My Journey To The Pro World !!

The year was 1998, a small frail, no confident guy was on the cross-roads, he was sitting in the Kurukshetra University's Hall, waiting impatiently for his turns, while watching the TV monitor
displaying the number of seats left in the Government Colleges for the Engineering Degree. And with every guy going on the stage to reserve his seat, his hopes of getting into YMCA college was diminishing.

He feared if there was no seat left in that college. What will happen to him, his dreams, his life. He felt dreaded thinking of going into a private college which were considered a second rung institutes where most of the people with less brains would go. And to his bad luck or bad dreams, he wanted to take up Computer
Science, which in the year 1998 was even hotter than the hot winds of Thar Desert and reasong being Infosys which was making people from different section of society, millionaires. So, almost every guy in that hall wanted to secure a seat for Computer Science department in the best available college. And here was our protagonist sitting and praying to God that somehow he secure a seat in Computer Science in a good college. But I guess that day God was little too busy and his prayer might be in the pending list of God’s mailbox.

Finally his time to choose his carrier came and it came like a thunder. When he went on stage to look at the currently
available seats in different government colleges, he was shocked to see that all the Government colleges were filled, baring a few like PEC with ICE(Instrumentation and Control Engineering) and a few other trivial subjects like Architecture or Chemical Enginerring seats were left on VRCE(Nagpur).So it was a deciding moment, other students were waiting desperately for their turns and the teachers sitting on the podium were in too much of haste as if they were desperate to go to the restroom and I was holding them back. Anyways, I had gone with my brother and he left me the option open. Either i can take some subject in a Government College or try my luck for a good private engineering college in CSE department. I chose the second one and now I had to decide the private engineering college to choose. I was the first guy to choose among the available private engineering colleges. Now to my bad luck and kind-of over-confidence I didnt find out about the private engineering colleges and so I was completely blank and my brother sensed it and was really giving me angry stares, for my incomplete homework. So, I had not much option left but to choose the name of the college which sound most familiar to me and there it was APJ college, now I was a student of APJ school and have seen the APJ college students in the school as the building of APJ college was still in construction so for the time being, the college was running from the school and it was pretty close to my house so I felt safe and secured and so I gave my Thumbs Up for APJ college for CSE department.

I was sad because I wanted to go into YMCA college but was equally joyful at the thought that I will be staying at home and was familiar to the college and that I would be studying Computers with which I had fallen love during my 2 years of High School(+2).

Anyways so when I got into college I had one dream and I dream it more frequently than dreaming about one of my latest crush and that was about going to USA. That was the place where I belonged, that was my final destination that was my DREAM.
My years in college went without much effort required from my side but my determination for USA grew stronger with each passing semester. I was dreaming of US very frequently. Would read about IT companies in the US. But my dreams were when the Bubble Burst happened , IT professionals were left stranded , the companies were closing at a mammoth rate.The Indian professionals were heard being working in a McD shop or working as a waiter or at the petrol pump. The impact was very well evident in India also. Previously, the "Accent" used to be of 9 pages blooming with IT jobs in any big companies but now after this IT Bubble Burst, the pages got reduced to 4 pages of which two pages were for spiritual or other crab and the remaining page was for jobs in civil or mechanical industry. IT was dead, or so we thought. So when in the year 2002 , when we were finishing our graduation, around 45% of the class fellows were writing GRE/GATE exam. There was a huge rush to go to US for higher studies as there were no jobs available. But giving the high money factor involved, I never thought about it. I always wanted to go to US to earn big bucks not to spend big bucks. So I stuck to India.Days passed , weeks past, but no job offer. I would go to Nai Sarak and buy technical books on JAVA, JSP etc and try things out. I would go for jobs offer for a meagre Rs 5K and would get startled to find such a huge Queue and sometimes I would come home, taking lifts from trucks without even attending the interviews as the seats were already fill before my turn would come. I had distributed approximately 150 Resumes to the companies in Delhi, Gurgoan and Noida. I went by bus and then walking, to the reception of the big, small IT firms and majority of times I would have to drop my resume to the security guard. Those were the days when my dream changed from going to US to securing a job of even Rs 5k. That shattering of dream was a very bitter experience for me; I was very hard consoling myself about the bitter truth of the life that it is all not so rosy.

I got a job (work for free) in a firm named Eclipse Systems in Gurgoan.Initally I agreed to work for free thinking at least I will learn something and will also get an experience certificate.At that time, I was as desperate to get rid of my fresher tag as any guy after marriage wants to get rid of his virginity tag. So I started going to Gurgoan daily, spending 45 bucks only on travel and food was an additional expense. The only good thing about that place was that it had A.C. and the internet was free. I had to design a website for that firm and so was collecting data and trying to find some good format to put it. Then another guy joined me in the work and he was also hired for free. Then we became good pals, both facing the same dilemma of working for free. Then we got a little frusrated for working for free. We approached our boss and asked him to give us some remuneration at least enough to cover our expenses for the travel and food. He got infuriated, he said, I hired you guys for free and now you are asking me for money. I won’t give you a single penny, whether you work or not. So that was the last day of our "work for free”. Then my search for jobs again began. I then met a tout. I used to read so many ads proclaiming jobs, so I went to meet one such person. He demanded me 1k, as processing fees etc and assured me of a decent job for around 9k.Now its like finding water in oasis , and so grabbed the offer without much thought. But that was a very painful journey. Going from one location to other as would be advised by that fellow, only to find that there was no such job. I was sad and quite depressed but then my brother's marriage came to rescue. So I was busy with that and for sometime I was in a good mood. Then I got call from Infosys. I was not much interested in Infosys, for most of my college friends were not able to clear the written test for Infosys. And moreover, I had a test on the day of the Infosys test and so I decided to ditch this exam and instead go for the NTPC exam. But to the sheer luck, the NTPC exam was postponed to a week later.So I went to my friend Mili's house and just told her about my Infosys test and she told me to write the test. She even gave me a few Infosys question papers and after her pestering me, I started looking at the previous Q papers. And to my sheer luck, my buddy, Debo had also got the call and so he also pestered me to go for the test. So I finally attended the test, and did my test fine. But not very good to expect clearing it. After a few hours, the results were out and I was selected. I was elated, but was worried for the interview scheduled for next day. I prepared a little for interview and went next day to face the interview. Now I was lucky in the manner that I was so confident that I wont clear the interview that I was blunt and frank with the interviewers. And waited with abated breadth for the results. I was ,deep in my heart, pretty confident that I would made it, but like my personality I believe in "Action speak louder than words". So I told my family that I wont be able to make into Infosys. But the D-Day arrived and I got an email from Infosys C&B department. And that is how my journey into the Big Bad Professional world started.

The later part of my journey and other adventures , in the next part.