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This part is really close to my heart, perhaps thats why it is so candid.

Blue Tag:

Change is inevitable, I don’t know who said that but for sure it was depicting in my life. My routine was settling, I used to get up at 7.15 for catching up my 7.55 bus to reach at 8.15. 15 minutes for breakfast with my gang [gang…we will come to that later]
4 training sessions, 2 coffee and 1 lunch break; one blue tag (My company ID tag) was bringing all this changes in my life. Tag of employee no 11***1, afterall I wasn’t just Abhijit anymore, now, I was a human resource for my company.
Life away from home was an experience on every single day, the first lesson I learned “There are no free lunches in this world”, not free but we had perhaps the cheapest house anyone could have imagined in Pune, but our house owner cleverly forgot to put * and skipped to mention the “Conditions Apply”.
“Aasa kay? asel thoda panyacha problem” he shamelessly replied when we complained about our NO WATER situation from last couple of days. “Motor bighadali asnar khalun aana ki pani” he has got answer for everything, suggesting us to bring water from ground floor water tank, we were on 4th floor and there was no lift. 30 more minutes were added in my daily schedule just to bring 2 buckets of water from ground floor.
It was mid monsoon and Pune is the place to be in this season, lush green lawns, stylish brown colored towers, cafeteria full of vibrant engineers, in the evening bit of drizzles were making PDC even more likable, I must mention about all the beautiful Wipro BPO girls who were adding special colors to its rainbow. I was having a blast with best of the people around.
Staying late for extra study, chomping chicken samosa and veggie puff at tuck shop, chatting with training mates while enjoying chaat at cafeteria. It was amazing to see 75 dazzling minds with all the dreams in their eyes trying hard to make their first professional step really impressive.


Mumbai to Pune:

Pune to Mumbai by train: Rs. 54
Pune to Mumbai by Non A\C bus: Rs: 90
Pune to Mumbai by Private Volvo: Rs. 160
Pune to Mumbai by Govt. Volvo: Rs. 240
I can still recall this fare table. 40 days,6 weekends and 6 trips to back home Mumbai. Pune’s Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park is located at Mumbai-Pune highway. The two and half hour journey is full of scenic places such as Lonawala and Khandala, in Volvo its been even better with movies. Waiting for bus at Wakad junction, occasionally asking for lift (though I never got any), bargaining with bus conductor for cutting down the bus fare and munching double roti at Expressway food court. I was doing everything that every software professional from Pune does. After all, now, I was one of them.

Pune Gang: Ekade Tikade

Shabnam mausi, Salma pe dil aa gaya, Patal Bhairavi all these movies, actresses named Sheeba, Kahekasha and heroes like Ravi Behl and Ronit Roy entered in my life with game named BOLLYWOOD. It was the first thing I learned in PDC. A film based game taught by my gang in Pune, which I learned and then conquered in no time. I discovered a bunch of great people as my Pune group, we were popularly (??) known as “Ekade Tikade” (Here n’ There). A cluster of 5 beautiful girls with all the brain in the world and two of us, me and Nil. PDC introduced me many fascinating characters. Nil, an avid civil engineer, seasoned flirt, my first buddy and partner in crime. “Looks can be deceiving” and he proves it to the core, spent half of his training period staring at monitor screen and rest at girls, Ankita, a 24 hour query shooter and still if you got any doubt, well she is first person you would like to be with, my questions about EXCEPTION HANDLING, she handled exceptionally well, Madhavi, a fine artiste; what with her great artistic skills on MS Paint and equally good in applying company resources to chat with her boyfriend, A blissful English poet Opoorva who can stump you on any given day with her mono line replies , Tamed and tiny Pranjali with loads of brain and patience to abide my silly doubts, Totally outspoken and compulsive Harry Potter fan Sharmila, sharing many of my areas of interests, Amit(chacha) and his mobile Phone both were totally dedicated to his girlfriend, Tushar, Jonny, Vinay and Mukul my co-traveler in company bus. Surprisingly, but I started enjoying my training days with all those heated discussions during lunch time, birthday bashes in Cafeteria, Ethnic day celebration at Deewali, playing dumb charades and Antakshari in company bus while en route’ back home.
Our Platinum was haunted with such and many other interesting groups. From the soundless 3 Deviyan to vociferous BWB, from recursive laughter of Monal to husky voiced Ashlesha’s “Mala mumbaila jaychey!!” we had it all. All of us were slogging for one thing. The climax was getting closer and now there was only one aim, Assessment Test.

Assessment: Ultimate nightmare

Any KT in 4 years of engineering? “No”………Good
Overall engineering grade? ” 1st class”………better
“In fact last year Distinction” ………..Oh Great, but all this is not enough to crack Wipro training assessment in first go!
There are times in your life when you can’t figure out what is going wrong and in my case I was totally screwed. I completed my lessons in time, done with the hands on sessions and was able to understand mini project [honestly that was crap] but still
Have I totally lost it? Yes, it was my company assessment test and I was screwing it Bigtime.

15th November 2005
Time: 11.00 p.m.

10 hours away from my last encounter, this is it. Do or Bye. Bye bye to Wipro, perhaps they will kick me out, before starting my first project.
No No No Way!!!! Me, Vijaykumar and Amit were dead silent in that 8/8 study room, Vijaykumar was topper of his class and at this point equally bewildered. This was first time I was studying 5 hours in stretch. I decided to spend some more time in studying and skipping my snooze tonight. But Amit insisted to drop by at his hostel and having 2-3 hours nap. We agreed.

16th November “D” day
Time 9 a.m.

I was thinking so much, I was reading so much. C++, PERL, TCL, TK all these things will decide my career now.
I hit the “Start Test” button. It was more or less the same questions I answered in my previous test, I knew the answers, I checked the answers and submitted the answer.
And I clicked………………………….. “Finish Test”

Coming up ahead:
Journey so faar
Journey ahead