Of Interviews, Homesickness and Bombay Duck!

(How to lose an interview in Bombay? Get feverishly homesick!)

Arindam Moulick

After I graduated from a national institute of information technology back in the late 1990s, I was headed to the city of vada-pavs Bombay to attend an interview at the Asian Paints’ software facility at Bhandup for the hallowed position of software engineer-in-exile. That’s it; I fell into spasms of mental strain. I just wanted to shrink into the floor and disappear. 

Alarm bells kept ringing in my head like a jagran being performed in a nearby temple! I was deeply mortified and I felt I was not the person cut out for such a kind of job even though I knew that I had slogged hard for it and waited just for this kind of day to usher in my life; partly because I was afraid to do well in the interview and get selected, and partly because I’ll have to relocate to that city if I got those guys’ hooks on me.

I couldn’t say no to the hardworking HR people of my alma mater, who not only worked up the important lather of job negotiations but had worked hard behind the scenes to put us delicate meandering souls on the much-harried map of employment. So I had to pay heed to them no matter what I felt about it all. Anxiety crept in to prick my body like a thousand needles even as the thought of the impending interview in my head kept driving me off an imaginary cliff. As a result of this thing going over and over again in my head, I became stiff, rigid, and very jumpy.

The placement officer, a sweet HR lady of immaculate manners called Janice- whom I had nicknamed Miss Good Manners and wrote a cheery poem on her called Janice the Menace! - found it hard to believe. Without propounding any of her usual stock of HR fundas to help shoo away our nervous jitters, she winked at us one by one, gave us the once-over, and danced out of the corridor raising a thumbs-up. Guess she was not unduly worried about us new-age keyboard-pounding upstarts; she perhaps deduced that we would eventually get engrossed like a Popeye trying to resolve a conflict situation: and that is by munching on a bunch of “green leafy spinach” and then a round of ... 'dishum dishum'. Mr. Popeye’s success mantra would make us go for it more than any of Janice’s HR peccadilloes possibly would!

Entreating us to abide by three formulas (rather formulaic potions!) she previously had deduced for us…

Formula A: Simply “pack your bags and catch a train at the nearest railway station!”
Formula B: Be good like Mr. Popeye and make a point to munch on spinach and win over the “girl”, a damsel-in-distress (the interview) and,
Formula C: Never look back from then on when you’ve got the “girl” in your arms

…she smiled her pert smile and slinked away. But little did she know that an all-year long, head-in-the-clouds, always-listening-to-music kinda guy would most definitely flounder and yet be sassy enough to high-five his friends and come home empty-handed, with no “girl” (read job), and quip: “you go figure”.

A dreadfully scary thing called Interview -
I trotted out…like an advanced decrepit, said my prayers, bid goodbye to my jaanu, - and was escorted by five other associates - to look for a job position that was never to be mine in the first place. 

Till the day of my journey I hardly ever saw myself in the mirror nor read a book, nor could ever hope to eat my usual morsels of food in holy abandon at home. After all, that I have toiled hard to learn and unlearn, an inexplicable mood swing seemed to lurk in my head and it appeared that maybe - just maybe – I would go bumping down the proverbial hill like Jack and Jill.

This rampant, seemingly endless range of digital tight-spots of having to carve out an IT career in computer software, or something to make oneself ever ready to jostle and wrestle and push each other to be able to reach, terribly hyper-tensed, the employability indices of the innumerable job portals, including HR and manpower firms of the world, seemed like a mad-dog chase I’d be unable to keep up with; and somehow be ready enough, dense and solid, for your next interview coming up soon to get your neck in. I figured that I could be in for a forbidding life-long entrapment.

There was, thankfully, a saving grace in the form of a good friend Praveen who also seemed to be as apprehensive about the big “Bombay interview” as I was – so that explains a friend in need is a friend indeed. We scourged each other out and in order to be able to weather this dreadfully scary thing and we yanked our course material out from our individual supplies of books and food and started discussing Sybase, C and C++, and other such software boogies on the rampaging Bombay Express. Although, the process of subjecting ourselves to “preparing” for interviews was hardly any fun, and whenever the placement officers happened to talk about it in such hard-to-concentrate-on “technical” gobbledygook even as they started doling out some quick-fix notes for us to take-it-or-leave-it, the scene of it all - as we innocently conjectured then - began sounding as though of its death knell upon us young lads. Like a fury unleashed. To be sure, my mind was drained out of its sane sap, or whatever little was left of it.

Not only was I noticeably shaken by the mere intonation of the word Interview - which was to be conducted in a place like Bombay where I thought only Hindi film actors and actresses could reign supreme and computer geeks like us could only manage to fetch an incongruous sort of living - I found myself to be somehow secretly and variously affected by the promise of our Hotel’s prompt room service, especially the free complimentary breakfast!

I kept dreaming of spicy Chicken Biryani platters the night before my journey (like a typical Hydeeraabaadi I say) and then continually salivating, over and over again, on something-beyond-Biryani specialties that could be ordered from the room service guys and have them delivered to us pronto. Raising the volume of Rishi Kapoor and Poonam Dhillon’s love song “yeh vaada raha…” playing on my Walkman, I merrily went back to sleep. So you tell me what use would my software engineering going to be (and I hate those people who made me do it) in such a glamorous place of exile (exile? well almost) called Bombay, alias Copycat Bollywood, where you always see what your eyes want to see, i.e., “commercial escapist” dhan teraaaan Hindi flicks?

Some philosophical musings -
I was also a tad more petrified than my unsuspecting friends because expecting myself to come up trumps in such a demanding situation was obscenely hard for me to deal with.

Attending an interview is one but securing a job in an alien city like Bombay is simply not another day in paradise, far from it. This was way back in the charming late 1990s and things were of different shapes and sounds then. I was blissfully amateurish; a blue-collared soul who knew no hoots about the idea of “taking some confidence measures” at a personal level. A chip-off-the-old-block, no-offense-ever-whatsoever, Forrest Gump kinda barnyard-guy like me looking out of the empty porch hoping against hope for his beautiful Jenny to return could not, yet, be a guy-about-town, a little more propah, and all that jazz. On the flip side, how could I know to have done enough of “taking some confidence measures”? I had no tip-off or natural clue. Like Mr. Gump, I too never knew if I had anything else to measure it up with, and that was that.

The circle of my family and friends, as a matter of fact, mattered to me more than the alluring prospect of a job in the big back-breaking city of Bombay. The bonds of love and longing and the familiar binds of my life have kept my roots firmly intact here. I couldn’t have left them behind or broken free from them either. That would have been really so sacrilegious. Therefore, putting aside the familiar pattern of my life I was used to was too hard for me to shake off and depart. Even today, I still have no regrets that I didn’t pass that interview in Bombay; in fact, had I gotten through I would have had that job given to someone else by not accepting it in the first place. I remained where I always was, and possibly will always be, till I grow old and elderly and really decrepit, if at all. The maddening gold rush of life was beyond my level of understanding and gumption; yet I lingered on without much ado, waiting for what I thought I was destined to wait for and that is: a mouthful of the sky. I never smudged a thing or two in order to make it up to my personal liking or taste; in fact, from what God could let me have of my share of life I almost always tried to conform to, but not this “Bombay Interview” for which I am ever ready for the Almighty to take me into His merciful accounts. I wanted a private patch of my own to live in, so I got one. I did not alter anything in the world, nor did I find anything interesting enough to modify or amend. I mean how foolish is that? Quite I suppose. Let’s say if I have something coming up for sure, then I would get up and get going to make a go for it. I believe if I am Destiny’s child (yeah I wish!) just like anybody else, then why do I need to have an approval rating system for all exigencies of worldly transformations that surely don’t work for me? 

Being a firm believer in Destiny is therefore what I think makes me safe and positive, and be among God’s good humour if you like. Call it escapist, call it brainlessness or call it plain lunacy, but that is all there is to it; not a penny more, not a penny less. So I snuggled in the warm quilt of my fond memories of those golden growing-up years, my passion for books, my deep obsessive love for Kolkata, and other unforgettable, uncomplicated stories of my surviving life here in the South.

Back to square one -
Our job placement guys left no stone unturned in order to be of any help to unheard-of ducks like us; but little did they know that a sense of scare had always lurked in some part of our minds that couldn’t be reached by any amount of placement officers to calm our delirium.

In fact, during those unpretentious days, the continual rush of one nagging thought after another ran riot in our juvenile minds. Not wanting to sound useless here, I must say that my head played games with the remaining part of my adult self; as if I were being forced into a permanent date with the Vampire called “Interview” to take place. It kept my nervous jellies fidgeting all the time. It raised the stakes several degrees higher for me to be able to summit. Just when I thought I may have somehow a lonely shred of confidence tucked somewhere inside in some part of me, I would still fuss over and crash out. To finally see the damn thing through, I had taken the easier patli gully route out; and in order to ensure that I never ever had to attend another interview ever again. I eventually began to fall back on a new ballgame: a game of an escape artist. I was erroneous to think that there would be no interviews at all from heretofore. On the contrary, I was attending interviews after interviews after I came away empty-handed from Bombay; I had to do so, ever since I stepped onto the gas of career-making based on the best remunerations thrown on the negotiating table. A life without interviews is really impossible, and what was I thinking again?

Hence, we deduced that everything is rather complicated to be able to get it all sorted out and eventually land the Asian Paints job. No wonder, a task like that had robbed us of our nights of sleep even as the day of the reckoning came nearer and nearer like an Alien on the loose.

Other friends, including Praveen, weren’t so lily-livered like me though. Praveen could shut the world out to remain unmoved and uninvolved and not give in to the skunk of euphoria lapping around us all the time. I reckoned that he tried to think of plan B in case of his plan A backed down. But wait a minute…Ummm… I had plans too: Plan A…. Plan B! Really! But you see my problem was that there were in other peoples’ minds!

On the other hand, I thought, if my plan A (if at all I had one) failed to impress those interview guys, I would most definitely throw up! My plan A, B, and C were all tagged as: “throw up when in doubt” or “when in doubt throw up”. Maybe, I might have to sprint back out; leave Bombay that same evening, catch a bus or train back to Hyderabad and live to tell the damn tale. I confess, the reason I 'fluked' all my answers, is that I was getting homesick, feverishly homesick. I wanted to dash home soon and wash the ghost of the Interview off me and let myself be unlamented in the safe recesses of my home. Alas, the world was perennially peaceful; we had no cell phones then, no in-your-face Facebook “like-its” or Twitter tweets either. Life was far less digitized than what is found today.

So back home was I; all that I wanted was a mug of hot tea (preferably warm) and thinking about my “secret admirer”. The “Bombay interview” was over and done with. My folks at home laughed at me and continued slurping on their favourite sweet corn soup as if nothing had happened. I suspect they knew I’d never make it. If I were left feeling like a shred of spinach jutting out at the rim of their soup-laden bowls: a fallen bit nobody bothers about lest sees it even once, I shouldn’t complain! They didn’t thump me into a gory pulp, I was thankful for that; but I quietly figured that it could, of course, become a better proposition for them later on than wanting me to be just a mama’s boy.

I reasoned it out as best as I could: attending an interview in a city I don’t particularly like to inhabit for a job; a far-away place that means nothing except that it augurs well for the Bollywood wallas; the 'ek-chalees-ki local' wallas, the underworld taporis, and other dons, the savages and fanatical bigots including all the anti-constitutional Bal Thackarey types and his gutter-bred cahoots. Never mind Bombay’s potent mix of human endurance and come-what-may kind of faith looking up in the face of unpardonable terror and other calamities that it confronts year after year. Going to Bombay was like going to a place of a filmy fiefdom and amorous opulence, which can never be - not in this lifetime - my cup of tea.

All right…, all right…, I admit that I do like Bombay (not Mumbai) and its amorous opulence as I call it, a little of it is no harm; mainly because I have been enormously smitten by it but in an entirely different sort of way (not when one has an interview boogie to hustle you no end). I found the city to be overwhelming and intensely affecting. In a short span of time I stayed there, I did get to know the city I always knew from the glitzy magazines I read back home here in the South. It was the same and much more. Oodles of it had tumbled down on me in great mesmerizing details and deeply affected was I as a result of that unique experience. Apart from its usual higher-strata of life, titillating razzmatazz of stars and their starlets, and serpentine local trains, I like the genuine warmth of its Jai-Ho population, the way of life there, food choices, regal addresses, of course, the local trains, and the lovely Parsi names of places and adorable Parsi Nannies.

Back during the 1990s when I first dashed into Bombay, I’ve seen some of the most handsome guys in magnificent clothes hobnobbing in affluent coffee shops and drop-dead gorgeous ladies - Bloomingdales, Poison Ivies, Sweetie Pies, and Senoritas - sashaying down the curvaceous roads of Bandra’s Pali Hill. All that I had seen and experienced while I had walked up and down the Pali Hill on one nightly evening had sent a fine shiver down my village-bred spine, numbing my mind with a strange burst of senses and engagement. It made me feel inadequate and tacky as a person who knew nothing of the ways of the world then. Today, I identify Bombay with whatever little acquaintance I have of it: Juhu, Naturals Ice-cream Parlour in Juhu Scheme, Juhu Beach, Amitabh Bachchan’s bungalow Pratiksha in Juhu, a bus stand not very far off from India Gate where two pretty Senoritas with their gorgeous smiles playing over their sunny faces were waiting for their bus to arrive to go to a place of their stay or elsewhere I knew not but they bedazzled me, dazzling city of Sion, Hanging Gardens on Malabar Hill, Haji Ali in the Arabian Sea, a view at the dreamy skyscrapers of Mahalakshmi, a popular Christian church in Mahim where I lit three slender white candles for the first time in my life at the altar of Jesus Christ at Mahim Church, Fashion Street, Victoria Terminus, local train rides through Matunga, Vile Parle, Dadar, Marine Drive and many other stations, and an amazing place called Pali Hill in Bandra, where I went to see the homes of the film stars like Dilip Kumar, Aamir Khan, Rishi Kapoor et al and binge on some easily breakable puffed-out pani puris.

As far as I am concerned, the interview part has been more like an unwanted task to be quickly squashed, the sooner the better, later the Alligator! I was pretty happy about it that I was not going to be tensed mulling over it again and again. I did not make a fudge of my clear conscience, for I was so thrilled by it. I did not even come close to securing the damn job; I didn’t really care. Three friends of valour did, including my new pal Praveen. They might have got something out of it: the pure thrill of having to be a part - a treasured part – of a trip of a lifetime. I am sure they did. As for me, I took it all in my stride in the best way possible. But of course, I enjoyed the trip all the more for a different Karmic reason as well: Praveen and I made friends with each other, and a very strange and sublime kind of emotion was experienced in a place called Sion in Bombay from where we all took an inter-state bus out on a nightly journey back to Hyderabad.

Alvidaa Sion -
Sion was strangely wonderful a place. Superb by night, the place was a flashing abundance of shops big and small, delightful middle-class restaurants filled with amiable people, fast-moving romantic cars and seriously useful Best buses, and the glittering, long winding, love-laden roads. 

From the pavement where I stood and gazed at the roads going all the way beyond, I was struck by the beauty of the life that I could have had there. Shining bright lights of love and longing were splashed everywhere that dazzled my senses to the core, and I instantly knew that on this bright night I could not have been anywhere else but here in the stunning city of Sion; trying to fetch a ticket to get home at a time when my heart was screaming inside. A feeling of the unknown and unsaid, unfamiliar and unnamed, a loving mystery of a special someone cloaked within the misty spaces of the time and the very place had deeply churned my heart from within. I yearned for something or someone I did not have, and the strangeness of those lonely set of feelings had poured into my vaunted soul like a sweet fragrance that never wore off even to this day. Alvidaa Sion.

A not-so-surprising outcome -
Praveen was aghast when we were told by the interview guys that “only two could make our day today, and the names are….” (The other four can go to hell. I mean…no, they didn’t say something like that, apparently not!).

I didn’t rise and shine that day. I was not shaking the final list; not even when I quipped loudly: “O come on folks, they are just poking us for fun”. But no, they apparently were not looking for fun. What was I hallucinating on, and what a pussy thing to say! Praveen stood shell-shocked by the news and turned to look at me agape in flashing surprise, as if pouting: “What...? How could you…?” I am sure he’d have thought as if I had betrayed the new-found faith that he came to park in me. In fact, he firmly believed that out of six of us avatars, at least I will probably make it by a good margin! But it was not to be. I did not make the grade in spite of his good thoughts about me. I never came round in telling him about my disinclination in such a job-in-exile. Praveen and there was another one who was on the final tally. I looked at Praveen and I thought I am gonna miss him.

Reading up some books and listening intently to a group of hell-bent HR officials in the class did help thrash out the mental demons clogging my unprepared mind, but it is the intent that works wonders, a very professional sort of intent. No intent, no professional life. With that thing alone one can go “kella photey!” (conquering the fortress of challenges! - roughly translated from Bengali). Praveen did not, as they say, miss the bus. He conquered the fortress. I was happy for him that he would work in…well…Bhandup!

Nevertheless, I was not so sure if my folks back home would pat my back for the doomed show of my making. Being blissfully unaware of the concept of challenge in the face of whatever opportunity that comes your way, I happen to deal with it the way anyone would in case of such a scenario; nah…, not really a death wish or something, but something of a different point of view. Maybe, something like an unconventional viewpoint (incredibly deplorable for some but realistic for me) of mine that portends well with my scheme of things and not anybody else’s, and that which keeps my inner being alive and kicking by doing what I think is appropriate for my own good, never mind any custodian prognostications hurtling my way. Suggestions, advice, counsels, opinions, et al are all welcome, if and only if, they better not be overtly pressurizing and stifling for me to deal with. I was happy like a pup though when the officials said that they actually prefer someone who would readily operate from their paints-manufacturing plant at Gujarat, I didn’t wag my tail at such mean bunkum of theirs. Thank you: I would prefer my backyard in Hyderabad to smell paints for the rest of my life. Iron bars do not a prison make for hard-won souls like us who are all too familiar with such easy pickings!

So I grew up -
Like other souls from the job-seeking fraternity, I reckoned I too am eligible for excelling in any interview challenge and probably lack nothing to rip it all apart. So what the heck? Now, who’s worrying about those interview guys who sit behind a table and look patronizingly at you as if you are being ludicrous and all that stuff. Am I not supposed to rise and shine in the world of my masterly knowledge and experience? (Ok, maybe not that masterly as of now so strike that off). Is it really supposed to be their way or the highway? If not, then what? Either that much bit of a naturally present my livid will-power will lend a helping hand to me, or the goddamn subject matter I had acquired from my alma mater would plunge the syringe of smart-alecky kind of thrill in my mind that will help me blast away at the miserly blokes parked at the other end of the interview table. Either way, I am saved.

On top of that, maybe, I should reveal my tiger claws out on the interviewer’s table whenever their “tricky questions” get tough to be bothered about. So what’s the hiccup, bring them on. I hallucinated further into the night thinking about my imaginary tiger claws, and yet to face a guy or two at the software-cum-paints-manufacturing company would now be an easy hunt. My other idea was to “throw up when in doubt” but that’s for other testier circumstances which might sometimes get to upbraid me, therefore such desperate measures. Looking at the stars blinking alongside the hovering moon above my moving train, I realized that when I got nothing, I got nothing to lose. So bash on regardless. Those interviewers of the world can dig elsewhere if they like, and I would break a leg for another time, at another place, in my own sweet time. I didn’t disappoint on that front ever after.

Ok, I may have lacked something - if at all – in my attempt at trying to be ‘being me’ and finding a proper “intent” during the course of that good old Asian Paints interview, but those were the happy-go-lucky days of innocence, pure-at-heart joys and better-luck-next-time days which may have collectively played a part in justifying my far too little emotional preparedness. As a matter of fact, I had to take some time off for my mind to get face-to-face with the paranoia of attending interviews. That’s how I could justify myself then. To stay calm and exhale all worries out and not unwittingly invite someone to think of me as a nervous wreck was also a good success mantra for performing better. (No, the “tiger-claws on the table” scenario never occurred nor did I throw up on the interview table and it was a joke really!) Nevertheless, a misappropriation of my own set of talents would bring with it a strong reversal of professional Tsunami; that I think, to say the least, I could ill afford. Those days have ceased to exist and all but disappeared now, and I am left with a feeling that I wish I was born in the 1950s or 1960s world. I could possibly have led my life far better than what I am leading now.

The inside story -
Once upon a time, Hyderabad, the adopted place of my destiny, twinkled in my mind like a strange guiding star. So when I was all set to dash to Bombay, I was handed out a travel advisory stating that even if I have the necessary wherewithal to accept the job offer, I should begin by having second thoughts at first and then straight away return back from where ever I went to! If not, I should gear up to face the consequences of having to stay away from it. Surely, Hyderabad, though my adopted home, was and is a providential homestead, and I figured that the city of Hussian Sagar and Hyderabadi Biryani (preferably chicken!) understands me better than when compared to the Arabian Sea-facing gulf of vada-paudy Bombay!

The city where I live is in tandem with my level of understanding, in both professional and personal terms. And when home, I know I am assured of its tender touches of familiarity and filial assurances. Therefore, sigh!…sigh!…for a fresh college grad bent on seeking a safe platter of juicy home-cooked goose (read food) and secured homespun subsistence then whoever wants to give a damn about the Fantasy of Away thing in Bombay. A life that is equally delectable compared to any other tempting turkeys (read Bombay) could only imply this: Thank you, I am not interested; therefore, Ma, I’m home.

My view of relocation is somewhat different. It’s got to be a permanent deal at the first shot, not a temporary contract type of arrangement which may or may not get permanent later on in life. One cannot haggle with anyone, so one turns away quietly and leave. I could never really mean to be a serious, obsessive career-oriented nerd who is always on the look-out for an enticing prospect anywhere, anytime; therefore, to relocate to India’s “underarms”: a tropically stormy, underworld-infested, mob-mafia racket, plunderer of public properties, anarchical Shiv-Sena mental squads and the very menacingly vada-paudy Mumbai city that is, is far far away from the reality aspect of my personal world that I have happily consigned myself to. Except with the exception of the street-smart vada pau bhajis, which, in a worst-case scenario, can make my stomach growl with an outlandish ache and make me run for the nearest LooLoo!, scary things of Bombay as mentioned above had made me gladly fritter away the job prospect which was laid out for me at the Bhandup facility of the Asian Paints.

Maybe yes, one has got to take risks and challenge oneself to work one’s way through the maze of forbidding Bombay life. But - to put it mildly - I had no penchant for such hollow promises filled to the brim with the pieces of risk-taking jigsaw puzzles; and, as a rank fresher, taking a risky - more like death-defying - step would certainly mean that I never have to come home in one piece. If I have the necessary gall to prove what I want to prove, I can jolly well do it in my own familiar backyard than risk catching an Arabian chill. Admittedly, it takes a different lot for this buoyant soul to hang on to the promise of a job, howsoever enticing, in the bleeding Bambaiyya of today. And this very prudent growl within me never rebelled against the very sane laidback Hyderabadi element in my mind. To help such matters resolve, I shot my gaze up at the stars of the night sky for divine intervention. Job or no job, folks, I already quit! Problem solved. That I would rather be able to make way for others who would be more akin to availing of such errands came as a welcome relief to me. After all, I would have been absurdly guilty of trespassing Hyderabad’s “understanding” with me. Strange logic you say? Well, let it be.

An afterthought: the “understanding” I had with my “adopted place of my destiny” seemed out of place at first because of my good old personal Karmabhoomi-Matribhoomi issue involved in it. I guess there is supposedly a quiet understanding between the dual lives of Karmabhoomi and Matribhoomi that I try to lead. It might not matter to no one but me. Hyderabad was more like a Karmic friend chiding me to never let go of its providential offerings in the face of some kind of opportunistic employment that I had been foolishly considering and preparing for acceptance. I knew life would never be the same again if I had left Hyderabad for Bombay.

Praveen’s dilemma -
For my reticent friend Praveen, the job offer that was given to him offered no genuine respite in terms of wanting to be able to “settle down” in a world unlike what he was fondly accustomed to in Hyderabad. 

At first, he was happy for accepting this job opportunity; at least he made well in the interview so he went right ahead securing it for himself. That meant a lot to him. Although he signed on the dotted line to confirm his permanent employment with the Asian Paints company, he kept looking back down the road from where he came. Initially, it all mattered pretty big to his self-confidence and why not, really, but this classic Hyderabadi element in him eventually showed up in the face of the idea of working in the Bhandup of Bombay and leaving his accustomed homestead and parental attachment behind would necessarily mean more than his level of emotional strength could persevere. He soon seemed to be leading an insufficient life and longed to, as Janice said “pack your bags and catch a train at the nearest railway station”, get home sooner than his circumstances would have permitted him to; so he threw all cares to the wind and rushed home like a long-lost prodigious son. Hyderabad Nawabs like us couldn’t care to transform into Bhandups of Bombay!

The city Praveen grew up in - that he had inadvertently left behind – suddenly turned up knocking at the door of his heart, or so the story goes. Hyderabad became a harbinger of memories and other easy opportunities that he easily could have partaken of if only he had looked where he was meant to look. Soon things began making fresh pleas tugging at his longing heart. Not for long did he work in Bombay because soon he was packed off to Gujarat where Asian Paints have their plant cum software maintenance facility. Life was seemingly good for him there at the plant site, but whoever said that once-a-Hyderabadi-always-a-Hyderabadi feeling makes you come back to where you actually belong was absolutely right. So the Bhandup of Bombay returned!

After about six months of work in Gujarat did he see any reason, and he yanked off his mind’s cobwebs even as he came away by getting rid of the unrelenting blues he was tackling there on a regular basis, even on holidays. Lessons learned. Experiences gained. Opinions trashed. The experience of it all made Praveen a strong individual who can be reckoned with for later successes at places elsewhere.

Bombay Duck curry -
I am not yet a connoisseur of Bombay Duck curry – a fish delicacy that is hard to come by for anyone who mistakenly thinks that Bombay Duck is a Duck, a bird of limited flight!, and cannot be the name of a sea fish!, but I’m nearing to be one. 

Methinks I am a twice-born Dvija and a fish-eating omnivore who is within his legal rights to devour anything that looks like fish, so getting to know what Bombay Duck is was easy for me. (Caution: If anyone cares to know if I can cook spicy Bombay duck (lovely bones and all) on my own, perish the thought; but if one cares to eat some, well, then you and I are most welcome to drool). The point is: well, the following are the points:

Interviews make me feel fat
Interviews make me feel like I am on stage
Interviews make me feel like I am a sophomore

Who said Interviews are like first dates? But I can recall having better dates! and other faux pas for sure. I mean, I don’t know why people ask questions when my answers really don’t matter! If interviews are a two-way communication process, so be it, but hey I am a good listener.

So there goes the story of a chance Bombay interview I did not pass. Though the overall experience of that outing had fixed me into a state of inertia, I was really gratified for one other thing, that is: I did not descend into the well of anxiety-prone times of my own, so never mind inertia. I mean I found myself braving a sort of indecisiveness - that was unstoppably inevitable - with élan. I was neither happy nor sad about it. After a while, I really didn’t care whether I had my lessons learned or not - simply because there were no lessons to be learned. Guess not doing well in that interview (now christened “The Bombay Interview”) was my idea of rebelling against the same one I had cumbersomely encountered there.

A life without interviews is practically impossible; but in the wake of that interview one had attended in Bombay, one hardly had to wait before the next hurricane arrived more urgently than the previous one. Call it a downside (or upside) of a crafty life in the computer profession, I better get re-booted back in. Or if I look the other way then all the Interviews of the world will merrily, merrily pass me by. And I don’t want to be left with my own “throw-ups” to mop.

By Arindam Moulick

- Originally written on Sep. 2001, updated on Nov.-Dec. 2010

- This essay has also been published on the EzineArticles.com website in two parts. Following are the web links:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Of-Interviews,-Homesickness-and-Bombay-Duck!,-Part-1&id=8771072
http://ezinearticles.com/?Of-Interviews,-Homesickness-and-Bombay-Duck!-Part-2&id=8771087