CHAPTER 1 - Lost Days of Glory, a fictional memoir

Arindam Moulick

Principal characters appearing in the story:

1. Ram Narayan Sangwani
2. Monami Roy
3. Una Artoran 
4. Padmashri Raoh
5. Manpreet ‘HeartLove’ Singh
6. Balzie Gigamorthy
7. Tania Bhatroy
8. Pavan Bommaraju
9. Neetu Scootywali
10. Savitha Tandavi
11. Revanthi Rakani
12. Raufia Zaibunnisa Begum
13. Dilnawaz Khan ('Smiling Buddha')
14. Shiv Charan Prashad (‘Joey’)
15. J. Raju ('Gutkha Raju')
16. TD Suraj (‘Truck Driver’ Suraj)
17. Dévee Prachad (‘Sexy’ Dévee)
18. Merion Roz Reyo,
19. Swati T.
20. Arinvan Maliek
21. Elizabeth Bernadette Soomi
22. Renzo Anny Munny
23. Merlene Thumas
24. Gudumba Gongura Howdy (‘GG’)

The story begins…

CHAPTER 1 - The Prelude

Many moons ago, there came an offer of a job less ordinary. Well…

Arinvan Maliek was not looking forward to anything from his alma mater National Institute of Software Engineering (NISE), not even a phone call or an email, at least not on a Monday evening in July of the year 1998, because that’s not how things normally work with them; he juvenile-ly imagined so. He believed that Mondays were normally reserved for “taking stock of things”, “setting mechanisms” and “guessing” how the entire week is going to roll out, but someone makes a phone call to a fresh-off-the-boater like me and offers news of a job is an incredible phenomenon in itself.

A job is a job is a job, after all!

If my college ‘suffered’ me for X amount of years then the job placement guys better suffer me for just one last time; at least for the sake of continuing to maintain their good placement record. Afterward, of course, it’s gonna be “good riddance” for them! Having said that, I must not miss specifying here that I really am not given to undermining one’s academic credentials but thanks to my college’s academics-focused generous mindset that I clung to it as if my whole life depended on it!

~

The time is now to introduce Arinvan to you. Yes, that’s my name and just in case you haven’t given a thought to its meaning, well here it is: it means “the eternal flame” or “the flame that never burns out”. That’s who I am. Complete name: Arinvan Maliek.

In the beginning, the thought of a job prospect was seemingly debilitating for Arinvan. Why? We’ll see that later.

No, we will see it now.

Ok, let’s see it now.

So let’s begin…

Arinvan, to be fair, was not given to deriding his own expectations of a favour of a job from his alma mater, but the thought of ‘working and earning a living’ held an unsure, awkward feeling within his being – as though of spidery cobwebs had been ensnared in his mind that either remained out of reach to be tugged at and yanked away by him or simply let go of it without bothering much. Guess that wasn’t possible, was it? How do you not take something which is supposedly given to you as a favour? Accepting it is more like being thankful for the favour done to you. So I did.

I was unready, unvigilant, and more of an unrepentant daydreamer.

I thought the job market was not for me to get head-over-heels with, so I should look the other way and pretend as if I did not exist! It was gratifying to see my batch mates keeping the burner of constant botheration on and went on to play Life’s waiting game in the fond hope of landing a dream job one day. But first things first: tell me doesn’t one have to get sucked into the vortex of the indifferent marketplace and then maybe get to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel to get hold of a job? I wasn’t even singularly worthy of such thought processes running amok in my young adolescent mind, far from it. I was still not ready to take a plunge. As a youngster, I was merely indulging in the art of speculation, presumption, assumption, etc.

Though I was still an infant-proper and preferred resting my worries on aphorisms like: “That’s life. Get over it”, but trust me I was not entirely illogical about it, was I? I think not. There were also some like-minded individuals who too had echoed the similar set of feelings just as me and were finding themselves seemingly incapacitated when confronted with the hurly-burly scene of the job placement developing right on our college grounds. Some of them weren’t ready for some unknowable reason. I don’t know: were they nervous? Were they simply clueless about jobs? Were they not ready yet to take the plunge? How could one not get interested in attending interviews happening right at their college campus?

You may agree with me when I say ‘experience’ does not always iron out the bare faults present in you but, at the same time, if you do not try and fix them yourself they might turn on you like a Damocles’ sword hanging over your head. The general lack of ‘experience’ in the résumé had driven many an upstart software engineers into a perennial state of being petulant with the powers-that-be (read job-offering gung-ho companies), but not entirely without a reason or two really. During those early days of Information Technology (IT), the constant reasoning at the interviews was something like this: “Sir, if you do not give me a job then how I am supposed to have any ‘experience’ at all?”

Obviously, such pleas almost always fell on deaf ears! It never worked. It never will. In fact, whatever little chance there might have been for you to expect at least a rethink or a turnaround on the part of the interviewers, it still fell flat. There was never a perfect answer to that open-ended question! Strange are the ways of the world in the IT profession. If you’ve ‘experience’ you are welcome or else go climb a wall. Take it or leave it. Shape up or ship out. Such is the power ‘experience’ wields at the interview desks of almost all IT companies; it still does, with what the condescending hawks forever salivating on your Achilles' heel misadventure. ‘Experience’ whatever the heck it is counts and how!

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

- A slightly different version of this article also features on the EzineArticles.com website. Click here to read it: http://ezinearticles.com/?Lost-Days-of-Glory&id=9183716

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.