First Onsite

Last two months were absolutely big and life changing for me. It all started on a fine and normal morning when my manager pinged me in office communicator– ‘Doni can you please drop by’. That was his way of calling people to his cabin. And I have sometimes replied to this question from him sometimes as casually as , ‘ Sure Venkat, 10 sec plz’ .He was so approachable, friendly and youthful. But the lesson I learned from others lives was – never be emotionally attached to anyone who is a manager. They are trained to be friendly and charming. People can differ anyway.

A brief discussion followed – It started with lowered voice – he asked, Hi Doni How are you doing? I got alarmed – My manager is pinging me in the early morning and asking me how I was doing? . And I was under the impression that recession is gone and all will be fine. I prepared for hearing some bad news – atlease release from the account. I remember each and every incident those days because there was feeling attached to each one of it.
I said : ‘Im fine Venkat thanks’, and smiled my usual innocently foolish smile. Then he started speaking of unexpected things. ‘Doni, there is another project based in UK with a short term Onsite opportunity. I just wanted to know if you would be interested.’
Ah! What to say! I have only heard about bargains regarding onsite in drunken discussions when roommates/friends would become sober and make references to their meetings and discussions with their manager when they asked fearlessly about Onsite – some were true some were, I thought , not so true. And only 3 people had gone onsite from the 2007 batch till then - two of them were achayans from pala who had insanely charming social skills and the third one was a techie with nick name 'the guru'.

I sensed the situation. This is my chance. By the way do you remember Chris Gardener’s(Will smith) little kid saying ‘OK’ when a rich man his father just met offers him to take them out to a football match?(In the movie Pursuit of happiness) ? With the same air, I said ‘Yeah, I am interested’ after a classic gap of about 3 seconds. To this, he laughed/grinned (Hey what was that?) – I knew then, he knew that I,(for that matter – any 2.5 year experienced guy) would lick this opportunity like a stray dog licking bones. When he saw apparent reluctance or thoughtfulness for 3 seconds, he wanted to laugh. Ok, fair enough. I forgive him.
What followed was a frenzy filled day. When something has to go wrong, many factors would come up to help it. I was informed shortly that there would be interviews, and if I clear them I would be released and ‘it wont be possible to take me back into the account’. I don’t know who initiated this thread which will end up in my way out of the account, but I like being a coin on the carrom board. Nothing to lose. By noon, when I was going for lunch to a Kerala restaurant where my friend waited, I got a phone call. I was honest in every word. I said I was riding a bike, I said I could speak only if he called again in another 5 minutes , I then said I don’t work from 9 to 6 but rather 10 to 8 (he asked explain clearly what are your activities 9 am to 6 pm in your current project), I said I copy paste and edit sql queries and never really compose them.. and when he was about to hang up on another hopeless candidate which was me, I woke up and said that I could brush up my SQL in two days if required. He said after a gap - ‘ I might forward your resume then but it will be your undertaking to prepare well – because you might be projected to the client’ .

I felt hopeful after the call. But I had lost 30 minutes from lunch time and had to rush back to office. There is a delivery time table in our account where the delivery starts by 3 pm. I just rushed in and almost finished a fix which was halfway. But not quite – I got another call on Vnet. It was the onsite manager and some other person(s) , whose Tamil names were impossible to remember as I discovered a short while later.

The interview was honest, and obviously pathetic because of that. I saw no point in lying my way through. But the best part was when a replied wrongly to a technical question and never knew the answer was wrong until my roommates spotted the blunder and almost fainted. The question and answer:
‘Can you explain what are joins?’
I had learnt about JOINs in basic sql training but after 2.5 years without using them I had no idea that it was j-o-i-n and not J-O-I-N-T.
I replied in my usual apologetic interview tone – I had learned it in SQL training and it was easy, but right now I had no idea, because in our project we are never required to write JOINTS.
It seemed the last ‘T’ sounded silent to them. I got a confirmation call on the next Saturday. I have cleared the interview and my CV is going to be forwarded to the client. A client interview will be there. Another girl is also going to be there along with me in the client interview.
So , I have got so far. But in the end? I had to wait.
I had to sit down and cram all the SQL I could. First time in life, I cancelled an extracurricular activity for sitting down and studying. I cut the movie Avatar when all of my friends went. And there was this important cricket match on Sunday – In Tambaram Madras Christian College – where you can hit 2 or 3 birds with one shot. One – pure unadulterated cricket with whites and leather ball, two- a good outing to a big green campus, three- you can once again ask directions to the cricket ground to a malayalee girl. When I first went there 4-5 christian girls were returning from Church chattering in Malayalam. I asked her ‘ ee groundilottulla vazhi yetha’ . They are very polite in MCC. I could enjoy the beauty while she explained.
So , I had to go to the match. Couple of senior friends advised not to. My manager also had told me to sit down and study well for two days. Client technical interview is bound to be tough. But I had to follow MY gut feeling and go to the match. It helped – I scored 33 runs which was my highest score after joining CTS – My captain had asked me to open the innings for the first time. We lost the match by 4 runs but every single player and Umpires and scorers and some others came up to me and shaked hands and said good words after the match. It gave me the most needed thing before a client interview – Confidence.
The video conference interview was held in my office location(GMR Perungudi) itself. Just before the interview we were told that 7 guys were interviewed during that past two weeks but only 1 person qualified. It was a helpless situation. I had to conjure up all the help I needed for me myself.
And, the interview. It was humourous, beautiful. I answered the technical questions because it was from the question dumps the project team gave me. I answered the domain(Insurance) questions because I definitely knew a thing or two about insurance, as I had cleared INS21 external exam in 2009 last quarter. And when they asked about my other interests, I could tell them about the Sundays match where I scored 33. And my reading habits, it was long dead, because I joined software industry, I said. The two clients laughed heartily without looking at each other. The last question was ‘ Have you ever been outside of India?’ Heart leaping , I said NO. ‘ Would you be interested to travel outside India?’ I said ‘Offcourse Yes!’.
‘Alright Doni, we will get in touch with your manager’

And for the next two days , my heart was hanging from the roof of my chest. I had no one to open up my anxiety. If I cleared the interview, it has to be very good obviously. But if I didn’t clear – I knew I am in serious trouble. I would have to revise all my understandings about myself and my benchmarks. Because I felt so much in heart that I would be selected. But my brain discouraged me – I had nothing inside me to be the 2nd among 9 guys in Cognizant.

Tuesday and Wednesday crawled through , I was in pain. But I could tell nobody that I was hoping for too much. On Thursday night I could get some good sleep after two excited nights. I was ready to go back to my old project and clear up whatever things were pending and start afresh. Client interview was a good experience. Will help in future. But it was really hard to feel like another Cinderella who got the chance to be at the midnight party but could not impress the prince with the dance.
On Friday morning my room mate went to the temple and when he came back he had a question - ‘Doni do you have a mole under your left foot? I read that those who have one will have chance for overseas travel shortly’ (This room mate is Sumesh , you can ask him for the exact words – His orkut link: --)
I had just woke up. I flipped my foot open. There was a clear mole! We laughed and said playful things.
Then I washed my face and started browsing orkut as usual. This time I opened the link https://mail.cognizant.com also, just in case..
There was a mail from a unfamiliar ID – Some varadarajan – I opened it with thumping heart and discovered the content with disbelief

“Hi Johny/Doni
Both of you may start going through the kt documents linked below..
Blah blah
Blah blah
”

This part of my life.. This very little part.. is called – HappIness.

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The most reverberative question for the next 2 weeks (from the onsite manager) would be:
"Have you guys booked tickets for Scotland.?"

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[ Insha Allah, One day I will make it to my dreamland which is Scotland, the brave! may be i might need some kin help ]

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how lazy can a boy be???? i have absolutely no estimation abt that.. absltly no.

bye bye