Sunday, November 9, 2008

What A Rip Off........

Siblings are one of the best gifts given to us by GOD. But there are a few people who are not blessed with this gift.

If you are the only one, then you don’t have to share with anyone. You can have the full cake bought by your parents without sharing it. You get the full attention of your parents. But on the other hand, you might also have to endure a lonely life with no one around. You will not have anyone with who you can play, with who you can share all the secrets which cannot be said to parents. You might miss all those sweet, small, cute fights with your brother/sister over little-little things and the moments which follow – trying to save one another from the parents wrath. Some are happy being alone, some are not.

Well, this story is not at all about relationships. I feel they are very complex and it is almost impossible for me to understand and explain. This is about an accident that took place on my return journey to Bangalore. Here I would like to talk about this girl I met. I was traveling alone in the train and so was she. She was very cute and pretty, just like Preity Zinta. I was getting bored and was looking a chance to talk to her. She was the only one of my age, the rest were people in their 60s and 70s. I guess she was also getting bored. In the afternoon she came and sat next to me and after a formal introduction we started talking. She opened up very quickly and told me many things about her life.

She told me about her family and also said that she is the only child and has no siblings. She started by saying that she is not at all happy being alone and has always felt very lonely. She started saying “I had always wanted someone with me at home, with who I can share all the fights, stuff got by parents etc. etc. I keep asking my friends who have siblings about their brother’s n sisters. Sometimes I even get jealous when they tell me about the fights they have had and small-small incidents between them”

Boy!!!! By this time I had started pulling my hair. I had started wondering what the hell I was doing here. I was least interested in hearing any story about ones loneliness. I tried my best to change the topic but she was stuck on that brother-sister stuff only. ”I know I am a little weird but that’s the way I am” she said. I wanted to tell her that you are not weird, you are crazy. It was 2am and I was not in a mood to listen to her anymore, so I decided to sleep.

I woke up around 11 in afternoon. She also woke up after 10min. She was looking very pretty. We had lunch together. I thought that today I will not waste my time in listening to her crappy bro-sis thing. Before I could have said anything she started saying “I have many cousins but I am not so close to them". She continued "I always wonder why people say things like - you are lucky because you don’t have any one to fight with you and share your stuffs. You are the princess of your home. Everything belongs to you. Rubbish!! I want to tell them that I am the unluckiest girl because I don’t have any siblings. I am so helpless.”

By that time I had started feeling helpless that I can’t explain her that I am not at all interested in listening to her damn story. Whenever I tried changing the topic, she jumped back to the same bro-sis thing. It was getting late and I was feeling sleepy so I decided to go to bed. This seemed to be a better option to me then to hear someone crying about something which can not be changed now.

I woke up early because the train was scheduled to reach Bangalore around 10am. She also woke up and was looking prettier then yesterday. The train was to reach the station in two hours. She came and sat next to me. I was thinking that I had wasted 2 days of my life in listening to her story but now I will not waste my life anymore. I was making plans of taking her mobile number and calling her little knowing that all my dreams would be shattered the very next moment. She said that she is thankful to me that I had listened to her for 2 days and said:

“ I am seeing a brotherly figure in you. Give me your contact number. We will always be in touch. You be my rakhi brother.”


At that time little did I know that it was not my last Rip off in a train.. There were more to come.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

The Journey Begins................

I joined my company in the last week of July. I had just finished my college and like several others, have entered into a totally different world.

Before joining , I was thinking all the time about how this new world will treat me, how will the people here be. Suddenly things have changed a lot.
Classrooms became training rooms and now cubicles , friends have become colleagues(the word sometimes sounds so heavy!!) and pocket money is transformed into salary.

The first day when I came to office ,just like any other fresher I was dressed nicely in formals. We had induction session for few days .We were told that the dress should be decent, not necessarily formals.First few days we were given soft skill training. Then the technical training started which lasted for a month. Initially everyone was very attentive in the training, but later all came back to their college habits. Chatting in class, sleeping and playing games when the trainer was teaching was our daily routine.As usual, in training also I was a back bencher just like in college.

We also have tests after each sessions. We needed 70% to clear the tests. Initially we all wondered how we would manage to do it because in college we had to struggle a lot to pass and that too when the pass criteria was just 35% and here it was 70%.It seemed like an impossible task to complete. The first test went really bad. Many people flunked in that test.Then we thought that we have to do something about it.Like this toh we can even loose our jobs.We somehow have to pass the tests.So we developed a new way of copying. See we are techies so have to come up to something, so what if we are so-called-engineers.We zeroed in on using mobile technology to copy in tests.The other tests went on well and we somehow managed to pass in all using mobile technology.

Then came the big day in our lives. It was the last working day of the month ie. the salary day. Our trainer was telling some crap in java.As usual, nobody was listening to him. Who the hell cares about java and that too at the time when we were expecting our 1st salary. We were again and again checking our accounts to see whether the salary had been credited in our accounts or not.Finally someone shouted "hum hazaar pati ban gaiye".We got our 1st salary. The next two days were Saturday and Sunday ie. no office. A good part of the salary was spent in these two days. We went shopping, we partied, we enjoyed like anything.

We were still in a college mood and we all got belted for this. It happened during the Showcase event. Our company had called one guy (dont even remember his name) to give some Gyan about the market trend (as if we care).It was a damn boring lecture so we started talking and laughing among ourselves, not listening anything. Later we realized that it is not our college anymore and we need to improve on our behaviour. I was cracking the crappiest pj's to one of my friend sitting next to me and she was laughing on them like anything.It so happened that HR ppl noticed us. I was doing my training in some other building so they couldn recognize me but my friend was in the same building for the training so HR ppl know her.They gave her name to the director. The director called her and scolded her like anything. I had a narrow escape. Next time again we had some stupid event and I asked her to sit next to me. She gave me such a look that she will hang me to death if I even went near her in the event.

Then the next week our training got over and we were put into our respective teams. It was good to see that the people here were very friendly and helpful.Work environment is also cool. We dont have restrictions of any sort (we can access orkut,youtube from the office). And now we all have started working on our respective projects. We all have the josh and want to give our 100% in our work. But I am very much sure that this is the same one week josh that we always use to have in the beginning of a new semester after screwing the previous one badly.Lets see what future has in store for us.