Category: Snippets from my Life (page 1 of 1)

It was a cold winter night in Delhi. The bare concrete floor was hard and cold. I needed to catch some sleep before my job interview the next day in Gurgaon. 

During those days, I was still struggling to get a job in the IT & Software field. All my paltry savings from my low paying private construction job was spent doing my software training. I had finally secured an interview with HCL, a big software company in Delhi. They were going to reimburse my travel, but I needed a place to crash for one night in Delhi. I had asked a friend if he knew anyone I could stay with in Delhi. He said the Rajya Sabha(upper house in the Indian parliament) MP from Sambalpur was his Dad’s friend and he could have his Dad arrange it so I could stay in his MP quarter for a night. 

My Dad gave me 300 bucks when I was leaving home. I used to be very sensitive about taking money from my parents those days. I had been unemployed or under-employed for a few years by then, after graduating from college. My father had recently retired from his work. So the last thing I wanted was to still be dependent on him. I reluctantly took the money. Though I had no intention of spending it, I needed some money in case the staying arrangement didn’t work out and I had to find a hotel for a night.

When I arrived at the MP’s house in Delhi, he said there was already a person in the room meant for visitors. I could share the room with him, but there was no extra bed or bedding, I would have to sleep on the floor. I agreed without blinking an eyelid before he could change his mind. 

I put on two layers of clothing and socks. I wrapped myself up in the blanket I had brought with me for the train ride and lay down on the floor. It was still very cold. I somehow had to survive the night in the makeshift sleeping bag.

The next day I got up early. Got ready, had hot tea at a nearby stall, took a bus to Gurgaon for the interview. Unfortunately I did fairly badly in the interview, and didn’t get the job. From there I went to the railway station to catch my train back to Bhubaneswar. 

After all this, sleeping on a cold concrete floor, failing yet another job interview, I was still happy that I didn’t need to spend the money my Dad had given me and I would be able to return it to him when I got home. 

Unemployment.. it twists your mind and changes you as a person. It’s a trauma that always stays with you.

I see a STD phone booth right across the road. I cross the busy road and get to the phone booth. There are a few people waiting to make calls. I wait in line for my turn to come. 

Let me rewind the clock a bit.  

I have been trying to get a foot in in the software development field. With my background in Civil Engineering, it’s been a difficult journey. Those days IT companies preferred Electrical or Computer Science engineers. Being a Civil Engineer it has been hard to get a call for an interview let alone getting a job.

The year is 1995. After much trying, I have accepted a job at a IBM training center in New Delhi. My job is to  teach students software development on a certain platform. My salary is around 4000 INR/month. But my actual take home pay is even less. I live in a sublet. In Delhi, Govt employees rent out a room of their subsidized 2/3 room govt housing to make some extra money. That kind of a rental room is called a sublet there. You get one room, the landlord’s family lives in the rest of the house. There is one common bathroom that you share with the family. You have little privacy. Rain or shine you always go out to eat as you don’t have a kitchen to cook in. I hate this living arrangement, but with my salary that’s what I can afford in an expensive place like Delhi.

I get word that a software company is looking for programmers. Those days private agents used to work with companies to fill vacancies. The agents would run ads in newspapers, gather applications, shortlist them and send them to the hiring companies for job interviews. If someone they send gets hired the agent gets paid. If no one gets hired, the agent gets nothing. So it’s in their best interest that they send the right candidates for interviews.

I call the agent who is dealing with this company. I am desperate to get a software job. I tell the agent, if he can arrange an interview for me, I guarantee that I will get hired. I teach students who later go on to become software developers. In an interview, there is nothing that I can get asked that I won’t be able to answer. The agent laughs at my overconfidence but says he will get me an interview and he does.

I go to NOIDA for my job interview. The hiring manager is out of town. So I get interviewed by a senior programmer who reports to the hiring manager. After a few days I get a call from the agent that the hiring manager wants to do a 2nd round of interview. I go to their office again. I am told that the manager is in Hyderabad and he will call soon to do the interview over phone. At that time their brand new office is still being set up. I am given a chair right next to the receptionist in the lobby and asked to wait for his call. I have my interview in the lobby, out in the open, while everyone is walking by, asking questions to the receptionist. The interview lasts for about 30 minutes. Then someone tells me to go into a room and wait.

A gentleman with a paper in hand enters the room and asks me what my current salary is. I say 4000/month. The paper he is holding is my offer letter but I don’t know that yet. He says if they offer me 10,000, will I join. I am overjoyed. Not only am I getting into software development, I am also getting a big raise. I think for a moment. Gathering all the courage, I say I want 12,000/mo. He shows me the offer letter and says this one has a 10,000 offer.. Let me print you a new one, don’t leave without taking your offer letter.

After a while I step out of the office with an offer letter in my hand. I need to call my Dad to tell him that my struggling days are behind me now. This call has been long overdue. I imagine my Dad waiting by the phone to get this call. There are a few people still in line in front of me. It feels like I have been standing in this line and waiting for my turn to come for years when others have been passing me by. I can’t wait any more. Every minute I stand there waiting feels like ages.

Beginning of the month, after my dad received his salary, he would diligently sit down with a pen and paper and do the budget for the month. Every anticipated expense would be jotted down and totalled. One of the items in that budget would be our monthly grocery. Though the grocery budget wouldn’t be itemized, we (my brother and I) knew it included a very important item that we both cared about that would make our lives a little easier. It was a tube of toothpaste.

Back then, toothpaste used to come in aluminum tubes. These tubes would invariably run out toward the last week of the month. But we knew we couldn’t just go buy a new tootpaste from the corner store. We will have to wait until our dad got his next month’s salary and a new budget was written down.

So, the two of us would have our work cut out every morning. When the tube wouldn’t yield any more toothpaste after relentless and vigorous squeezing, the tools would have to come out of the toolbox. The first choice of tool would be a rolling pin—the one used to make rotis. The tube would be rolled flat on the cement floor to extract whatever toothpaste was left. That exercise would usually get us through a day or two. But the damn month wouldn’t be over yet.

After the rolling pin stopped yielding results, the next tool of the trade would be a pair of pliers. We knew the circular head/mouth of the toothpaste tube—an area the rolling pin couldn’t reach—still held some of our elusive paste. The pliers would now be employed to gently cajole the remaining toothpaste from that area. That would stretch us another day or two.

When even the pliers would stop helping, the final tool to come out of the toolbox would be a pair of scissors. The tube would now be cut open to surgically extract the last vestiges of toothpaste clinging to the inside walls.

By that time, the month would finally be over, and we would get a new tube of toothpaste—allowing our morning routine to go smoothly for a few weeks 🙂

My friend had paid me a visit. We had a good time catching up. It’s been a few years. We hadn’t met after college. He is working at a top private sector company, I am still looking for a job. As he was leaving he needed to tie his shoes. He had taken them off on our veranda as per common Indian tradition, people leave their shoes outside before entering the house. As he was having difficulty bending down and putting the shoes on, I told him to bring them inside and sit on the sofa so it would be easier for him to tie the laces. He did.

It should have been a fairly innocuous event, watching someone sitting down tying his shoe laces. But it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t help but notice his relatively brand new pair of shoes. They were Reeboks, they looked nice, they looked expensive. 

I looked at my only pair of shoes tucked away in the shoe stand in the corner of the room. They have faded considerably. I had bought them from a seller on the footpaths of Calcutta a few years ago when I was still in college. They were faux leather. They looked kind of cheap when I had bought them. Now they look even worse after a few years of wear and tear. I use them only during job interviews. That’s my only pair of shoes that can pass as dress shoes. Before an interview I try to get some shine on them by putting some shoe polish on them. 

My friend tied his shoe laces and left. I looked at my old pair of shoes and hoped they don’t come apart before I get a job.

The other day I took my son to the public library here. He wanted to get his own libarry card, so we went up to an information desk. They pointed us to a computer and said fill out a form online and then go see them. It took us 5 minutes to fill out the form online, then we went back to the information desk. They pulled up the form, asked my son what theme he wants his card to be, there were a few themes to choose from, he chose the dog theme, and he was issued the card then. It took 10 mins. 

Flash back….

I wanted to get a Library card back when I used to live in Bhubaneswar. So I went to the library. The clerk who issued cards had just arrived at his desk. There were pictures of Gods behind his desk hanging on the wall. He first performed puja and then asked me what I wanted. I stated the obvious, I wanted a card. The clerk said they weren’t issuing any more library cards, but I could go see the head Librarian and if he allowed, I could get one. The head librarian was a big officer(Babu), had a big office in the Library. There was a peon gurading his door from intruders like me. I went into his office after placating the guard, with a hand written application. He interviewed me about why I needed card. I told him I was unemployed and was planning a bank robbery and I wanted to get some ideas about how to rob a bank. I was sure the library would have books about past famous bank heists. So I needed a card. Well, I didn’t say that 😀. I said I was preparing for exams and it will help to have access to books. He said they weren’t issuing new cards anymore. But I could go to the Director of the department and if he approved I could get a card. 

The Director of the department was an IAS officer, his office was in the State Museum near the BJB college, a long bicycle ride from the Library. But being unemployed, I had all the time in the world. So I went to museum. At the museum it wasn’t easy to get into an IAS officer’s office without prior appointment. But somehow I was allowed in. The Director was nice, he listened to my Bank Heist plan, I mean my exam preparation plan, and graciously approved my application. Armed with an approval from a IAS officer, who didn’t have any better things to do than approving Library Card applications, I went back to the Library and finally got my Library Card. Of course all these events didn’t happen in one day. It took me weeks to go from one Babu to a higher Babu and then to an even higher Babu to get it all done.

Compare that to the 10 minutes that it took my son to get a Library card. What’s the point of this story! The point is, the Babu raj which is a sad remnant of the British Raj is ingrained in our society. It’s laughable that an IAS officer had to issue an approval for a Libary Card. This was bureaucracy at his best. We have become so used to this way of doing things that we don’t realize there can be a better way. I hope things have changed in the subsequent two decades.

They were the first batch to have completed their 10th board from the local convent school in Balasore. So our +2 Science class in F M College used to have a mixed population, kids like us who came from Odia medium schools and kids like them who came from an English medium school.

Though they were a handful in number, they used to stand out. They were fluent in English. They came from relatively affluent families. They used to dress differently, and they had an overall different demeanor. I used to be in awe of them. I still remember some of their names. Sanjay, Gopal, Jyotiskar and Amit(Shah). I wanted to be like them. And that started my journey with  English. 

Being a slow learner compared to my friends like Deepak and Prashanta, it took me years to overcome my fear of English and to be able to speak it confidently.

In Engineering college, during a viva voce exam for a lab, I answered a question in Odia. It was common practice back then. Most students and teachers used to be Odia. But this professor stopped me and told me to gather the courage to answer in English, and I did. That must have been the very first English sentence I spoke in a formal setting. I am sure I sounded tentative, unsure and possibly said it all wrong grammatically. But it was a start nevertheless.