New Life Starts Now

The last of the college days were passing bringing with it the doom of being jobless and pushed out there into the open and wild, exposed to the naked eye, to be examined and judged by everybody and tolerate their snide comments with smirk expressions, to be laid bare bones in front of the society and to be laden with thorned flowers celebrating the defeat and failure of not triumphing when the world expects you to. Losing the protective shell the college life provided, there were no more excuses left for a innocent benign life anymore. The shoulders must immediately bear the expectations of all and start reaping ripe green paper fruits to keep up with the status quo, that is the face of reality now, that is the open world stage, that is now the real world. Graduating from a tier II university doesn’t helps, no one remembers the person who came second, no one cares for the losers, you do, you say? Well, who was the second person person to step on the moon may I ask? Exactly, not many remember the people who did anything the second time.

There were no noticeable companies that came to recruit the poor freshers at my college, to society’s pleasure our batch students were all sitting at their respective homes trying as hard as they could to get into any of the companies they might get their foot into. But, alas, Odisha’s IT industry was still in its nascent stage, it didn’t had the capability to absorb such large number of freshers. There were though a plenty of BPO sector jobs with pathetic wages which required one to do a meticulous task of delicate communication with oblivious foreigners and extract some personal information out of them for marketing the firm’s product. Seeing no way out for a handsome paying and worthwhile coding job, I took the hard decision of expending all the saved money and shifting to the IT giant of India, Bangalore city. I realized after arriving that there are graduates in the ranks of thousands who just like me have come to fulfill their parent’s dreams and compete for a better name and place in the society. There were people struggling since years for a good job and a modest salary at the least. The jobs were lessening, the head count were growing largely in numbers and the competition was intimidating. After a month of getting nowhere, I became frustrated and could bear it no more, I decided to work pro bono for a reputed and emerging startup, though not advisable given my situation still I took the chance, anyway, I had to start somewhere and that’s all I wanted, to start and to start as soon as possible. A month passed toiling in the closed walls of the tiny cubicle and then the word came that they were gonna start paying me and put me on the firm’s payroll though the salary they offered wouldn’t even pay for my stay in the expensive city. However, the next day I was taken ill by the bites of the annoying bedbugs notorious for draining the blood out from people’s body. My mum came to keep me company and look after me, and I, after days of gratis service at the startup got the chance to heed the mails of the many interview calls exploding my inbox. Still being ill and suffering from viral fever I picked some of the firms which I thought were worth working for. In my first day of venturing out I tasted victory at Edureka, the emerging Coursera or MIT Opencourseware like website of India, in the capacity of Technology Analyst, my job comprised of experimenting and learning different programming languages and technologies and help the convert that knowledge into sellable animated video tutorials. The next day when I went to work I was informed that my position had to be given to a girl to maintain diversity of workgroup in the firm and I was offered to interview again for a completely unrelated job role. I was in a rage and irritated, I tried to calm myself, and with a smile communicated and made the HR realize if that’s how they want their company to look to the public and walked out to her continuous apologies. Well, with two priceless days wasted striving for the job instead of spending that time with mom, the next day I went out for a different startup which was so early in their business that they only had a headcount of six including the top brass people. The job description was good and the product they were dreaming about looked promising to me so I plunged in to be their seventh soul coding away towards realizing their imagined product into materialism. The pay was low but the everyday task which I cared the most about was challenging and interesting.

After a few months of working there, I took the offer from Infosys to embark on a completely new journey and begin a new life at the wonderful Mysore DC (Development Center). The pay is still low, but the life’s good, and I still thrive to be better if not the best. Indeed, the step to do something different and move to an entire new place to spend the last of the resources was risky and bold but it was worth it. Afterall, every adventure involves a certain degree of risk and requires a pinch of boldness.