The other day when I was just about to hit the bed, I stopped to look at the balcony of my house brightly lit in soothing moonlight. It was 1.45 am. I stood in there for a while, recalling the events of 7th october, 2011.
Not sure about myself, but hundreds of students at my college were kind of waiting for that day to come. TCS campus placement day. While everyone else was busy preparing the aptitude test questions and polishing their technical concepts the day before, I made sure my resume and application form were printed and hair don't look the usual frizzy they do. 'Must start with something, dude', I thought. Went through the basics, check. Solve the sample papers, check. Tweet while doing above things, double check.
Nevertheless, I and Vaibhavi were one of the first people to reach the college that day. It didn't look that bad at 8.30 am I must say. Apart from clearing the tests and all, I was also concerned about managing my dupatta since it kept sliding off my shoulders. Irritating. About three hours later, after getting done with the aptitude test, I felt kinda low. Didn't attempt as many questions as I hoped to. Didn't know how many of them were correct. A tiny voice inside me said, well most of them should be correct anyway. But still. Same with Ishani. Results came in quick. Just when they were about to announce the results, I wanted to crawl up a dark hole and stay there for the rest of the day. But just 10 seconds later, I heard my name being called. And I went from "Fuck, I'm screwed" to "woah! really?!". Just then, Ishani's name got called to. I could see similar expressions on her face too. Just when they finished with annuoncing the names of those who qualified, I was told that I would be the first person to go for the next set of interviews. Need to prep up, I said. As I walked towards the lab, I tried to recall stuff about Java, Data Structures and Software Engineering. What is hash table? How is polymorphism implemented? Software testing metrics. DAMN! I couldn't remember any of those then. Must. Calm. Down. It always happens with that whenever I'm in an extremely intense situation, a very stupid song gets stuck in my head. This time it was 'No touching no touching, only seeing only seeing' from Damadam. Damn you Himesh! Contrary to what I had expected, the first interview went pretty well. Had to now wait for the second one. A rather long wait it turned out to be, but no complains. Meanwhile, we talked. And talked. And talked a little more. About interviews. HR stuff. and hundred other things. All I wanted to do was tweet all of it. But phone internet turned out to be a jerk. At around 5 pm in the evening, they called me in for the HR round. While I was waiting outside the lab, the teacher who was co-ordinating all of it said "next aapka turn hai". I was calm, but more like sleepy and a little exhausted. The interview was hardly anything I expected it to be. I blame my memory for not remembering the full name of college. Although, I was glad it ended. But post interview, I felt my chances of getting selected dropping to almost zero. We all were then asked to wait in one of the labs. Again, everyone else was chatting. taking pictures which were soon to become their facebook DPs. I went for a little walk. Sunset time yay! The college garden was peaceful. Till I saw Vaibhavi, Aashka and Parul. They narrated about their HR round. About half an hour later, they said that they were ready to announce the results. I stood next to Ishani and said "Dude, mera nai hoga yaar". She said the same. They started calling out names of the students who made it. Just when I lost all hopes (yet again) I heard my name being called. The OMGWTF! expression was soon replaced by a smile. And then again, Ishani's name was called out too. Yet again, same reaction. She kept on confirming with me whether they really said her name or not. As they were leaving the lab post announcement, I saw everyone breaking into hugs, some into tears and most into joy. As I and Ishani walked out towards the entrance, we kept hugging each other and recalling how hopeless we were then. I was happy since most of my friends got in too. Hug exchange kept happening (nothing controversial). I saw my mum and dad who were waiting for me and remembered how disastrous the beginning of the semester had been. But then I looked at them smiling at me and thought, life is good. :)
Cheers to my fellow classmates namely Ishani, Vaibhavi, Priti, Meera, Priyanka, Mittal, Parul, Bhoomi, Sanah, Mansi, Jinal, Utsav, Parth, Kushal and Jatin for making it as well. Good job.
"Kya aap paanchvi pass se tez hain? Oops, wrong question."