2 years down the line.

I received this mail from the proactive HR department of my company exemplifying that what significant change I have made to 40 thousand collogues of mine. As they say 'HCL have not been the same’.
What a day it was, 17th April 2006. Ten people were joining HCL Tech from my college, seven were joining NCR offices, Kedar was suppose to Chennai office so his induction was in Chennai ,Manish and Saritha joined HCL Comnet in Noida and they had separate and a rigorous induction program. The seven of us: Pradeep, Saurabh Chhawchharia(Chocho), Gaurav, Pragnya, Sandeep(Sandy), myself and Bhusan arrived a day prior to joining at the HCL guest house near Kapashehera Border, Gurgaon-Delhi border. We knew that HCL was inducting 'Management Trainees' in small batches and I think all anticipated that there will be students from other colleges joining with us. Very soon we realized that few people from IIIT Pune (I2IT) have already joined along with a girl from SITM, Pune, Manisha Maheswari. After shaking hands, getting to know each other and catching up with classmates, I think we were all excited about the next day, the day we will be induced.
We all had decided that best will be to take a walk from guest house to office as the building was hardly a kilometer away. So the next morning, most of us got up pretty early, I couldn't sleep the entire night partly because of the Air-condtioner and mostly because of anxiety. So all of us got dressed in our brand new formals, Girls in Salwar Kamiz, most of were confused whether to wear a tie or not and finally we all decided to drop it, started our walk towards the HCL building. Around 8:30 we all started, the moment we stepped out of Surya Vihar(the society where guest house was located), something was awaiting to surprise all of us, hundreds and thousands of people were on the road marching in the same directions, with lunch boxes in their hands, few were on bicycles… its seemed like a political rally. Gaurav, who is from Delhi, told us that they are all factory workers. I still couldn't believe my eyes, people people every where... we soon joined them. Fascinated by the crowd, Sandy could stop taking pictures of all us in the human flood from him mobile phone. We all reached Manak exactly at 9Am, completed the formalities and were given temporary ID cards. The attendant at the front desk guided us all a big conference and asked us to wait for Rashi kaushik, the HR. The building was beautiful, much better than its average exterior. We all sat around the round conference table SCITians on one side, I2ITian on the other and Manisha preferred to sit with I2IT guys directly opposite to chocho. I think that was the moment when his heart skipped few beats... perhaps she was the one. I couldn't stop staring at Anurag Barwalia, a wiered looking guy, with a long tika on his forehead and often smiled to show his chutki stained teeth. Who knew that me and Barwalia are going to be working for the same business unit and will also become room partners and good friends. Barwalia turned out to be a really simple, hardworking guy with confused ambitions. Then there was Goppu, a big man with a big heart, we all remember his dance with Rashi Kaushik on the final day of our induction.
Rashi walked in, she was big fat lady with a school teacher like attitude. Very quickly she introduced herself and distributed booklets which contained schedule of all presentation that we have to go through in next 5 day. There were around 25 ppts from various BUs heads, quality folks, testing teams, SBU heads, HR representatives, Admin, finance and finally with our LOB head, the Corporate VP, Rajiv Swarup. The first session was by sanjiv jain, the HR head, he introduced us to HCL and its glorious history. In the middle session a very pretty girl walked in, Charu Murali from Birla Institute of management. As all heads turned towards, we came to know that she was supposed to join in Bangalore and got herself transferred because of some reasons, but finally a pretty face in the crowd. Next, we had a session with BAG(business acquisition head) head, Shiva kumar kollunguta, a very impressive gentleman. During his presentations he asked quiz questions and distributed KitKat for right answers. Charu won a couple...beauty with few brains. As we went ahead day by day with the boring presentation, we came to know that it’s going to be an interesting period. I was thoroughly confused, I was from relatively technical background and now I had to wear a hard core MBA hat, Chocho shared my agony, I remember it took me months to convince myself that I will be doing something different. Later I realized that my technical background was of a great help in the days to come.
As the sessions continued, on the second day the most impressive presentation was from Sidharth chowdhary, the head of retail business unit. He very clearly told us that he is going to select one of us to work with him. Retail boom was rumored to be the next big thing in India after IT and Laloo Prasad yadav and all were hoping to get into it. After his presentation he asked us to introduce ourselves and tell what our aspirations are. When my turn came, my confusion came out very clearly in the short speech I made. I had no idea what was expected out of me, all my days in Symbi I have done coding in Java and hated my colleagues in Business Management and Systems for being superficial. I told him that I wanted to be in technology and domain really doesn’t matter as I had no idea about retail. Very soon I realized that I had screwed it. Manisha maheshwari went on and on to explain her great project that she had done for Tatas and had great exp. In retail, but was left speechless when Sidharth asked her some basic questions. Pradeep was chosen to work with Sidharth, perhaps because of his clarity thinking.
On Thursday we were told that the BUs will be announced on Friday and before we move on to our respective units we all have to showcase our talents. Rashi was furious about our lack of participation in the PPTs and told us to keep her izzat on Friday eve in front of HCL’s senior management. We had a single night to prepare ourselves. After great amount of discussion we decided that we will perform a skit ‘dropti ka swamywar’ , Manisha voluntarily offered her dance performance on ‘paan banaras wala’, Charu was suppose to sing and the best item was a dance performance by sandy, chocho, Goppu and gaurav on ‘Jungle main bole koyal’ from the movie Taal. It was great Idea by Goppu where they performed an expressionless action dance… which is kind of indescribable. The show was a great hit, except Manisha’s performance where we all ran away faking calls on our mobile, but we all appreciated her courage.
As BUs were announced we came to know that Sandy and Pragnya and most I2IT folks will have to leave for Chennai. Sandy and Pragnya left HCL as year later to join Satyam and Infy respectively. Chocho and Manisha joined the MPE BU, what could have been a good friendship turned into an ugly animosity as chocho realized that she is nowhere near to what he has thought. Ever since he has joined, Chocho is having a dream run and is the only one in our bach to opt for project management profile while. Me, Charu, Anurag and Deepti joined the DSG mega account , after six months of doing nothing we moved out to different verticals I went ECMP, Anurag remained In DSG for a while later resigned because of frustration, Charu went to e-learning has been doing really well. Deepti went to Chennai to join logistics. Gaurav and Bhushan joined Government vertical, they are now in EEG and retail resp. because of lack opportunity in the domain.
2 Year hence, I think I have finally been able to gain clarity in my vision, ambition and aspirations. It was really tough to do things you have never done when people expected you to be best at it. But finally none of us have ‘arrived’ but we all know where we have to go from here.