Some Memorable Incidents….

After months of deliberation and observing my friends start their blogging career, I felt the urge to create my own blog. For those who believe blogs to be informative and filled with serious stuff, this is the wrong URL to visit. I hereby take an oath to try to the best of my ability to tickle the funny bones of the readers. And I couldn’t find a better way to compose the first post than describing some of the incidents that have occurred in my life and continue to bring a smile on my face and I hope they do the same to you people.

1. The birth of Jumbomamu:

In 1994, I had changed my school from Centre Point, Nagpur to Nath Valley School, Aurangabad. I had transferred midway through class 2. That meant that everybody else knew each other and I was the Mr. X. During the first few days, I used to say quiet and shy and was less of a talker. It was during a sports class during one of these days, I was asked to introduce myself to the rest of my class. I tried being as loud and clear as possible. Still, for some reason, our sports teacher misheard my name as ‘MAMU’ and since then, this name has followed me wherever I go :P. Being among the tallest guys in my class since primary, I only found it fitting enough to add the JUMBO tag to my name, and hence ‘Jumbomamu’ came into existence. P.S. Don’t misinterpret my innovation as being boastful.

2. The Punishment doses in School:

As years went by, I turned from a silent and innocent little kid into a high school student who could not let any opportunity to play the fool go waste. The same was the case with all the other guys in our class. Due to this, our entire class, including the less-mischievous girls had to take two rounds of the sports field on a daily basis. There was one rare instance during the English lesson in Class X when I was the only one punished for not paying attention and had to stand outside the class the entire 90 minutes. Unluckily, that happened to be the time when our Principal used to take his rounds. My heart skipped a beat when he passed right in front of me, but as soon as he walked ahead without asking me the reason for the punishment, I resumed my attempts of trying to maintain a remorse-filled face. I always knew that history repeats itself; but I had no idea that this could happen in a matter of one day. The next day too, I was punished in the English Class, only this time for no reason I can think of. Again, our Principal was on rounds and before he could ask something, I shouted out loud- “Sir, Ma’am thinks I am not paying attention in the class again!!!” This was the only near-death experience I have had so far.

3. The Workshop Lectures in College:

During my first Semester at College, I had the worst timetable anyone could ask for. The main reason for that being the 4pm to 5pm Workshop lecture on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Staying awake in the air-conditioned lecture theatre after a series of classes is really a herculean task, to which I am sure most of my Bitsian friends will agree. During one such sleepy lecture by Sachin Wahegaonkar Sir, I just couldn’t keep my eyelids from shutting even for a second. To mask it, I covered my face with my right hand and pretended to be taking down notes with my other hand. However, during one of the rare seconds that I was awake, I noticed through the gaps in between the fingers of my mask-hand that Sir staring at me as if he was going to go for the kill. I stayed motionless for a few seconds hoping that he would resume teaching. Those were the longest seconds ever. But to no avail… I had to stand in the last row of the lecture theatre for the rest of the hour. At least it helped me keep awake for the rest of the lecture :D.

4. My Practice School-I at Accenture Pvt. Service Ltd:

The non-BITS fraternity may not be aware of the term ‘Practice School’. It is basically an internship program for the students where they are allotted an institute/company where they have work on some assigned project and are “evaluated” on the same. The day the PS results were out in our college, I went totally berserk to have gotten my dream PS. Little did I know that for the first one month of my internship, I would be absolutely jobless. However, at last I was finally assigned a manager and was told to meet him. I was pretty excited and eager to know what sort of a project I would be doing a crash course on (since only 20 days were left for the PS to end). He told us (me and my PS mate Bhaskar) to write an essay and submit it by the following day; and depending on the quality of our essay, he would decide whether we are worthy of getting work or not. Both of us passed the test with flying colours :P . This made me realize the importance of our Technical Report Writing classes (lol). On a serious note, I am extremely lucky to have my PS1 at Accenture since the 2 months I spent there taught me to be Patient despite being annoyed and frustrated due to joblessness, and this will surely help me face the recession times better and I am sure that if I can do a PS at Accenture, I can do anything!!!

5. The Embarrassing VISA Experience:

I had scheduled an interview for an F1 Visa at the Mumbai Consulate for 9.30 am on the 27^th of June 2009. I reached the venue about an hour and a half before time assuming that the security checks and all would take a lot of time. I was told to enter the premises at 8am itself. For the security check, we had to remove all metallic items we were carrying and place them on the table and then pass through the metal detector gate. As soon as I removed my belt, I realized that my trousers were all of a sudden too loose for me and would eventually fall down and I can only speculate the extent to which the Security at the Embassy would indict and punish me for this act of mine :D. To save myself from this, I ran through the metallic gate to save time and then literally snatched my items from the security guard and put the belt back on before it was too late. This surely raised some eyebrows and people were looking at me with weird expressions. But I managed to save my dignity :P. This made me forget all the pre-interview tension and then the interview was just a piece of cake. Candidates who are scheduled to appear for the Visa Interview feel that the interview is going to really tough and a test of nerves. Nobody thinks about how the security check would go :D. In my case, the interview was much simpler than the Security check. Moral of the story: value the sword and the needle equally :P