You can’t miss them – The Interviews

Of all what my percentile speaks of me, is ridiculously risible. But we can always get back to it later. What I intend to write here is how inexplicably challenging B-school interviews can turn out to be and how it takes only one question to digress on a whole new unwanted course, thereby rejecting you out right. This I say, at 99.8 percentile, which retaining all modesty, seems respectable enough. In the same sprint, I’ve been giving quite a few interviews lately; quite a few meaning, every weekend and that, for the past 3 months. Of what share here are some of the interview questions I’ve been grilled on, after reading which you will not be culpable if you think it was sheer luck that steered me through some of them.

Interviewers are sweet little butchers, strangling people with their smiles throughout. And the questions can be as easy to understand as this:

Tell us something about yourself.

Now this is one of those rare times in life when you are blanker than Rahul Gandhi being asked to throw some light on how 1984 Sikh riots and 2002 Godhara riots were different. Chances are, you’ll end up giving a less informative reply than – they are not same, followed by the very famous I-am-done pause. Interview after interview, my respect for Rahul Gandhi has only grown exponentially. So not wandering much, I told them about my punishment-laden formative years, my recently-cultivated-only-to-answer-this-question hobbies, my utter lack of interest in engineering and what leads me to take up MBA as my next career option, which brings me to facing the following cliché.

So, why MBA?

These words fall into your ears like honey drops because this is one of the very few questions you are prepared to take up with the spirit of Aaaaan-de. You feel both lucky and unlucky to confront this question because where in on one hand you know you just have to spill the well-framed thoroughly-mugged words in a fluent manner, on the other hand your experience is bitter enough to tell you that no amount of preparation for this is going to satiate the thirst of those butchers, because truth be told, you’re doing it for money. Tell you what; I’ve given over 10 interviews till date only to land up with over 20 odd answers to this question and still, my search for one good presentable reason is on and doesn’t seem like ending anytime soon. I wish I could tell them the genuine reasons. I wish I could tell them what a hopeless coder I am. I wish I could tell them that an MBA degree could be the sole saving grace of my academic career. I wish I could tell them that my pointer should speak volumes for why not MS. I wish I could tell them I am technically challenged and technologically paralyzed. So coming back, in every interviewer’s eyes I want to be an entrepreneur. Selling what? Making what? Doing what? I have never bothered myself lying beyond a point where it starts becoming obvious as hell.

-Anubha, you come from DA-IICT. What is that?

--Sir, Dhirbubhai Ambani Institute of information and communication Technology.

-That’s one college?

--Yes Sir. Sir, actually the branch is also there in the name only. 

(Yes, this is a real life conversation. Apart from the endless stares that you already registered in your name during the one hour you were saying the full form of DA-IICT, there are a couple of doors more that you yourself opened to lead their way.)

- So Anubha, You’ve done your BTech. in ICT? Could you please elaborate?

--Yeah sure. Sir, this branch is a complex amalgamation of all the possible branches on the face of this earth. To name a few, Information Technology, Computer science, Electronics, civil, mechanical, chemical, aerospace, communication, metallurgy, mining and any possible new domain also that you can or cannot think of.

-This sounds interesting. So you’ve done communications also?

-- You can’t deny, because they have your transcripts. You can’t accept, because you don’t know what’s there in the transcripts. You can almost see your end nearing at 500 km/hr whenever something like this is thrown at you. God bless the UP people, for they never thought knowing communication technology was as important for faring well in MBA.

-Anubha, there’s this subject ‘Stochastic Simulation’ in your transcript. What was it about?

-- (Sir, you are not supposed to ask anything from the morning 8:30 lectures. That’s almost a rule). 

After smiling like an idiot for quite some time, I told them whatever little I remembered, heads, tails, some stocks and shares, call option, put option, only hoping they wouldn’t pick on any of these jargons next. And the next moment, it wasn’t as bad! It just got worse. 

They asked me to draw graphs for Normal distribution, uniform distribution, relation between them, generate a random variable using excel (on which I reconfirmed if it was Microsoft excel they were talking about, answering which they said ‘No, surf’). Anyway!

-Okay, okay. Here’s a bowl of toffees in front of you. Please sell them to us.

-- (That was one God forsaken toffee I’ve never had, chloromint! How does one even promote it without stealing the punch lines of other toffees?) Anyway, I had to appear excited about this whole oh-wow-chloromint-This-is-my-breakfast-everyday thing. Trust me, if there’s any last thing you’d want to be turned on by, its mint. But then I thought Dobara mat poochna would be quite discourteous as that would mean depriving the interviewers of their sole job, so I controlled that urge and instead spoke: Chloromint khao, khud jaan jao. To which both of them went ‘Really?’ together.  And when they mocked with ‘You’re already so good, why do you want to do MBA? (Sentence unedited)’, I knew my chances of getting a B-school were bleaker than Pappu’s chances of getting the PM seat.

I have a long list of these humiliating interrogations but I don’t think I can write further on. Some insults are better lived once. 

But I’ve had the time of my life in these 3 months. There is nothing I can think of which can excite you, scare you, get on your nerves, test your patience, make you plan your future life, force you to scrutinize your past life and expect you to know the whys, hows, whens and whats of every little thing you can/cannot think of, all at the same freaking time. You talk to your peer victims, and feel good about it. You learn that you’re not the only one back firing stupid answers for stupid questions. And that is probably all you need then.

And so now, the must awaited clichéd – All’s well that ends well. 

All Hail the Almighty. All Hail His majesty. Amen.

Lost Lyrics

Inscribing my doubts, there is a wobbly presence

That affirms with a nod and vanishes with a call,

Been there always, I yearn to preserve this touch,

For it responds only to that, my stolen heart is such.

Defending in my heart, the innocent fear of falling for you,

I couldn’t act but give up, for you were one of the few,

The few who make smiles meaningless and tears meaningful,

And the few who justify your birth, the birth of a hopeless fool.

Of deceptive smiles and fidgeting moves, I was a masked face,

Who wanted to run like others, yet stand alone with the pace. 

It was not a bit my choice, expectations built in air,

And when you intended the least, you fulfilled the largest share.

I put the pieces together; the cracks continued to spread the image,

‘I’ll love you for a thousand years’, the oldest promise on the page.

Time moulded me, time falsified me, time proved me right,

And it was time that left me a mere spectator of my life.

Down the narrow lane, we did toddle but with a glitch,

With us standing on either side, someone burned the sole bridge.

Several songs have captivated me,

I have fallen for many for music,

But for all my life craves to tell you now,

Is that you were a song being loved for lyrics.

  

Indian Weddings – You can’t miss them!

These two words ‘Indian Weddings’ have been dangling in my mind for quite some time now and I have comported to the simple fact that without being amiably cynical about the innumerable ceremonies, this dim-witted brain wouldn’t rest in peace. Oh no! Don’t make that already bored face for I am not going to delineate the whole process from arranging a suitable partner to faring the bride well.

It’s been quite some time that my college dispatched me for home and God’s grace delivered me safe to my place. Some questions are implied and their answers are more. What I am next planning to put forth is a question which might greet you with an impish smile on your face owing to its own tint of obviousness, but trust me, the answer will not be that straight forward! Why do people go home? Oh no! We have more than a dozen issues to chew our gums on and so we wouldn’t, precisely, list all the possible reasons. But let me add just one more to your drop down menu. To attend weddings. No, it’s not the wedding of your real brother or any other cousin that is being talked about here, just casual weddings. You grasp that? Weddings, which are very unfussy to us, but only theoretically.   

So, we are going to attend the wedding of some uncle’s daughter, who snubbed us as a kid, whose name we find hard to recall when asked by some other acquaintance, whose birth did not brighten us even 1% of how much the wedding does and who did not even choose to be a passive part of our lives until this day,  but ‘The Book on Social Relations’, without any relaxation, says, that if any person walks into your house to invite you with a white card in his hand, gaudily shouting the names of two more morons falling into the marriage pit, there is no reason why even one member of your house should stay back when the couple is being blessed out there, in an overpriced marriage garden. In a country like ours, where talking about the person gains precedence over talking to the person, happenings in the neighborhood are more significant additions to the knowledge than happenings in the family, and Sharma ji’s bahu fascinates us more than ours, there is very little thought left to be attended to, of whether or not to be present at the wedding ceremony. 

Now, one thing which is absolutely beyond the comprehensive capabilities of any human mind is, how can, possibly, the marriage of two people, comfortably unnoticed all this while, stir so much of gossip only from the point they decide to be life partners? You go to a foreign land. You won’t find them talking about you 24 hours a day because that’s just not the way they have been brought up! As effortless as that. But we Indians, yes each one of us, are so accustomed to chitchatting about the littlest of the most unfussy things that we often lose track of our own lives! This, anyway, is a different issue altogether to be dealt with, in a separate post. Here we were talking about the mystical ways in which weddings are Indianized solely by the people attending it, whom you only call for a supper or you think so. 

In every wedding, you are doomed to find a gaudy group of ladies, less interested in the current wedding, more in fixing yours. WHY? I ask, why? It is pretty hell to bypass this group, more so, if you have just crossed your teens. You gift them a respectable Namaste and You are next is your return gift. They expect you to blush for a while, fake of course, and then give your humble consent so that their eternal hunt for your soul-mate can make its way; and given the generation you are born in, more probable than not, you have given your consent to somebody already and so you just keep smiling like an absolute idiot! Well, that again, is a different track altogether irrelevant to the flow of ideas already trapped in here.

So, Aunties! These aunties already have some Mandawat’s or Verma’s son/daughter in their heads which they will, very subtly roll over the ongoing talks to put into your ears and trust me; they WILL make sure you sense the hint. And you always thought education brought in smartness, right? Now another thing which is carefully designed by them is, the filters. Filters, as in, the basis on which they selected 20 out of a whole blessed list of 100. You don’t know the 20, you didn’t know the 100 either! You see, the entire process has been on for quite some time. Now, just wait till the number drops down from 20 to 1. So, next time you are insistent upon proclaiming that nothing is free, make sure you exclude thoughts, imaginations and gossips. Not very surprisingly, the filter in my case turns out be height and of course, education for Engineering still is a degree for them! Amused?

Well, another attribute these days. As a sign of modernity, they will prefer recommending partners for you, especially male counterparts who reside in a foreign land or have spent good 3 4 years in there, pursuing a course. Ladka America me settled hai and then the smirk on the face as if that is the dead end to all the miseries in life. Aunty jee, that is not! But frankly enough, there lies no point in cribbing for you can’t really prevent someone from talking especially when he/she is advising you, for one thing and is 20-30 years elder, for another.

This looks long for one read, pretty that. On a very light note, so many noteworthy things go unnoticed for we have shut our hearts and brains to the many interpretations of one single gesture or even a remark, maybe.

Even if you are associated in the least possible sense to a wedding, you can still have a pretty good time only by observing people. A laugh doesn’t ask for more.

Many more appealing facts wait to be interpreted a bit differently only to make the atmosphere light. But as of now, what looks good is a well deserved break to the post.

Keep attending weddings.
‘Coz that’s precisely all, you are in India for!

-Anubha 

Feb 3, 2013

     

                

A Wrong Mistake

Many fantasies were unscathed, there you lined up once,

And I was almost sure of my life taking no such turn,

Until you knocked on the door wearing that smile,

Only to observe the distance between our worlds shrinking by a mile,

All apathies confiscated, all strangeness dissolved,

By that sole look of yours, an adolescent was born.

Your past wrangles with me, I conjure to overlook,

For nothing seems stronger facing my yearning for you.

Been betrayed too often, I fancy to falsify the fall,
But warnings barely help, for I cannot control.
You must be the dream of many; there is no reason against,

And so you spurred another dream, there are no amendments.

Abandon my world for nothing sets free my insecurity,

And that I’d be sure of your words; is a distant possibility.

No matter how much I wish, please do not say a word untrue,

For a buoyant heart then, would write your name even in dew.

Lie down, unwind and go back to yesterday,

For the smile you shared with her,
Tickled a tear somewhere, the least to say.

It was my silent gaze into your eyes,

An impulsive up thrust of love, it seemed,   

I sensed you near; I held you close, when

A dream came true, in my dreams.

When someone loitered for long at the door,

You shouldn’t have tapped and drifted apart. 

You shouldn’t have stroked a hopeful heart.     

Growing Up

Examining the topic in its very literal sense, let me just share what all went into my growing up. The very notion of being the youngest fellow at home is not always cuddling, and I sure would have loved to prove, had one got a choice. Irrespective of the innumerable tiny tots who then addressed me as Didi in school, at home, I was always found chasing my brother for every little thing. From learning to signalling an out in the game of cricket, to dripping my first ink pens, it is him; I have always looked up to. Each day we drooled back from school, I always had him to fascinate me with his school talks, for he is a boy, one thing, and two years elder, another. With not much difficulty, I can gather we were supposed to be studying in one room, with the door open, for the simple reason of surprise raids by our parents. And without much amazement, their doubt never deceived them. Till the fifth grade, my mother hardly remembers me doing anything other than the Cursive writing, that too erasing most of the time, and the gentleman on the other table would be found examining the nibs of his pens. With time and over arguments of the type was-just-going-to-start stopped hitting her ears, for her nagging had stopped hitting ours.  

Even after drinking water 7 times and going to washroom over 3, that one hour bit us both like anything. The only promising thought that kept me erasing was the play time thereafter. Again, until the teens, I had no one to look up to except my brother to have me along with him. Apart from the tiny eyes filled with innocence and legs fitted with shoes promising to run miles to pick up his ball, he always needed my dad’s strict recommendation or rather pressurisation to take me along, or entertain me alone, had he to make a choice between his friends and me for he was way too ashamed of his not-so-talented sister playing within a group of six to seven boys. But orders were orders. Grumbling, he had to stay back at times, but that’s just the way things were then. Reflecting back today, it is tough to say if I had done the same or anything even comparable to that and foreseeing at the same time, it is tougher for him to make the same statement today. Back then, choices made with so little thought also never charged, and today decisions made after years of ponder also lead us nowhere. What has changed so much?

Now, one can’t deny that the younger child is always the more pampered one, and so was I, maybe a little more. And one can’t beat the elders when you talk of teaching the skills of escaping parents’ signatures on class tests and the fact that Youngers do it more cleanly and furtively, is another point you all got to agree with. To me the story was too short stretched. On getting two out ten (Mind you, I am talking of second class, when getting even half a mark less than full was something that called on for more labour), I could think of no better an idea of surviving than copying my mother's signature. After practicing it at the back page of almost every copy, chanting God’s name I finally rubbed my pen on the final page too. It somehow resembled the original. And I was more than halfway through the plan until my brother recognised the fake sign, one fine day while going through my test copies. Obviously, within a minute my entire ancestral family was well-informed of their extra-ordinarily smart girl. Too cool of my Mom, for her only concern was why her signature and not daddy’s! I wanted to shout out at my brother, for he was no outstanding a student, and that I too had helped him hide his copies in the travel bags, not once, not twice but many times for one has to agree that no matter what, half a mark out of 5, or maybe 4 out of ten are equally bad. But the only reaction which left me speechless was that of my father's. He kept silent till my mother was done with her growling and brother with his had-I-not-checked-her-copy expression, and spoke serenely after that- My scolding or not will not make any difference. She is a grown up girl now. Till she thinks she is right, I am quiet.

Though his eyes sprinkled with that joy of being blessed with a talent that could copy her mother's signature at such a tender age, I knew deep down somewhere his heart questioned the values he had imparted to us or if he really had any, for that matter. His silence that day said it all, while my mother's furious words solely added to my rage.

That day I learnt about the deception of smiles and tears and maybe got the very first indication of growing up.

As time passed by, I stepped into my teens, where the first thing I realised was that everything I wanted to do and eventually refrained myself from doing, did not have the fear of my mom’s scolding anymore. The reasons for holding back had changed and maybe some priorities too. 

Then, at some abrupt point of time you realise that life has ceased itself to answer any question of yours. True. Go ahead. And you shall learn that more often than not the only consoling tap is that of Happens. One should never expect his needs to be catered to at his one ring of a bell. But, who desists to expect? I myself am pondering over this, but someone had once said, not expecting anything in lieu of your good deeds is also an expectation.

I don’t remember lying much to my brother, and I predict he doesn’t remember not doing so. With chocolates in hand, while both the siblings decide to have it right then, it is only the younger one who naively signs the treaty and after consuming his share, realises an hour later that the elder one still has his, waiting to dance on his tongue. That feeling of being betrayed is worse than being ditched by your lover on the day of your marriage, trust me. As some more years passed, I incurred no harm in concluding that two levels in this world are unattainable, one, the level to which a sister entrusts her brother and the other, the level to which a brother doubts his sister.

No matter how much I grow up, how much ever mature I may seem to the outside world, this single world ‘youngest’ is always going to overrule all my maturity. While my brother has constantly been instilled with a sense of responsibility, maybe because both my parents are working, I wonder if in his L.K.G. also he thought of himself as anyone minor to the President.

One never ceases to grow, on should not, in fact. But let me just say, in this process, is there anything that we are leaving behind? Are we, today, aware of how heavily we are paying for growing up? Think. Well, chuck, for want or not, this is the need of the hour. Grow up.

  

  

The Last Hug

Walking beside you with an unrivaled trust,

Treasuring the last moments, for soon part we must,

Rupture the silence; I am looking up to you,

For this might never overpower again, a feeling so true,

Those few words, I have longed to hear from you,

Right time long passed by, I am still waiting in woe.

Failing to accept what I want to, a strange state of unrest,

For who’s a criminal, until confessed?

People share laughs, people share tears,

Who could ever have known, we shared the same fears.

Being left with ‘God is rude’ and statements like that,

Time passed in a blackout and there started the flashback,

A journey that had no beginning, a journey that met no end,

And before the present could come, we sneaked into past tense.

So strong I struggle to stand, memories again make me slip,

Moments tough to let go are tougher to stand with.

I remember your last smile and it still rips my soul apart,

I remember the last hug, unwilling to let go of the past,

With moist eyes today, I think of myself as a fool,

For I naively thought it meant, you wanted to see me soon.

I will comprehended this silence one day, no matter how tough,

But for all I know today is,

That sometimes being one is also not close enough. 

Too Hefty A Price?

‘When we were kids, we gushed outside in the evening. As restless tots, it was tough sitting at home and most of the time we played games you never have heard of and, sadly, will never do.’

‘When we were kids, going outdoors meant to coaching centers. Yes, it was tough sitting at home and most of the time we remember rushing our vehicles from one tutor to another, learning things we have never used, and sadly, will never do.’ 

What definitive grounds to take pride on. We, without chewing any gum, owe the above transition of statements to the unprecedented competition and of course, the unabated power of time. Who, in our grandparents’ era, must have even had the slightest of the ideas that outdoor games would soon be replaced by the frantic schedule of the coaching centers, the bats and balls with the ‘Speed Maths’ and ‘Basic Physics’ at such tender ages, the childlike stress less smiling faces with spectacle laden dull robots, and Rajan’s house with a huge luring building of some coaching institute. The times have changed, or more so, the climes. Two three years back, nothing seemed so demented so as to hint me that within no time I’d have to quote things of my childhood with a prefix ‘In our times’. But today if I don’t, would they even manage to get the ABCs of the issue being discussed?

So, ‘In our times’, a parent had to rationalize the extra help being provided to his child in the form of tuitions. My father had a tough time justifying even my 10^th class test series in Mathematics. After having me enrolled into one, I wonder if he even considered me capable enough to appear for the boards. A massive tide of water has swept the old notions, and the new ones are occupying the space so hastily that one is left not with a choice but accept them. One doesn’t intend to denigrate the education being offered by the coaching institutes; maybe that’s exactly what the need of the hour is, aptly what the ever increasing competition calls for, but give me just one second of your life to calmly and impartially think upon this question: Is this education worth a childhood?

Stories of kids going to coaching institutes since their 4^th grade or maybe 5^th, aren’t new. They rarely manage to astound a person these days. ‘You Dream, We Fulfill’. Yes, yes, you aren’t a bit wrong in guessing the ‘we’ here; the million lane flooding institutes. The fees of a coaching institute is not 50,000, it’s a childhood.

Who has not heard the childhood stories of their parents form their own mouths? Of course, we all have. And no matter how much ego we have to shed in agreeing to the fact, that theirs was a more carefree time, we all do. Some of the incidents narrated by my father are hard to get through, but that’s where the real fun lies. Imagine, someone finding it hard to believe that something as crazy as what you did, could also be done. Flying kites is fun for us, making the strong thread used for flying the kites with sharp glass in screeching sun, was for them. This is where the metaphorical difference lies. One surely doesn’t expect a person to make threads out of glass but there is no harm in expecting the same happy-go-lucky attitude. Going back, are these coaching institutes demanding too much of a child? Too much, too early? Is being an IITian commendable if the child is being trained unabated for 6-7 years? Are we conscious of the fact that this is not the same as ‘going to lengths for realizing our passion’? When they grow up, will these kids ever know that there is a world beyond course books, and that strangely enough, it did exist even when they were stuck with the concepts of force and momentum? Where are we heading? These grey and white haired people think not a second before cursing the social networking sites for snatching the real world from today’s youth. Could they, for a change, tilt a bit and think in this direction too, of who is to be blamed for the present scenario?

I am not trying to defend the online world (I would love to, though), but till when are we going to be ruled by the old ideology of ‘No matter how much you study, it is always less’, and always blame the advancement in technology for whatever seems to be going the wrong way? It is not as true as it seems. Wait for the right time. It is not only not right but wrong to pay 100$ for a 2$ commodity.

Whatever you do, at the back of your head be aware, that someday you’d be narrating each incident as a story to your kids. Make sure, you do not invite mockery, or even worse, a pitiful laugh. Trust me, there will be no point repenting then. How about considering your deeds, now?