Days Gone By

30 long months have gone by. Now looking back it all seems so unreal and far away. Call it destiny or anything else, but something brought ten different individuals together and put them in a cauldron. Only three remain now, others have either gone on to pursue higher levels of nirvana or are running towards achieving their goal in life. It is time for me look back, as I chose to live in the past, cherish those unforgettable moments.


Long ago, some 30 months ago we- me, vivek, Venkat and vinay decided it would be good if we reached Bangalore a good three/four days ahead of our joining dates in our company. It was a bad idea, even before joining I had lost little faith I had in Bangalore . If I had any way of looking into the future, I would have willingly changed my mind there, but then those uneventful days of September 2005, I didn’t have any vision2020.

So we joined the company on September 9,2005. It was a Friday. We were among hundred others who joined on the same day. For many it was a dream come true. For me it was my first job, I had so many dreams to fulfill. I already had visions of a big car, a three bhk apartment with split a/c. Although we joined on September 9, the company chose to put our joining dates as September 12 – some obscure setup where they prove that although I enrolled on September 9, I officially was into ‘office’ only from 12th, there are other reasons I was told. Since me, vivek, Venkat and vinay happened to be from the same college, we hung on. Soon we met up with a person who was so happy, so smiling it was difficult to remain aloof and not smile. In came Sai sundar – the wonder boy from Crescent Engg College . Sai has always remained the same from that day till today, always ready with his close-up smile. We also met up with the boys from Venkateshwara college - Kishore, Saravana and Krishnamurthy. Kishore turned out to be a gentle giant, Kiccha not so gentle but more of a cool dude type who wore trendy cargos. Saraba, fun to be with. I knew very little about the man from Perambur then and even now. The lonely foursome became excellent eight.

The induction program was supposed to mould from a college going cool dude to a office going cooler dude. It was also supposed to build team work, better interactions and other stuff which MBA’s feel proud to give lecture over. It hasn’t helped much though. I still believe I met far mature characters in my college than in my office. I have met cheaper characters in office than in my entire life. May be people develop after coming out of college, or may be they believe by passing out of college they have achieved something that they can be cheap or may be they were always like and we never found out the truth. Anyway the induction program was supposed to help us do all the team work stuff.

The first day we had to do something called icebreaker, where about fifty new joinees were supposed to randomly chose a person whom you haven’t never met till now and introduce yourself and both of you tell about each other to the audience at the end of two minutes. I am never comfy with this ‘meeting new people’, especially when it involves English. There were a few PSBB( that’s a famous school in Chennai where even the watchman speaks high profile English, I had a difficult time once talking to a LKG kid who spoke only English and I could barely frame out a sentence in English then!) type guys and gals around I was hoping to find a ‘ok english’ person but unfortunately I met up with this lanky fellow from Stanes, Coimbatore. But he was soft spoken and didn’t seem anything like the other English dudes I knew. He was kapil. Kapil introduced us to captain that day. Captain, always smiling, his ‘don’t know don’t care’ attitude at times has given us more than a laugh.

The induction program went on for three days. There was one event where the people who volunteered (some 16 of us) were to form a human square blindfolded. It was in this blind maze that I met Sonia and Priya as I got stuck between them at what we thought was a corner of a square. At the end of the induction program the kochi gang were to told to pack and move on. It was then I really saw the 24 scapegoats being packed off to Kochi . I knew 9 of the guys already, I also met RajaV. So we were 11 guys. Among the girls I had only talked to priya and sonia once when blindfolded.

A week later, the same 24 met at Avenue centre, Panampilly nagar for our vlsi training which would go on for another month. The induction program being long over, we were back to familiar grounds, a room, 25 people, one presentation, one person trying to teach us something. It felt like we were back in college that one month in Avenue centre.

Kapil turned out to be our savior in cochin by finding us 10c. Saran – our beloved captain, in a chain mail put into words how difficult it was to find a house in a new city and praised Kapil for the service done to mankind by giving us 10c. We all salute Kapil for his brave deeds. The venkateshwara guys and RajaV soon formed the palarivattom club and were promptly renamed the ‘palarivattom gang’. Together we – the 10c gang comprising of seven of us, later Rajan the great joined us to make it eight and the palarivattom gang rocked in the backwaters of kerala.



Dreams only last until the moment you wake up. we soon woke up to reality, the harshness of life. Individual needs, family commitments, better opportunities beckoned all of us. One by one, the gang disintegrated until it longer can be called a gang. Now as I look back I see all the funny moments we had, the arguments we fought, the trips we went, the red-devil buses we dared to set foot on, it seems the journey as a group has come to an end. Only individuals travel from here. As another September draws near, for all I know important person/people in my life may leave for greener pastures. Until the moment nothing is sure. Life is about living the moment and right this moment I am going to gulp down a cup of steaming crap tea as I call it.