to rise. I personally sat in front of my lap top every day and searched for companies well known and unknown and just uploaded my CV. Sent my CV through e-mail to more than 100 consultants, though no one ever came back to me with a job neither did the consultant hired by our college to whom 2 lakh Rs were already paid.
The hostel started to look like a haunted place with zombies moving all around the campus terrorizing every one and also getting terrorized them selves with one thing WHAT IF I DON’T GET PLACED? It had been the best time for the companies who were hiring. They did what ever it took for them to choose the right fit. They did every thing which they could not do the last year, as if taking out their frustration on the poor MBAs. Take for example Make my Trip took 5-6 inter views in their office and guess what, they did not select any one. One contender fought for 1 hour 40 minutes in one of the interview but Make My Trip was not impressed. Vedanta, HSBC Life insurance, BOA etc gave a presentation and never turned up. Some of the top companies that came to campus were of the likes of Prabhudas Lila Dhar India and Adarsh Group. While PDLD selected one student in January in May it did not finally gave the offer letter to him, I guess they might have gone to a better college to hire another one after ruining the future of the student whom they selected. Adarsh Group on the other hand had been very kind by selecting 3 students from our batch. Their was only one small problem and it was that the company having a turnover of over 300 crore didn’t have enough money to launch the company’s website or get its employees a visiting card or get a land line phone connection or own a company letter head printed 3 pages on which they could have printed the offer letter. Wow! I did not know that such big companies can actually cut cost by such innovative measures. How about job enrichment? The company didn’t clearly knew what will be the job description for the position they were hiring for, so in real sense the selected person was supposed to do any thing the boss wanted letting in the concept of job enrichment in the company. Bata called some 3 people in their company head quarters in Gurgaon and faked the whole interview by asking silly questions. Later after a few weeks the director HR of the company got enlightenment that our college was one of the top 10 B-School so he again called another set of students to interview. Considering that it is a strategic decision he has not yet disclosed the results for the past one month and it seems that he might disclose it the next year as it is highly confidential.Same was the case with JK Group. Jindal steels got the shock of their life when one of our batchmates personally called the HR department to tell that his colleg's director has not forwarded his CV to them and that he wanted to attend the interview being an eligible mechanical engineer (This person nevr thought that a company which was offering over 9 lakh package might not like his way of getting the interview call, how bout the other mechanical engineers in our batch who were then equally eligible to get a call but were not called for inter view as it was our director who had sent 3-4 selected CVs for the profile). Finally Jindal did not take any one from our college.
PGDM-HR final exams got over. It was time for us to start a long waiting journey to eternity with no clear picture in mind as to which company was coming in the next week or even the next day. I had one of my longest and most dreaded summers of my life. Every day I came back to my same bed and same room and ate at same Pandey Ji’s shop/canteen. Didn’t felt like going home either as if I had done a crime by not getting placed. Most of the hostel was an empty vessel and the best thing we could do was to sit in a group of 2-3 people and talk on diverse topics like placement, Amrish, Anup’s foreign visit to Bhutan in times of recession, Director’s strong steps to get companies on campus and finally again on placements. It was like our mind got nauseated every time by talking about it and we actually didn’t have any thing but placements to talk about. In weeks or even at times after a month we got news of some one getting placed at a top package of 4 or 5 lakh wooo! What a nice package I thought. Last year our seniors did not let TCS recruit from our campus for a very basic reason. The branded Tata Company was acting foolish u see, it was offering 4.75 lakh package to the students and our seniors were adamant like small kids on not letting such awful companies who were offering less than 5 to come on campus. We had been very modest in our approach though, all through out the placement process. We let all the companies offering less than 5 for our placement. TCS did not turn up this time.
Psychological pressure was building in my mind as the month of June was coming nearer and nearer. The month in which our super juniors were to join the college.
May: I got placed in Krishna Maruti as MT HR at 3 lakh. It was a grand relief I had ever had. Just a day before Anshuman and Roopal were wishing me good luck and assuring me that I will surely get thru. Roopal had been a great support through out my stay here. I hugged her (and thanked her for it in my mind) as I got the news. I might be acting selfish but I wish she wouldn’t have got through Adarsh, she deserves way better a job than the one being offered by the no website company. Still 10 people are yet to be placed and the day after tomorrow is our Convocation. Many students will not be able to attend the convocation I guess, not because they will not be able to make it to the campus but because they will not have enough courage to face the reality that they are graduating form a top B School with out a job, for which they got 90+ %ile in CAT and for which many studied day and night to get thru and for which many took loans of lakhs of rupees to pay for the tuition fee and for which they knew if they will get in then it will make their rest of the life beautiful.
I look at the brighter side at present just because today I have a job, not every one can do that. I saw the hidden tears in Saurabh Bansal’s eyes who got thru PDLD in Jan and missed every good opportunity till May until the company said no to him. He was also selected for Adarsh which again seems to be saying no to the students now. 30 % of my batch is yet to be placed, but I am sure that soon it will reduce to zero. Hope that the journey which started smoothly ends smoothly. May God bless the inner conscience of the companies who have been playing with the future of some of the brightest students in the filed of business management. May God also bless Anup so that his foreign trip is successful and God bless Amrish for making a lot of false commitments and God bless the director for his efforts to ask Amrish in every meeting with the students about the number of companies that have already come on campus and also on asking during the meeting the names of the companies and also the number of students who are yet to be placed.
Signing off with a PS: I never knew how life can take turns on straight roads which seem so smooth. As far as I am concerned I think a new set of turns are now waiting for me starting form 1st of June. I just pray to God that I and my friends may constantly get the vision and inspiration to deal with every turn of this life, which in fact is very short. I wish all my friends be around me all the time which I know is very difficult. But I do wish for that un granted wish, you never know when a wish might come true. Gn.
