Semester after semester, life thus passed – sorrow, comparison and pain, friendship and compassion.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth sems passed with my bosom Subha beside me through troughs and burrows.
Placements would be racing towards us in the seventh and eight semesters. Anyone with no more than two standing arrears was permitted to attend the placements, and once placed, you cannot try for another company, even if it was your dream destination.
So, sixth semester saw tough and rigorous preparations for placements. An organization called ‘Blue Lotus’ came over to train and hone our inter-personal skills. Saturdays were fun. They didn’t train us in Aptitude or Technical, it was purely inter-personals skills. Now, anyone who had attended job interviews, and who knows that any interview has three sections – Aptitude, Technical and HR, would definitely know that this training is a complete tomfoolery and non-sense, nonetheless we enjoyed it, because we got to mingle with the group, crack jokes, make fun when someone blundered, and funny punishments were meted out to them. Whether we prepared for the placements or not, we were clearly enjoying ourselves.
My CV was written up for the first time in my life. Everyone was mandated to have a mini-project on it.
Devi and I joined with Eileen, and we cooked up the “Library Management” Project. Now as the name suggests, obviously, it is going to hold names of books and authors, tagged against names of students who had borrowed them. I had absolutely no idea about the project more than this. I only hoped that no one questioned me on this at the interviews.
Bang… The day of placements arrived.
A whole auditorium packed with rats from all streams and departments – at least some 2000 odd ones – all scurrying for one place, just one small place, in a multi-national blue-chip IT Company.
The procedure was thus for any company:
First, we would have the company culture and policies introduced to us by the HR for some 2-3 hours, and then the online Aptitude test, those who cleared it - went for Technical round, and the final round was HR
The first company was TCS: 3 hour intro, one hour of Aptitude, which I cleared very easily. Next was my much feared round – Technical. I was very bad technically (everyone was just as bad as I was, but frankly speaking I displayed fear on my face more and that was my doom). I didn’t know anything about the mini-project.
I wished that the interviewer would somehow miss the mini-project section. But to my greatest dismay, that was the one that caught his attention first.
An array of questions followed:
What is the database you used?
Database.. eh eh.. we didn’t use a database
Then how do you store the data of books and students?
Oh there is a textbox in which we need to enter details
You enter details. Where does it get stored?
Stored? No where.
Oh ok!! So, you did this project, or you got it from someone?
I did it myself, with two other friends, just that I wasn’t handling the database part.
Oh..
I know I lost my job with TCS because of these dumb replies, and I did not know the right answers either.
Status after Day 1 Placements for comparison at home:
The fact that Divya had been selected was enough to rip me into pieces at home.
I went into the washroom and shut myself for hours. I was crying uncontrollably not knowing what to do next.
I was a failure. I hadn’t got a job. I was nowhere close to learning French. My dream of a career as a writer was getting no better..
The next company was Wipro, and I was sure that I was going to do the same blunder. My life was doomed.
Scoldings in progress:….
“You aren’t going to land yourself a job when all my fellow batch-mates would be earning their livelihood. You are undoubtedly going to be the biggest failure on Earth. Sister of a doctor/topper, daughter of two respected professors was a fit-for-nothing girl. What a shame on the family!”
Well, my mom had screamed at me a couple of times already, and she was flinging swear words across the bathroom door. Time for me to wipe my tears, wash my face, clear my nose, check if my eyes looked red, and walk out as cool and composed as possible.
I was mad and possessed. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just had to something about my life. “What if not an IT professional? I am going to be a writer. IT industry isn’t my world, this is!! Live where you are loved and do what you enjoy” I told myself.
I went online, Googled for all kinds of short story and novella contests, and uploaded my story. I waited for a few days. As days sped, I got no response, and eventually forgot that I had even submitted any.