Stories by Preetam

People get depressed the most when they have quite a lot to lose and everything is on the line. Whereas, for people like myself, we have nothing to lose. We are barely across the margin, let alone the elements at stake. People like me, can perceive any crisis from a distance and may end up warning others about it.

Unfortunately, people get intimidated by red signals and warnings. Others may perceive us as pessimists or morons! The funny thing is, we never crack even when we are at the brink of falling inside a deep dark pit… because we always end up imagining all the possible outcomes for a situation. We prep ourselves for the worst case, smile a little bit, with the chin up, look forward and march towards the next milestone, with the mindset that – nothing can be worse! Once in a blue moon, we may get demotivated. But, that’s also part and parcel of life. People like me have a lot of thoughts while having nothing to do, no job, no shit to deal with, nothing.

I was sitting idle since the last 4 months after almost cracking an interview before getting hit by Corona. On one Sunday morning, I plugged into my computer and applied for around hundreds of jobs on every possible job site. I started checking my goddamn mailbox every hour for any kind of notification for scheduling an interview. Finally, my frustration ended when I got a mail from an HR of Accenture asking for the timings to schedule an interview over a video call with a panel of 3.

I was pretty excited in the beginning. That’s how it always starts. As and when I prepared myself for my interview in such a deemed organization, I knew that I didn’t have any jack load of knowledge to sell myself in front of the interviewers who may have interviewed almost half a million of youngsters for the same profile and are used to have profiling of the candidates. Unlike me, there are many scholars who apply for these jobs. Technically, I didn’t stand any chance. But, what’s the harm in trying!

Started the zoom call at 10 AM on Monday morning for the interview.

“So, are you ready? Can we start?”- One of the interviewers asked.

Agree to disagree, I definitely wasn’t ready. I was fucked up after finding out the total number of candidates that were going to get interviewed on the same day for the same role. The tension intensified when I got to know that only 10 candidates may get shortlisted out of the thousands. But then I thought to myself – ‘Fuck it. Let’s just do this.’

I said – “Most definitely yes! We can start the show.”

The interview, which has a set of 3 rounds lasted for almost half of my day, including a couple of breaks in between.

After the interview, I was relieved enough to commit a huge mistake – Calling up my so-called Best friends. I con-called Shubham Darshana and Vishnu and it started with the most obvious question.

“When is the party for the job?” – Vishnu mocked.

“It was an interview and not a job offer.”

“So what, we know that they are definitely going to hire you. We believe in you.”

“Yeah, of course, because it’s my dad’s company, right?”

“What’s the most frustrating question, that you had to face today?”- Vishnu asked.

“Why are you asking such weird questions?”

“Say na!” – unfortunately, he dragged the conversation, even when I did not want to stress on the interview.

“The questions like why should they hire me and how am I an ideal candidate with regards to the other waiting lists and so on..” – I acknowledged.

“So, if you had to answer like yourself, the ‘real Sameer’; How would you do that?”

“She asked me if I was smarter than the others out there. That was actually a very good question. All I could answer was – depends on who’s in the queue!”- I said. “I guess that’s a typical my kinda reply.”

“If someone were to ask you if you thought that you could map with the role?”-Darshana asked.

“Well, that is a very stupid question. If this question gets asked by the interviewer then I would probably doubt the intellect of that person. Anyways, to answer your question, I would say that I definitely consider myself as the better candidate than many out there and that’s why I have applied.”

Before they could ask any other questions related to generic interviews, I interrupted the topic –

“Let’s just talk about something else ‘coz I am at par with the maximum level of frustration and serious talk for the day!”

“What do you wanna discuss?” – Vishnu asked as if I were the only person who could start a topic.

“Maybe we can finally talk about her!” – D said.

The cat’s finally out of the bag. They got to know about my accomplishments over the past 4 months, apart from the job hunt, of course.

“What about her?” – I expected that question from either of them.

“How was your virtual date bro? And how the hell did you crack the code?” – D asked

“It’s all about reading between the lines…”

Life is never transparent… Sometimes high and sometimes low. Nobody can get a crash course and live without the hardships. But always know that- if you reach the bottom of it, it is just the beginning! Sometimes, it’s not how high you climb but how high you bounce back after you hit the bottom. We may be at the bottom at the moment but I believe that we can always bounce back…So, always believe that You are in the game even if you are on bench!