10 ways to screw up your job offer.

After a plethora of interviews I've given, i hereby share the 'gyaan' i acquired to my juniors for their upcoming Placement season. Although you are completely prepared for the technical interview or HR interview, you could sometimes slip off owing to, lets say, 'randomness of universe'! Well, make sure you DO NOT repeat the following things listed below:

1. Writing 'flirting' under extra curricular activities in your resume! Your resume is the first impression, make sure you put sensible things there. And avoid spelling mistakes.

2. Asking why the company isn't doing good profits at the time of Pre-Placement talk in front of large audience. Its almost like telling the HR guy, "dude, your company is sinking" which would cost you a chance at the offer.

3. Dressing shabbily for the interview which makes the interviewer question your seriousness for the process.

4 .Being completely clueless about the company you are attending the interview. Pre-placement talks are there for a reason and they don't expect you to doze off the PPT and be unaware of the profile/position you are applying for.

5. When asked about ''your weakness'' in HR interview, when you reply 'coffee', or 'sweets' or 'ice-cream'! They aren't asking you to write a slambook; instead the weaknesses that could affect their organisation. The best way is to reply genuinely about your weakness in professional life and how you made attempts to overcome it.

6. Saying ''Sleeping'' when asked 'what do you do in free time?'. You aren't supposed to reveal your minimally creative self in front of the interviewer. Try telling something else.

7. Saying that you would go for MBA/ higher studies after 2 years of joining when asked about your ''Future Plans'' or ''Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" Nobody would invest so much in a guy/gal who would leave the organization in 1-2 years.

8. Saying you aren't comfortable with relocation to the HR when you know the company is not in your home-town and work-at-home is not the option.

9. Asking the cute guy/hot girl who's conducting the interview whether they are single or not, when they ask ''Any questions from your side''.

10. Signing and sending the offer letter after the deadline passes.

Image Courtesy: farm3.static.flickr.com

Travelogue: DIGHA BEACH

It was 3am in the morning and grumpily I picked up the buzzing phone only to hear an urgent voice of a friend asking if I could accommodate a girl in my hostel. Awkwardly in that drowsy state, I said yes and found myself sharing my bedding with an unknown person only to find her gone by morning without my notice. Although all of it felt like a dream, I then understood that a group of seven have gone on a trip to Digha Beach and returned at that odd hour.

On enquiring, their exciting experience has been shared with me as a payoff for having their friend with me the previous night. 

“We didn’t plan the trip in prior and took off at instance on a Friday evening as soon as the last class got completed.  Most of the unplanned trips turn out exciting than ever compared to those which are planned.  And it worked out for us”, said those enthusiastic souls. So here’s the itinerary:

Durgapur-àHowrah Stationà Dharamtallaà Find a bus that goes to Digha (takes 5-6 hours in bus and just 3 hours in train)à reached Digha Rly Station by 5.30am in the morning.

“By the time we reached Digha beach from the Railway Station, it was pitch dark and Sun was yet to come out of its abode.  It felt as if the sea was waiting for us and its tides welcomed us with their pleasant sound. If you happen to visit the beach, it’s best seen during Sunrise and Sunset. The Sun coming out of the horizon from the sea is a view one should never miss. We lingered there near the beach weighing the idea of getting into the water or not; finally giving up sanity and urgency of keeping off our bags in a hotel and we rushed into the water to cut through those wild tides! The water felt cool and clean unlike any other beaches we’ve seen.”

Hotels in Digha are right before the beach and charge reasonably along with spacious rooms and no restriction on number of persons allowed per room although an extra surcharge of few tens of rupees per head will be undeniable. “We all huddled together and dumped our bags after coming out of water and our ached bodies needed some nutrition. So we did take a break only to resume with Boat Rafting. We feared the boat would capsize and tied our life jackets cautiously, thankfully nothing of that sort happened!” At Digha, there’s Boat rafting where wearing a life jacket is an absolute necessity for there are many cases the boat get capsized; and there is Horse Riding.

“The horses were peculiarly dressed as if there’s a wedding nearby. But we didn’t care much as long as the horse let us ride on it! And the Sunset near the Old Digha beach which is near the New Digha was mesmerizing.”

“By this time we all were bankrupt and had to board a train to Howrah without ticket. A constant fear that the ticket inspector would find us out was lurking on all our heads. Even a man in black coat seemed like TT and one of us hid behind a pole near the platform! We got lucky and weren’t caught on this discrepancy.  Finally we managed to get on a train to Durgapur too! That’s how the unplanned event was filled with fun, bankruptcy, fear and thrill!” accounted my friends.

Digha Beach is a must-go for all those fun loving individuals and the final year batch groups who are planning for a two day vacation around Durgapur. It comes under budget, fun and mesmerizing.

Info and Image Courtesy: Alok Pandey, Vishal Raj Anand & Group.
Originally written for : 'Renaissance'-the college magazine of NIT Durgapur.

Her Numb Mornings!

A quite chilly morning and a quiet room woke her up rather early to an unoccupied part of her bed that was too neat to make her understand he wasn't there. She lay there looking at those perfectly positioned pillows and unruffled sheets. For once, her world came to a halt.

She never noticed the beautiful design of the bedsheets until that morning and when her gaze shifted to the fluffy white pillow, she at once winced for not changing the pillow cover that still had one of his hair strands. But she would let it be, for as long as it was possible. Slowly she let her hand out of those warm sheets hoping to feel the warmth on that part of unoccupied bed; yet she was rewarded with stone cold emptiness. It was strange, for her inner-self didn't start blabbering to her the very moment she opened eyes. It's an ideal solution after all, to not think, to not understand the gravity of the situation, to stay still and not let the worldly routine and chores invade her peace.

Of all these years, only now did she start to notice and wonder the little details of their room, the cracks on the wall, the old ceiling fan which accumulated dust and stared gravely at her, the old newspapers coverings on the shelves whose odour she suddenly had the urge to breathe in. 

She always had this craving for smelling old books or papers that made her fascinating to him. That's how they met. In a library, when she was busy finding a book on those dusty stacks which were abandoned by most of the people, leaving them to be rescued from their solitude by her, she with her enthusiastic big glasses gleamed in coherence to the spark in her eyes when she found ''Wuthering Heights''. Unaware of any company she had, she quickly opened that old book and touched those yellow pages, worn out with time and inhaled the intoxicating smell. He was taken aback by this peculiar behaviour and started watching her until she noticed him. Their eyes met then, in the temple of books and old literature, where millions of dreams come true on delving into those stories the books held. 'That truly is an affair lasting for a lifetime', thought those dreamy old books in the stack room. Yet, his absence this morning questioned the magic the universe beholds.

Still in bed, unyielding to move out of it, her eyes searched for that hope, unwilling to give up and fathom the reality behind the quiet room. Yet she knew deep down her heart and far beneath her conscious mind that this was it. He was not coming back. She wanted to be angry at him, for maybe anger could preoccupy her from driving herself to madness. Anger can keep her going for a while, but she utterly failed at it too, making her return to this numbness which assuaged her and morphed the stinging pain of her heart. The pain, she remembered, and quickly made an effort to dodge those thoughts to the meaningless meanderings of comprehending the shades of the curtain covering the morning sun rays from slipping into her bedroom.

It felt incomplete. The room that echoed with their laughter doesn't seem the same. The bedside table that used to be occupied with his books was devoid of any life it previously had. The still and quiet room was as good as if it was dead. Dead? Now, her inner voice screamed with pain and disgust on fate, that she wanted him back; but who would hear her cries to get him back for her?!

He won't ever come back. EVER!

Image Courtesy:quoracdn..net

"What are your plans this V-day?"

Jotting down the mysterious points our professor was dictating, I was taken aback when a classmate of mine turns back and asks me with a crooked smile, about my plans on this Valentines Day! I momentarily paused, weighed carefully the situation if i should reply sarcastically or not and finally resorted to an awkward chortle, all the while thinking of the dictation of notes. He gave a quizzical smile, unsatisfied with the amount of information i let pass and returned to copying the boring notes of the departmental subject.

Only 2 days to go for the so-called V-Day or Valentines' Day; for which different sects of people hold different opinions, ranging from marrying off the love birds when sighted to proposing that pretty girl the guy always wanted to, with a red rose! Facebook's app "Who will be your Valentine 2015" is getting many clicks owing to the weekend date and my mailbox seems to be filled with the promotional ads regarding "Easy Valentines' Day gifts for Girlfriend/Boyfriend". Clearly, Love Is In The Air!

Well, in another way, this Saturday, the poor old man who sells balloons near schools and colleges will sleep peacefully after his days' earnings; for the prissy girlfriends and the lovable cum caring boyfriends would find the heart-shaped red balloons "cute" and ''apt'' for the occasion. The red roses will have pricked more hands than ever this week and probably would have broken more hearts than ever when the College Sweetheart accepts the proposal of that dashing guy. And not to forget the specially made heart shaped cakes with red and pink cream used to celebrate or mark the love birds' anniversary!

Sitting back in my chair and treating myself with a hot cup of coffee, i reflect on the so-called 'plans' for this Saturday and take to quizzing my friends in proximity.

One of my girl friends said she made a greeting card and is organizing a surprise party for her boyfriend at a restaurant. Lucky him...! And a guy friend who is single says he is looking forward for the much-awaited World Cup Cricket match with his other Cricket fan-friends. Now, that's a perfect bro-date!

I then asked a rather cynical guy who recently got his heart broken about his plans, carefully shielding myself with a plate, anticipating he might throw an object on the absurdity of the question in his context. Thanks to his calmness, he replied " I'm gonna drink so badly that i will forget that 'she' ever existed." Well, I guess creatures with broken hearts are the wildest!

While I come across people who actually had 'plans' for V-day, there are other set of 'practical people'; who don't give two pence if its a V-day or not. For them, its just another feat by the corporate world to cash in the emotions of masses. That's a very practical way of stating the much hyped day.

Valentines' Day or not; I say one should make sure that their significant other feels special in one's company. And by the dear Singles' of the whole wide world...YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!

Oh, by the way, I really am not the kind of person who 'plans' for a day!

Adios.

Image Courtesy: www.demotivation.us

“We only want ‘Virgin’ Bride for matrimony.”

A casual stroll in the park that evening led me to a group of gossiping aunties who were engrossed in some discussion. I barged in to find what’s amusing them this week only to hear “You don’t know? Mr. Sharma’s daughter is not a virgin it seems, and her marriage broke due to this reason! These days youngsters are too fast….it wasn't the same in our times…..” went on the banter.

I was shell-shocked to find that a guy rejected the beautiful and educated girl just on the basis of her hymen-status! It’s a sickening feeling that the society associates virginity to purity and chastity and see no scope of happy married life for that girl. What they fail to recognize is, the groom may not be a virgin either, but the bride should be “virgin, fair, tall and slim, preferably educated!”

Our society is very ironical at times. We tend to think the girl’s attire is responsible for her to be attacked by anti-social elements. We still have love jihads, honor killings, dowry practice; yet we boast of Indian culture and how it’s being adulterated with modernism!

There’s always a chance that the girl could have been in love and was hoping to get married, but when things didn’t turn out as planned, she walked out of the relationship. The girl invests emotionally and physically but when the matrimony doesn't favor her status of being a non-virgin, although it is perfectly alright for the guy who was involved before to get married with no questions asked about his virginity, imagine the heights of chutzpah the society exhibits!

Some uncles and aunties claim that the marriage can’t prosper if ‘she’ is not virgin before wedding. Experts say marriage can only progress when both the parties involved can confide in each other. When the groom is ready to trust and love his prospective wife, where does the question arise for the in-laws or the aunties of the society to even tag the girl as ‘impure’ or even make her undergo a virginity test! It becomes a different scenario when the male ego looks at the girl as a sex machine where the performances of different males are evaluated and hence won’t prefer him to be graded, eventually asking for a virgin bride! Its appalling how the survey conducted by Hindustan Times says 63% of men in India prefer virgins for marriage. For such individuals, marriage could never be a healthy relationship and the girl will always be in the shadow of the dominant male.

Image Courtesy: http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/

Well, its not just in our society. Lady Diana of England was asked to undergo virginity test before her marriage into the royalty. With so much hype around virginity test, experts say that one could never tell if an individual is virgin or not. And recent developments in plastic surgery has brought a new procedure called Hymenoplasty which re-constructs the hymen, which people fancily call as “re-virgination” which is just as ridiculous as preferring a virgin-bride in the first place.

          

The problem arises with the narrow mindset one cultivates and the herd-mentality people develop.  Its not just the grooms that ask for virgin brides, but there are demands for virgin-grooms too! The whole hullabaloo revolving around who is virgin and who is not is pointless. Unless one can start to trust their partner and not consider sex as something vile and accept it’s a natural process, there won’t be any end to the arguments regarding virgin-bride.

Its high time every girl owns up what her body is; hymen or no-hymen, she can have a fulfilling marriage if she wants to! 

The not-so-perfect Love Story

Staring at the screen of my friend's laptop; i reminisce the old times with my laptop when it was in working condition with its soft keys that never made noise while typing incessantly like i am now, with an additional nagging from my friend to stop the goddamn typing. I will, once i tell my story. Here it goes......

It was Summer of 2012. Elated with the completion of my first year of Engineering, i came home to a brand new laptop my brother bought for me, which will be my love of life for the next two and a half years.

The first few months were great between us. Our chemistry was mesmerizing, the machine worked flawlessly and i loved every aspect of it and its safe to assume that my laptop loved me back too, selflessly! And then within few months, as every relationship encounters problems, we had one too. The genuineness of Windows 7 software became a glitch to the almost perfect system. I started disliking it; for the initial infatuation was lost and i tried switching to other Operating System. Ubuntu seemed a better option. Easy to download and great software and never gets virus! I indulged in the idea for a while. Well, i did more than just indulging when my poor Windows 7 suffered.

After a lot of attempts and giving up on Ubuntu; for different reasons; a solution came up. A software that can overwrite "windows is not genuine". Once again, everything went back to normal and we resumed our relationship. Sometimes, things just fall back into place even when everything seems hopeless. Soon as time passed, another component got added, the 'external keyboard' to make things easier; for typing of course. But you know, who would like the idea of carrying the keyboard everywhere you go with your laptop?! It was tiresome, yet something i made peace with. We were happy that way!

An year passed and still no problem and i boasted of my laptop. And then the storm hit us. It suddenly stopped working and upon consulting a technician; i was told i should format or rather have an upgraded version instead of Windows 7! I was always told to have a backup for times like these and i gave a deaf ear for that. Its almost like losing a whole 10000 word essay with a single 'close' button accidentally clicked only because you forgot saving it earlier! Without any backup, without the working laptop; it just feels like some deficiency in life. But it goes without saying that we did good. The machine worked without any major flaws for a long period. Afterall, its Lenovo! That my dear reader, is my love story with a Lenovo B570 i3 Core Processor with 8GB RAM, 650GB HDD!

So what went wrong? Was it the backup or was my attempts at installing Ubuntu previously weren't good enough? I am still figuring out while the other part of brain is busy finding out who's got a Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit cracked version to format my C-drive.

Please notify me if you have it. Its utmost needed.

Guess its time to 'stop typing'. Adios.

Image Courtesy: deviantart.net

2014: The Year in Review

Positivity begets Positivity. I read somewhere that one should be grateful to be happy and i want to be happy, just like the rest of 6 billion people (the other 1 billion consist of infants and eccentrics). So , i am grateful for all the things that happened to me in 2014,  and have jotted down for the future-me to look it up when i would be feeling blue.

Here it goes:

1.  I turned 21, finally and officially an adult.

2. For the first time ever, i tried on a dress (a one-piece) which i didn't even dare to wear in wildest of     my dreams, in winter, for Springfest-IIT Kgp. And i loved the experience!

3.  Learnt life's most crucial lesson regarding friendship and ethics. Though the harder way, i'm glad i      finally stumbled upon it.

4.  Glad to make new friends at Midhani Ltd., during my Summer Training and have a disciplined lifestyle during vacation. 

5.  Started working out for good health and the experience with gymnasium had been great!

6.  My brain has attained the innate ability to produce Oxytocin( in amounts more than i perceived    could be possible).

7.  My impaired skills at Poetry got strengthened, again, i credit the oxytocin.

8.  Worked for a Facebook page aggressively, dreaming big and finally opted out, on the grounds of  being truthful to what i believe in.

9.  Finally zeroed in on future plans; something i was oblivious to; for the past three years.

10.  Grateful to have a wonderful family supporting through thick and thin.

All in all, the journey of life felt as if the steering wheel of a Ferrari is given in my hands to ride as freely as possible. It was adventurous, terrific and a bit dangerous. Looking forward to steer it as best as possible in 2015!

Happy New Year folks!!