The Wise one says…

I live in a world of stereotypes, with all of them walking around me all the time, making a life of there own, literally playing the parts they all were assigned in the beginning…me being the comic relief.
They seldom try to break free from the imperfect behavioral shape they were caste into, I try not to think of spades as a spade…but as epiphanous as it may sound..but blondes are made fun of for a reason!

Before it is signed off as misogynist writing of a single psycho….give me chance to convince you that I speak the truth. Women can be difficult to talk to. They are so subjective in their approach and talking to them is sometimes like perambulating a giant circle, where seemingly disconnected dots or shall we call them points of iteration collapse into singularity. If there ever will be an apocalypse….I know what would start it. Its called death by boredom

The other day..when my sister asked for an opinion over the picture she clicked (of a depressingly plain tree), I…like always had some advice.

“You know…I dont like it at all”

Ya..I know that doesnt quite sound like advice, but hey..I am not an expert!
Like the unsuspecting protagonist of a slasher movie, I didnt knew I had opened a pandora’s box.

“You know what..you always do that.”
“Do what?”
“You dont know how to appreciate”
“No..I do”
“No…the other day when I made coffee…”
“But it was too sweet..”
“oh..thanks..”
“No..I mean..there was too much sugar in it”
“did you thank me that day/?? huh??”
“What?? I must have made coffee hundreds of times…did even ask you to thank me??”
“And now this picture…you hate it..”
“I dont hate it. I just dont like it.”
“one and the same.. and then that day when I was watching TV, you took the remote”
“It was 6 pm. They air Aladdin. You love aladdin…”
“But you dont….coz you cant! its something you cant…! You CAN’T APPRECIATE”

And it went on in circles like a really bad song with a very catchy chorus.

And then the other day, something similar happened with my mother.

“We dont know you anymore..”
“How come”
“You are secretive about everything”
“What do you wanna know?”
“Well…what all did you do at college?”
“Nothin much…regular stuff”
“regular stuff??? regular??? tell me regular”
“tch…classes…lunch..labs…what else”
“you dont tell anything in detail… you might plunge into depression”
“No I wont.”
“Why didnt you tell us about the CAT form?”
“What about it”
“That you havent got a center near by”
“But I told papa..”
“But you didnt tell me…”

And it usually goes on..until the bell rings…or the milk spills all over.

I am being dragged to clean my room now…for I know how “guests” like to intrude in my privacy and have a tour of my room.. They dont wanna see any cormen lying around… gotta go.

“where did you get placed??”
“Aricent”
“what>?”
“A-R-I-C-E-N-T”
“Package?”
“3.5″
“Bas??”
“ya..”
“Infosys to zyada deti hai/.”
“They are both kind of in same league..”

Since then…I have been put on phone several times to tell them(the ones being called) about the company..
“Is it Arihant?? Its a great company…some Sindhi guy..”
“No its Ari CENT… Rupert Murdoch? Hughes??”
“Oh..”

another one..
“Kuch Adjacent Adjacent karke hai..”
“No its ARICENT…”
“TCS nahin aati?? you know Nandan NIlekani is doing that universal id…he is from TCS”
“You bet uncle..I know about NIlekani..” (How much do you know about him?? haan??)

Some one said..

“You took a job?? No MBA then??”
To which my mom said “..no no..its for same side. He is going to give all the papers..”

Expectations ride on you..and I am sick of it. For once..I dont need assurance that I will be paid more. I dont want advice about whether I should pursue an MBA…and I dont want to compete..r even be compared with Mrs Batra’s son. SICK OF IT>….SICK SICK SICK of it

I wonder whether I subconciously appear in the placements just for the writing some juicy accounts on my blog..

So here goes the lament..

mcafee..mcafee…where do I begin. A company which takes their recruits so seriously that nothing in this world stops their HR head from being an 3 hours late.

They shortlist dismal handful of people..and then they say..
“Hey..if you want to see the ppt..I have it in my laptop….you can see it here..”

After obtaining a 95%tile in the test which has conveniently been outsourced to another company..they started with the interviews..

They asked me everything that ever existed, is or was written in Galvin, and I kind of managed it. Then one of them asked..
“Which is the most difficult program you have ever written in your lab..”

“Sir..there two sort of programs, one that are just ifs and fors..like round robin…Just irritating. Other ones are conceptually different from anything you have ever done..”

“So…which is the difficult one..”

“Next thing you are going to ask me to write them..wont you..” I guess..i just blurt out things..

“You have done it yourself..havent you..”

“Sir writing a program on screen is different,..” I said

“Why?”

“Well…for one thing..I can compile”

….And then they started to laugh…

I got through with the first stage…I was amongst the three people they had chosen for the final final interview

SO..their HR head, this guy with a moustache, and a vague hindi accent who was pretty hard on me..

“So…rate yourself in the first round.”
“3 on 5″
“Why..”
“Because I see a scope in improvement..”
“Why didnt you study at the first place….” In the scariest rendition possible.
“Well..there are some questions you never can be sure of, and that is why you learn with each interview..” I was a little defensive here..

–Strike 1–

“Ok..tell me…QA or Dev.”
“Any day I would prefer QA over Dev.”
“Blah blah…qa qa..blah blah…qa.dev”
“Okay…but I would still prefer Dev..over product validation”

–Strike 2–

“If mcafee hires you, would you consider joining or even appearing for some other company?”
“Well…placement would give me a sense of security..so If get placed at mcafee..I probably wont work hard at the first place. But if company like google…(ahm…google is like reaching for the stars) I would love to give it a try.”

And with this statement..I sealed the deal. I almost implied that they are dust when compared to google..which they kind of are..

so this is how they announced the results…

“All three of you..please have a seat”
“We would like to thank you for successful completion of the process…and we are going to make to offers..”
the HR guy took over..
“Who is most confident here? you…you..or you..?”
Dead silence there..
“How did the interview go?”
“Good” “Great experience” “50 50″
“Okay..the offers we are making…” i could see hands zooming on three of us…
“are sanchit and sakshi.. ” sitting on either side.
And I was left in the middle…as an audience..
“And you Prateek…sorry..”

“I have the shirts…and goody bags…for winners..”
“And..this is for your placement coordinators..”
And possibly its just my imagination or they looked at me.. and wanted me to clap..and cheer everytime they announced the results..

It was a time when I had strangest twist my bowels.., my pants squeeze life out me…and then this. I did not have an expression for this situation…

I picked my clothes and whatever dignity was left, shook hands with the shameless minions of the brutality, and walked away. Smashing through the doors..halfway into tears…with every step hoping that somebody would call me back….now….now….now..

I was going through the latest issue of outlook when an article about the tribal in Orissa got me thinking for hours about the rationale behind this God person.

The government has the duty to to respect my religion whatever it may be. Living in a secular nation this is ironically the least as well as the most I expect.

Consider each man for himself sort of a model here. If each human, can and does start a new religion, assumes new rocks and trees as his Deity, transfers his allegiance to some star other than sun, wouldn’t he become a minority straight away. And with that, he will be under the govt’s security umbrella (which comes with its own holes..)

Now if some tribes in orissa consider the mountains and streams as their mother, wouldnt mining deep into that land be technically equivalent to the Babari demolition. It is..just that its scaled down to such a minuscule point where it affects a man no more than a leprechaun for the Urbane. He will be another man in leaves for us.While his world comes crashing down, we continue to eat in our shiny silver foil made out of his God and then we roll it into balls to churn new Sachins and Sehwags.

“If you destroy my God, I will destroy yours” said one of the tribal with a hint of vengeance in his voice. Which is to an extent is justified..I mean we can handle some more fundamentalists…cant we?

Who is to determine, whats God/God like and whats not? Who is to stop me from transferring my allegiance to the illegal floor I constructed on my flat?? Would you still demolish it if I carve out pagan symbols on it?

I am concerned here… where do we draw the line? Either let them have their own definition of God, a choice to choose what they want to praise on loudspeakers in the daylight…or strip off the right to practise any sort of religion altogether. None or all isnt it?

Big guy..show me a sign if you exist!

I have a paper in less then 20 hours…and here am I, making an update.

I just got over with Mamma Mia! The movie…and I am still trying to get over it. You see Meryl Streep and you put the remote away thinking that this movie just could be a marvel…but this people…is up to be the worst movie of the decade. It is so bad, and so loud and so long ..

Break into an abba number every 5 minutes, which is half baked in the movie…then that greek set up becomes so boring and flat after first 30 minutes. Streep acts old and stupid, rest are just stupid. I wonder why I even began watching it at the first place.

Haven study a bit, reading a wiki page about my new hero…Shannon..can you imagine he was the one to have suggested that we use boolean in digital circuits…How cool is that. Claude Shannon..rules.

The surmounting pile of shameless “victories” pile up on my resume manager, I wonder if they debar me for that.
I wish they really do, because there has to be something which protects the companies from this “legend” (honestly..if you dont see the figure of speech…god help you with English) called Nigam…who just cant stop being funny. (crack a joke in the opening para..check)

“If they are rating me on my charm…I am through” is what I said right after my personal interview. And I was true. I have all the qualities to be a good employee…just that I am not sane enough to be one. Its like I dont want to play the game right, but fast forward to the good times. If I enjoy talking to people while they interview me..is it a bad thing?? I dont know. But here at Citrix, being the “wild card” contestant after much ado turns out about nothing, things were dark for me as the ghosts of my shameful coding skills came haunting back to me.

A little background about company, strict hiring, no-nonsense,

“So you are actually the topper of our first round..”
“Really…” (I would like to thank my parents…and my teachers… )
“But not so great in the coding round..”
“Ya..I know. I was disappointed about it.”
“What..are you generally like this only? Not so good at coding..”

Now this is a verbal assault, like a vituperative nightmare for guy like me. In geek world, this is more sort of an impotence.

“Sir, actually I was so excited about the question, and did it without any thoughts”

“And this, I hope doesnt heighten your spirits either..” pointing to the shameful zero (reconsidered as 7 due to step marking)

“No way it could”

Some talk about programs…some talk about C, stuff about other stuffs…and it really didnt go that bad. just 2 questions..knocked me down but I had ample of chances to recover to and some extent I did.

“Sir, If you dont find my answers great, tell me the right solution. May be..it will help me.”
“Why..why should I”
“er….humanity’s sake..” How else could I have answered such a question..
Laughing there heads off with this..
“Did I touch your nerve??” said the cooler interviewer while the other one said “Deposit money into my account..and then I will tell you that”
“Sir, I will do that as soon as you start paying me..”
And again a burst of quick glances, smirks evolvling into a riot.

“So 82%….”
“naa…81.99″
“Dont you have anything else to do in life”
Now this is offence in my world.
“Sir, marks are about vivas and some people have all the luck” (may be I blew it here)

“How would you rate yourself as a programmer?”
“er..Not the best, not the worst”
“We are looking for the best you see…”
“I am sure…I know you are..” and I repeated it about 4 times. trying not to be remotely sarcastic.

I mean, they cant judge a person on how he does in a day. Sometimes you perform..sometimes you cant…things as easy as nodes in a tree dont strike your mind, it definitely doesnt mean that you are numnut here.

It was like two inseparable entities, reflections of each other, thrown into existence like two selves in parallel universe, like a reality of another reality stranger to me until now, when suddenly this Melvin Udall,a figment of some writer’s imagination stares me in the eye from the mirror 30 years into my future.
Yes…he is I, I am him. Not someone I would want to be, not someone I aspire to become..but every idiosyncratic trait of mine, aggrandized, and taken into account the social awkardness and this thing for inappropriate, incosiderate wisecracks..you get who is known as this bigoted, loner, human hater, sarcastic writer ..Jack Nicholson in the movie “As good as it gets”.

The obsessive compulsion for walking in strange pattern (like a knight on the chess board..which I too enjoy at times), or the affinity for plasticware (guess who else has stopped using plates..and switched to microwave friendly tupperware), or this incorrigible disgust for intruding neighbors, thing for verbals contrary to sheer vulnerability in case it gets physical at any point. Not to forget… alone too.