Page 29 - Love Story of a Commando

I freshened up, buttered a piece of bread which I had along with a
boiled egg and instantly missed my mother. I made an attempt to wash my
hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. I donned my newly bought pencil
skirt along with a white formal long-sleeved shirt, which I was told was the
unofficial dress code of Mumbai corporate girls. The pointed pumps added
to the overall charm of the corporate attire. This was going to be the first of
many days of office.
I tried to contain the feelings of excitement as well as nervousness
that were bubbling up inside me.
I was excited and scared at the same time but the humid Mumbai air
was very reassuring. I got in a taxi and made my way to office. The roads
were packed, traffic was bumper-to-bumper and crowds thronged the streets.
Everybody was in a rush to reach their destinations. Mumbai certainly has a
faster pace than Delhi. I smiled at my spontaneous reaction of comparing
everything in Mumbai to Delhi. My thoughts were interrupted as the taxi
screeched to a stop right outside a magnificent office building on Marine
Drive in Nariman Point. It was a huge twenty-storey commercial tower built
in a very impressive manner—the corporate headquarters of the company in
India.
When I entered the lobby and completed all the formalities, there
were already twenty-five freshers, all looking lost. The GET or Graduate
Engineering Trainees, were put together for further training with the sole
purpose of transforming the unpolished and unsophisticated students into
hardcore suave professionals.
That was a huge blow to our egos and feelings of independence.
Most of us had assumed we would have shiny little glass door cabins with
piles of files awaiting our magical skills. The HR employees projected smug
smiles with complete foresightedness in their eyes about our bleak future.
We were enrolled for a structured program so that we could decide on our
real strengths and career goals. Then the management would evaluate our
orientations and slot us for the right roles. And it all seemed like a long time
before we would have our own cabins.
Life can be tragic sometimes!
We were introduced to countless people, shown various areas in the
office buildings and provided loads and loads of office manuals on day one.
It passed in a blur with a little window of a fifteen-minute break for lunch
during which I quickly met my roommates. I briefly told them about the sad
state of the building, lowering their expectations immediately. They all came
from small towns in India with high expectations and unreasonable hopes for
Mumbai.
After all, the rest of India looks upon this financial capital in awe.