My entry into professional life

July 11 2005. Not just another day. At least not for me.
It was the first day of my professional life. The day when I entered the big bad world of corporates.
Me, along with my college classmates Ashok, Rajappan and Arup were in the train to Mysore on July 8th...

Flashback...Colour replaced by Black and White screen

Interviewer announcing my name, looking in my direction and smiling with tears in his eyes thanking me for choosing his company. Sob sob..so touching (Actually he just announced names of all the 100 odd guys who got through the interviews and just left. But let's not get bogged down by silly details like this).

"Pehla nasha pehla khumar" plays in the background

I am jumping in the air doing the leg 180 degree leg stretch. (It's another thing that I have torn 3 good pants trying this out in real).In flashback scenes, slow motion is allowed. So by the time I come back to the ground, the song is done with.

Flashback done, 70mm color screen comes back. Me still in train. I started dreaming of all the wonderful things I will experience during my 3 month training period in the campus.

We reached Mysore campus on the 9th of July which was a saturday. The mysore campus had a jaw dropping view even from the outside entrance. It was so huge that it took some time for me to just scan the entire campus from the entrance. After all the security checking was done, we were escorted to our rooms. The rooms too were just out of the world. I got the impression of staying in a 5-star hotel. On 9th and 10th we just roamed around the campus exploring the fantastic buildings. While one building looked like an Egyptian pyramid another looked like a Roman palace. IOn seeing thse types of buildings, I couldn't help wonder whether we need to learn history during the training period.

First 2 days we had ice breaking sessions. Ok it doesn't mean literally breaking blocks of ice with hammer. Students were encouraged to interact with one another freely through various activities. Within 2 days, I made a quite a few friends.
On the 3rd day we were all asked to assembly in the main hall. After the exciting first 2 days we were expecting more "fun". How am I to know that my fun loving days were going to end all of a sudden.

We guys are called company "resources" in IT lingo. ie, anything owned by the company becomes it's resource. Now that's a very presigious title considering that you have things like desk, table, dustbins to share the same title. After everyone had arrived in the hall, the HR manager said he had a happy news for some "special" resources . Naturally me being special and now also being a two day old resource, the news should concern me also

"Everyone with a computer science background will be directly put into production (that mean actual projects) without any training" thundered the HR manager.

For a moment there was silence.

"This was his god damned good for nothing good news??????"
Steam was whislting out from both my ears.
All those day dreaming about enjoying the mysore campus went up in smoke.
Hmm maybe I guess this is how a terrorist is born.

One bad news down. God knows how many more to go.

Next thing to worry was where we would be posted. They would put out the list in 2 days. I was hoping for getting posted in Bangalore or Pune. Chennai and Bhuvaneshwar were the last places I wanted to go. Other places like Trivandrum, Mohali etc were still fine when compared to Chennai (too hot for me..I mean temperature) and Bhuvaneshwar (what to do there????).We were asked to fill up our choices for location in accordance with our preferences. So my list had Bangalore, Pune at the top and Chennai, Bhuvaneshwar at the bottom.

2 days later the list came. I scanned through the list
"Saraswati...Saravanana.............Shekar...........................Smitha...."

"Crap why should there be so many S guys..."

"...Sreeram....aahaa Sree Shankar...hmm....Chennai"

O man not again!!!!...
Nothing seemed to be going my way. I wondered Which ass**** made this list??? Was he born with his head upside down that he saw my list and thought I preferred Chennai to Bangalore. My only regret when I left Mysore campus the next day for Chennai was that I couldn't kick that moron's ass.

All the ones who had got Chennai as their posting location were going to Chennai in the same train.

Fine no use mourning over the past. Better look into the future and move on.
Now the next worry was the type of project I may end up with. We were told that we would be put into one of the following project genres : Open systems ie, mainly unix, Datawarehousing, J2EE, or Mainframes. Now the one I most dreaded was the mainframes projects. The reason for this was that I had already had experience working with the COBOL language, which is the language that is mainly used in mainframes, in my college. I was ready to dip my head in a cartload of shit rather than work on COBOL again, or , a more scary scenario, become a COBOL developer my entire life.

The next day we reached Chennai. For the first week the company provided accomodation for all of us. In contrast to the Mysore accomodation, here we stayed in a minus 3 star hotel, the only favourable factor being the proximity to the office. We had to report at the office the next day.
The next day, I reported to the HR manager for Chennai DC (Development Cener).

The entire time only one thought was going through my mind
"No mainframes...No mainframes"

"So you are Sree Shankar"

"Yes Madam"

"No mainframes...No mainframes"

"Your manager will be here in just a moment"
"No mainframes...No mainframes"

After couple of minutes
"Aah there comes your manager. You may go with him now."

"No mainframes...No mainframes"

"So Sree Shankar right...Hi my name is Uday. I will be your reporting manager for this project."

"Hi Sir. Nice meeting you"

"Hey don't call me sir. In this company we address everyone by his first name"

"Ok sir...err I mean Uday"...

"No mainframes...No mainframes"

We got into an empty lift. Next few seconds no one talked as the lift started moving up.
Finally I couldn't stand it any longer.

"Uday, what is our project about"

"Oh it's a very interesting project. You will surely love it.It's mainly reading data from one file, doing necessary processing and then writing it to another output file in a specific format"

That bought something of a cheer to me."Finally...whew...doesn't sound like mainframes."

"So in what language are we doing this...C/C++ or J2EE or some new language", I asked enthusiastically.

"COBOL".

What more could a person entering his professional life ask for.