Celebrating 2 years

Couple of days ago, I tweeted this little message. July 9, 2007 is a red letter day for me - for that was the day I started my career as a working professional. As I tweeted that, I was greeted over IM by few of my friends and colleagues. It didn’t strike me much as soon as I tweeted, but few hours later I was just amazed as to how fast time has gone by - and how far I’ve come. To think, I applied for this position as an afterthought (“should I really ? Well.."). That got me into nostalgia mode.

Lets travel back in time - nearly 3 years ago. I was just about done with my 6th semester in College. I was barely scraping through college, no thanks to me and a certain VTU (“V Torture U” - my university). 3rd - 6th sems were probably one  of the worst phases of my life. I almost lost a year, with my overdues (“OD”) almost killing me. Almost - is the keyword - I didn’t. My folks were pretty supportive, as were my friends. My “escapades” through mid-college meant that I was ineligible for campus selections, and here I was seeing those people snapping jobs left and right because they were able to “cram” everything into their frigging minds and “vomit” them out onto answer paper - word by word, letter by letter, punctuation mark by punctuation mark. This cramming thing was something I could never do. It was rather disgusting to see these people (mainly girls - no I’m NOT being sexist here) spew out letter by letter things from the “prescribed” textbooks - ask them a Question and they would tell you which page, paragraph and line these definitions were there.

Come campus selection time, and it was cramming and vomitting all over again - only this time the “source” was different - aptitude books, C Programming books, lab programs you name it, these guys had crammed them all ready to vomit. It was also rather painful when these people would ask me why a certain function works this way, just minutes before the scheduled interview times, only for their good luck to be asked the same question, they’d vomit it out, get selected - and hey after that they get this air of “superiority” and snobbishness and sneer at people who helped them get the freaking job in the first place. I just let it go - didn’t even bother going to College during these scheduled test/interview days.

It was about beginning of 7th sem when I started to pull it together - the subjects got interesting ( to my liking anyway), got some good marks but not enough to salvage the damage caused initially.

This fine day - I saw this notice on our notice board about Aptitude test for another job. I was just about to dismiss it, but this clause of “required marks criteria” NOT being present got me thinking and I was like - probably my last shot - why not give it a try.

I mentioned this to few other folks - notably Neeths & Sid. The three of us, and few others from my college gave the test - and I  cleared the test and the Interview (if you’re wondering - no, I didn’t “practice” for it) - and finally got a job.

Over the course of time after I was selected for the job but before joining, I started speaking to few of my would be colleagues, friends and room mates about where to stay and etc. Soon I was done with college - and the D-day had come. I had been posted to Chennai and hence I left my hometown of Mangalore for Chennai.

The memories are still fresh in my mind - I reached Chennai few days in advance as I didn’t have a place to stay there, and thought I’ll need a day or two to scope out few guest houses and mansions. Met Adi on July 6th, we went about hopping from Mansion to Mansion, speaking a mix of English, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Tulu to bring out pseudo Tamil - ’t was a though time trying to communicate with the guest house owners. The next day Ankit reached Chennai, Shankar the day after.

2 years have passed by since then. We’ve had our fair share of ups and downs. The first 3 months of training - which was an absolute bliss. The pondy trip brought the Ruby gang¹  closer than ever. Once we were assigned projects and teams it was different altogether. But we never missed our daily lunch and evening snack times - when all (well, most anyways) would join in, discuss on what’s happening around the organization and world.  A practice, which is still continued today - I believe. Though about half of Ruby gang has moved on - some got married, some left for higher studies - but the memories still remain.

A big Salute - to the Ruby gang. It’s been an awesome time - and truly I’ve had the pleasure of having some cherished memories with the gang.

1. Ruby gang - because Ruby was the name of our training room [↩]