MY FIRST JOB EXPERIENCE!!!!!

   Whoever said "COLLEGE LIFE IS GOLDEN LIFE" was partially correct and partially wrong because in my case college life was no less than Platinum.
Engineering was the first time I stepped into hostel life. I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared at first but hostel life also meant freedom for me. The first semester went off in seniors ragging us also we trying to understand what engineering was all about. By the time I could figure out what was happening a semester had gone by and I was left with couple of backlogs. By the time I could figure out how to clear those backlogs I ended up with some more.

UBDT College of Engineering

Then the wait to get into 2^nd year, so that I could rag some juniors. My name became so famous that even after I quit ragging, some of my juniors used my name to scare their juniors.

Night out, cigarette and tea at the local tea stall, cricket, fight at the hostel for the month end special lunch etc were such fun that it brings smile on my face whenever I think of it even after a decade.

It was in the final year when most of us got our own mobiles and SPICE was the most famous service provider we preferred. Mobiles were used only to receive calls and to send SMS. We preferred the coin booths to make outgoing calls.

Spice offered lot of SMS packs like 100 to 500 SMS per day and we literally polluted the environment with SMS and forwards. End of the day we could peacefully sleep only after we had used up our SMS quota. That really screwed up the network. My friend would SMS me in the evening asking me to come down to the tea shop for a smoke and I would receive that SMS while having my dinner. Initially I would get confused if he was calling me now. There was couple of instances when I actually went to the tea shop and didn’t find anybody there, but later we got used to the delay in network.

Eighth semester was a bit different because the confusion and concern about our future started to bother us. Most of our discussions now included topics like cursing the college for not having good campus recruitment's (Like hell we would get it), which seniors to contact to forward our resume and if further study was a good option (Knowing we had literally crawled through engineering).

It was just a week since I came back home after finishing my last semester when I got a call from my friends (Prasanna,Prashanth & Kummi) saying that they had already found a job and there were still vacancies. That’s it!!!! I don’t know what happened to me but I just wanted to fly and join them. My brother asked me to wait and not decide something in a hurry but I was convinced that I had to get this job.

Prasanna told me that he along with my classmates Naveen and Kulbhushan was staying at his brother’s hostel in Adugodi Bangalore. It was a Ayurvedic men’s hostel located near Adugodi signal. The room was quite spacious to accommodate five of us. His brother was working in night shift and would come to the room only in the mornings.

I reached Bangalore in the morning and after freshening up left to Domlur for the interview. Now the company name was B L KASHYAP & SONS (Bihari Lal Kashyap) and the interview was at their site office located behind DELL building on the intermediate ring road near Domlur. The IBM building was under construction which this company had taken up. I was dressed in formals carrying a copy of my resume in a file. The senior most project manager arrived in a Honda city. The guy was over six feet with a thick moustache and had a flashy mobile in his hand. Looking at him I became nervous and kept praying that this interview shouldn’t go like the numerous Viva sessions I had in college. I used to give an Oscar winning performance in that viva’s where I would act like I knew the answer very well and it was just not coming out. The guy asked me to sit down and asked me where I was from and how far my native is from Bangalore and what is it famous for. Next moment he said that my salary would be 5000 Rs a month and asked would I be interested. I said yes and he asked me to join from the next day. The project manager immediately became my role model. I came out with my chest as wide as Arnold’s and with a smile on my face like I had won Kaun banega crorepati. My friends were waiting outside and were happy to know that I would be joining them from tomorrow. 

IBM Building

So the next day me and my friend Prasanna left the room early around 6:30 and reached the site around 7:30. The senior in-charge engineer asked us to go the site and supervise the work.  We promptly went to the site and looked around. Prasanna has been working there for a week and hence knew his way around the construction site. For me it was just a mysterious island. The laborers most of them from North India didn’t give a shit about us. They knew very well we were fresher’s and they knew a thing or two about construction more than we did. It was very hard for me to spend the first half till lunch. I kept bugging Prasanna asking questions and making fun of everything around us. HAL airplanes kept flying above our heads making so much of noise. Sometimes I felt one or two would crash on my site.

For lunch we had to at walk at least 2 KMS to a Shanthi sagar hotel. Meals would cost 25Rs if I remember correctly. They would give 2 Puri’s which would get over even before I started to eat it and a bowl of rice. By the time we came back to the site I would start feeling hungry. At the site apart from cigarettes and tea, one can’t find anything to eat. We were not supposed to leave the site before 7 in the evening. By the time it was 7 it started to pour cats and dogs. The site became water clogged everywhere. My feet were stuck in the mud and it was difficult to even take a single step with loads of mud stuck to my feet. Somehow we reached the main gate and walked to the main road to catch any private vehicle that would drop us near Adugodi.

Adugodi then was a complete granite area with very few hotels around. We would reach our rooms around 9 in the evening and by that time most of the hotels would close down. We would have only two options either have food at a bar called "AISHWARYA" or walk till forum mall to have Parota’s. Naveen and Kulbhushan would wait for us in the room for dinner. By the time we would finish dinner and come back to the hostel, Prasanna’s brother would ask us to stay outside since the security guard had come for a surprise check. We would roam around Wilson garden area for an hour or so until the security guard left the hostel.

Next day when I and Prasanna reached the site, Prashanth called up and informed us that he had quit since he had some other plans. Now every step inside the site became a torture for me. Thoughts started flowing in my mind if this was the kind of work I have to do until I retired. What about my complexion, I would be dark always. To add to my woes I saw DELL & YAHOO software engineers on their building balconies, sipping coffee and gazing at our work-site. I couldn’t make out their faces because they were standing too far. But I could see that they all were dressed in formals and had their ID cards around their neck.

How cool they looked!!!!  How good their job might be!!! How well they might be paid… Oh... that must be life.

Suddenly I would reflect back on my life right from my 1^st standard and wished if I had worked hard, I would have been standing on that balcony sipping coffee. Whole day I would be absorbed in these thoughts. I would just keep looking at them the whole time and sometimes I would feel that they were looking right at me and laughing at my plight. And then suddenly couple of airplanes would fly by with thundering sound. Prasanna would scream saying that in one of these days he will throw a stone at the airplane and crash it down.

I would wait till 7 in the evening with nothing in my stomach and hoping it wouldn’t rain. But God was acting like one of my lecturers in the college hell bent on ruining my life. Rain means another 30 minutes to get out of the site. And night dinner would be either at that bar or Parota’s.

It was my 3^rd day at the site and I was already in depression. Then Prashanth calls me and says that he is planning to join some software courses, and that will really help get some better job. Now my head was totally screwed up. I took out my frustrations on a laborer who spilled some cement on my shoes. He walked by looking at me like I just attempted to molest him. That afternoon after lunch I told Prasanna that I would be going back to the hostel as I was not interested in this job. He was literally begging me to come with him because he would be bored alone at that site. I told him that I am going mad at that site and am just not interested. I hopped on to a bus and reached the hostel. But to my bad luck Prasanna’s brother who saw me from the first floor asked me to leave since the security guard was doing his rounds. I went around Wilson garden area roaming aimlessly and with an expression on my face like a man who had lost everything in life. Prasanna came back in the evening and again started to beg and plead me to come back to work. When I saw that he wouldn’t stop, I said I will come for one day tomorrow and see how things go. The next day (4^th day) when we both were entering the site, the site manager caught me and asked where I was yesterday afternoon. I told him I was there on the east corner of the site but he was not ready to believe me. I told him I was supervising work over there all day long. He wasn’t convinced but somehow let me go.

Things weren’t any different on that day. Around lunch I told Prasanna that this was my last day here. If he again requests me to come back, I would break his head.

Next morning I saw Prasanna getting ready and then looking at my face. I told him not to even think of asking me to come back to the site. He left for the site whereas I continued to sleep. After an hour I got a call on my mobile. I picked it up and it was Prasanna. I asked him where he was and he said he was calling me from a coin box right opposite to the work site. He said he wasn’t feeling to go inside the site without us. I told him to screw that job and just come back. He became all emotional and said that in life we can find 100 jobs but not true friends and so he would come back. After the call I started laughing and Kulbhushan who was sleeping on the floor cursed me for successfully persuading Prasanna to quit his job.

Even before we had joined this company, one of our classmate Vinay had already joined here, worked for half day and shared the project manager’s lunch and had left the site without informing anybody and never came back.

So now in a span of 7 days 5 engineers from UBDT College of engineering had joined this company and quit without informing. This is how my first job ended.

P.S: Last heard that company didn’t hire anybody from UBDT College for over a year…..!!!!!!!!!!