The story so far .... - Reaching Threshold, ETA……

Note: The names (of individuals and organisations) mentioned in this following text are fictitious and resemblance to any person living or dead or to an organization existing/acquired/merged/closed/doomed is purely by coincidence. The author does not intend to hurt the sentiments of any individual/organization in any way.


1998-99 was the acme of software industry. The dot com boom appealed to all the young blood having knowledge of computers. The stipends and salary structure were very lucrative and many even migrated to States. I was in first year of my engineering ….. Electronics and telecommunication.

I had selected E&TC engineering by choice, but the market scenario, during that year, claxoned that the years to follow were for software. I have a vivid recollection of the campus recruitments going on in our college during my second academic year 1999-2000. I was in control systems practical which was conducted by one of the best professors in the electronics faculty. We were working on some electric motor assignment where you vary the tension on the motor and the current drawn is more when the torque is to be kept constant. I was sitting on a stool with Rohit Bhat and Kunal Bhide, my colleagues, on my left and right. Rohit never liked the idea of staring doltishly at the apparatus, when the results obtained were aberrant, during practical. He followed a simple philosophy, either the results were right or the setup-procedure was wrong.

“Fish!! What are we doing here folks?”
“Chill dude, lets see where are we going wrong” Kunal retaliated.
“That damn motor’s not going to work all by itself dudes, Mulay is gonna fry our arse.”
“Hmmm, the results are right but we ain’t using the formulae correctly” I smiled.

And just then three girls walked into our lab. Two of them were from final year engineering Computer Science and one from final year Electronics and Telecommunications. Clad in white Punjabi dress with blue dupatta, MIT girls looked beautiful on Mondays and Thursdays that’s when it was obligatory for us to wear our uniforms. It had been the start of the campus recruitment in our college and the myriad list of companies overwhelmed all the students.

The year 2001-02 was not that remunerative as speculated.

We were in the final year of engineering and the first activity on the first day of college was to check up list of companies coming for campus recruitment. The batch that passed out a year previous to us saw near about 70% placement for the college as whole and nearly 100% for CompSci and E&TC departments except for few students who were year down. With such placements happening in our campus, the 2002 batch was very optimistic. Companies listed for the first week, to pick up the cream, were myflex, TCS, MBT, Bindingviews, TTIL, Calsoft, IBM, TataInfotech and many more. Our college did not have the dream job concept, so once a student was selected by a company, he could not appear for other companies. This was done so that all the students get a fair chance. Rohit and I expected to get placed at least by third day of placements as by then the cream would have been already selected. This meant the companies, listed for the first two days of recruitment, would have to select fifty odd students total from various streams, which would promote us to the cream layer for companies coming third day onwards. On the whole, we all were overjoyed, overwhelmed.

Our joy was short-lived. TCS backed out the day it was supposed to come. Lots of students cleared the criteria set by myflex for taking the aptitude test, as the criterion was very reasonable. But myflex shocked us by selecting only five students, 2 from CompSci and 3 from E&TC. There were another 45 to go the next day according to our logistics.

It was the second day and I went to pick up Rohit at his residence.

“Dude, lets hope the numbers are correct this time” Rohit said as he sat behind, on my Splendour.

“Yeah, lets hope for the best buddy, I hope Bindingviews doesn’t ditch us today” and I bit my tongue.

Rohit gave me a nasty look and patted my back as a signal that things will be fine. We both were decked up, clean shaven, light blue shirt and navy blue trousers pressed to be crisp, a navy blue tie with a golden tie pin, black formal shoes, all the dandruff exterminated with Head&Shoulders, hair brushed to shine and a very decent hair-style to go with the formal apparel. All in all, the whole trouble was to at least appear as a gentleman at first sight. But we were not the only ones like that, absolutely everyone were polished, we all looked confident, but were tensed within.

We waited, waited for long, an hour passed in anxiety, the next half an hour served as anxiolytic time and the hour after that passed in complete boredom.

“Dude, you are an asshole” Rohit shouted
“Hey, I ain’t Bindingviews” I retorted
“They ditched us man, they ditched us” Rohit lamented

Just then our placement coordinator came to the hall where companies hosted their Pre-Placement Talk (PPT) and addressed us

“I am sorry to tell you, my friends, that Bindingviews has postponed their recruitment till further notice and they aren’t the only ones, Calsoft and IBM too have deferred the campus placements. Fortunately we have Kinbay coming in day after tomorrow and TataInfotech in next week”

I dunno why he called us friends when it was apparent that he was of our uncle’s age and his comportment resembled to a grandfather. Well whatever, this address meant that there was not a single company for two days and our logistics failed miserably.

Kinbay’s PPT was interesting. The HR, from Kinbay, had intriguing presentation skills. Dressed in beige color trousers and black top, the dusky female really had lot of eyes ogling at her. She started the PPT with the company’s profile, operations carried out from their India offices and career path for trainees recruited from campus. She had this uncanny style of emphasizing on certain key words with her hands. She swayed her hands vertically with her finger curled, as if to show a ‘V’ with each hand, and as she brought her hands down, her index and middle finger would be drawn in, all to suggest double quotes surrounding the word she just uttered.

Let us call this style as HOOBA-HOOBA.

“We follow an“ HOOBA-HOOBA “informal work culture”
“We have“ HOOBA-HOOBA “flexi-timing”
“We have“ HOOBA-HOOBA (pro-longed!)“extra-curricular activities like picnics, parties, music shows etc”
“We have as special“ HOOBA-HOOBA “marriage bonus!”, ummmmmm , the expression on our face was “try us, we are pretty gullible :D”

“We gift” HOOBA-HOOBA “Rs.10,000 when an employee gets married, and if you marry someone within” HOOBA-HOOBA “Kinbay, you get Rs.20,000 collectively”. Woah, what an incentive to join the organization, you not only have code to develop but also, lot of other missions like woo a gal from the organization, sweetheart commitments, singing dancing for her, just to earn about Rs.14000 when you and your chick settle (Rs.14000 is the figure after deducting 30% for IT purposes with the assumption that we fit in that slab).

Towards the end of the PPT, they screened a film in which they had captured the company campus, the cubicles, employee interaction, coffee lounge and the most ridiculous thing, according to Rohit and I that one could ever show to promote ones company; glimpses of Kinbay guys and gals in HOOBA-HOOBA swimming-suit, beat that, Kinbay’s trip to water kingdom …… uncensored, uncut!

Kinbay’s gals in swim-suits lingered in our minds even if we felt it that was a miserable publicity stunt. We did not sit for Kinbay and I don’t even remember who got selected and what happened after that. The next was TataInfotech, whose test was full of puzzles and hardly few of us cleared it. TataInfotech left us disappointed and for the next whole week we were free with TTIL scheduled on next-to-next week start, Monday.

Decked up again, we impatiently waited for TTIL guys to arrive. Rohit kept an eye on me to prevent me from saying the unsaid. After a brief PPT, we took the test. 12 of us got through and we waited for the group discussion. I had already formulated a strategy of united we stand with Rohit. So we were going to have a collaborative group discussion. As we walked into the room, we were given number tags. A capital D had been formed with the arc comprising of chairs occupied by us and the straight line comprising of the table occupied by the panel. We occupied the chairs whose number resembled with the tag in our hand. Let us call it coincidence. On the start of the arc was Rohit with Prashant and Siddhart, following him. Then the middle arc had Aniket, Shalini and Shweta. The bottom arc was filled with Ashwini, Divya and me. Rohit and I, we were bang opposite each other, which was helpful in a way. We were expecting topics like “Liberation of women” or “Reservation in Post Graduate courses” or “Globalized view of India’s economy”, but the panel surprised us by picking up “Modulation” as the topic for group discussion.

“Modulation” I said in my mind, “what the hell are we going to discuss about it in a group?”

There were three types and each type had a paragraph explaining the fundamentals. And everyone had pretty much the same knowledge about modulation. We all were just staring at each other. I had done some homework about the do’s and don’ts in a GD. So I decided to take the role of a facilitator in the GD.

“So today, we will discuss on modulation. What is modulation, what are the different types and where each is used? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each” I nervously introduced the topic in an equally nervous group.

“Modulation is transmission of base wave over a carrier wave” I started defining the insipid communication technique.
“There are three types of modulation” Mr. Someone just pitched in.
“Yes, you are right, there are three types indeed, AM (Amplitude Modulation), FM (Frequency Modulation) and PM(Phase Modulation)” I replied with an expression that I didn’t like the way Mr. Someone interposed my oration on modulation.
“So lets hear about AM from Rohit, FM from Prashant and PM from Mr. Someone” I delegated the discussion to Rohit. Now PM was the toughest to explain and Mr. Someone had a tough time explaining it. When he started defining PM the rest of the group took the role of the opposition party, questioning each and every word he said about PM and its advantages and disadvantages. We were on the verge of defining an “HOOBA-HOOBA Anti-PM”, which was not only simple to implement but also had no trade-offs, seemed absolutely invulnerable to any losses and outran all the existing modulation techniques.

The panel couldn’t take any more of this nonsense and the GD ended. The interviews were not all that good and TTIL ended up recruiting one from CompSci and one from E&TC. Rohit and I were still without a job in hand to boast about.

Weeks passed, months passed, campus recruitment hibernated and we couldn’t even believe that it was already the last day of college, the last paper of engineering, the last of four years of graduation and to top it all I was without a job. We heard about our seniors getting decline letters from the companies in which they were placed. Some blatantly declined, some diplomatically postponed joining till further notice while some had the decency to pay a months salary and cancel the appointment. It wasn’t a good year for our seniors or for us.

I collected my BE result, I had scored First class in last year and also in aggregate of four years. I was one of the rain drops falling that year; I was one of the countless confused graduates contemplating the contingent future. I had dreams to fulfill, desire to grow, passion to excel and I was ready to take the next step, but it appeared blurred. I was reaching threshold, expected time of arrival 0 hundred hours.