Back on Campus: Pre placement talk in Lucknow!!

It was one thing that I really wanted to do: Go back to Lucknow, where undoubtedly I spent some of the best days of my life. I could not go for Manfest, but as luck could have been I had to go to L for the pre-placement talk for DB. The best part was that Shefali also managed to convince her boss to go to L and so it was more like a double bonus!



So we flew together on Sunday evening and were supposed to give the ppt on Monday. We reached Lucknow at about 9 in the evening and were duly impressed to find a person standing with a placard with my name with DB written on it. Well my chest puffed up nearly like the ad of timesjob.com waala guy. Well the sad n scary part was that the driver was new to the area and forgot the way to the campus. All of a sudden we found ourselves stranded in the car in the middle of hinterlands of UP! Seriously it was kinda frightening. But then I decided to take things in my hand and finally got back on track. I was only wondering how others, who had no idea about Lucknow, might have felt in the same situation. So we finally managed to reach campus by 9:30pm where we had a couple rooms booked for us.



Now was the first bombshell shocker. The Alcom (alumni committee) had organized talk by us on “the careers in the banking industry in India”. It wasn’t tough for us, but the fact that I have never landed up on podium for any of the extempore competitions was one of the major reasons for my inhibition. But shedding those was easy and the talk went on fine for about an hour followed by another hour of Q&A’s.
We finally rounded up at about 11:45 and promptly went for a walk around the campus. It was kinda empty as campus (well it is placement times!), but we had an awesome time. We sat as the Nescafe and spoke to Nescafe waala-Alok for a long time. Had a maggi outside and sat near the fire in between Nescafe and Guptaji’s shop. We sat there for a long time before going to the library and revisiting the old times. I mean I have sat, studied and even slept through my days in lucknow in campus. I am sure I must have spent more than 60% of my time on campus in the library. Not necessary;ly studying, but genrally it was the most peaceful place on campus. Then we took the long route behind the library towards MDP centre, then the main gate and finally patanjali. We were chocked with memories and finally decided to call it a day at about 2..


Got up early and went to Fauji! Ordered some dal fry and jeera aaloo to go with it. Vikalpa, the HR from DB Bangalore was there and so went and met her as well. Ajay, my boss who was supposed to give the ppt had run out of battery and was incommunicado. We finally managed to call him up and sent him a pick-up car which meant that there was delay in the ppt by nearly an hour. Since students were already in the classroom, I had to take the stage again and spent about 45 odd minutes giving another gyan session to the guys. Finally Ajay came and we gave the ppt which again went over time (mainly in the Q&A section). One thing I realized over this period was that as a student people are anxious to get good placements, but believe me, the companies are more nervous than the students to get good guys!


I never knew that while on campus, but this is 100% true..


After Ajay and Vikalpa had left, we went back to the Nescafe and had another round of maggi. It was nice knowing that H9 won Sikander this year around. Well in my first year we came agonizingly close to winning it. But the fact that our juniors have done us proud is one of maximum pleasure and satisfaction.
We sat with Mohini and a lot of other guys and talked our way to complete nonsense. It sometimes is fascinating how in campuses you are completely at ease with yourself and have no real worries to think about.



It was like coming home….


Well met up with Chauri, who had also come up for Deloitte PPT and then spoke for a long time with Neerja Pandey, my fave prof on campus. And when it was time to leave, I can say that except for the tears, I was crying like a baby..
I said it was like coming home, and now it was time to leave home…
A home that never really was mine, but will always be a part of me..
I miss Campus Life.
I miss Campus.
What the hell
I MISS LIFE!!