Today
as I sit in the Varanasi training room after more than 1 year, I feel
nostalgic. Having joined Mastek Ltd on 13-June-2012, I was still in training around
July 2012. Now, I sit on the same place
and I reminisce about the time I spent exactly a year back. ‘Bunch of monkeys’,
that’s what our manager used to call us. Fresh out of college we used to
jump about the entire training room having fun and doing antics. There was
never peace and quiet time in the room. Out of nowhere a person used to start
playing songs on his/her mobile and people used to start singing along. I was a
step ahead. I even used to dance. We had whistlers in our batch namely Mandar
and Nikhil (they were the best ones). And yeah you can count me in too (A
little astonishing since I am a girl!).
Well, this was not the only fun we had. We had
our 'antakshiri' sessions and our eating sessions too. Girls, namely Meenu,
Vyoma, Leena,etc used to open their lunch boxes and we all used to swoop on the
delicious eateries that they used to bring. We used to check again and again if
the training room had any cameras (just so that we never got caught doing so
much ‘masti’). Our soft skills sessions were exemplary.
We realized later we should not divulge too many details of our mad
fun to the trainer! Apart from this, for me, training period also revives the
memory of my best friend. Well, her name is Zeba too. Well, just as the name
matches, our personality and thinking matched too. But she was a step ahead of
me. She knew how to steal hearts. She used to make gulab-jamuns for the
entire batch and now that Ramadhan is going on I also remember the
iftar party we hosted last year thanks to my bf ZEBA!!
Our batch was naive and frivolous. We never used
to take anything seriously (apart from a few). The tension of evaluation also
could never take away our ‘masti’. We didn't know about corporate
ethics and to think of it now I am glad we didn't We enjoyed the 3
months of our training period without the burden of behaving in a particular
way, eating, talking etc etc in a particular manner. Corporate politics was not
known to us and coming on Saturdays was
still fun. That was the only time during the entire period at Mastek I felt I
was paid appropriately for the job I did! I feel ghastly underpaid
now.
I decided to pen this down because the silence in the very same room is getting
hard to bear. Although I have had phenomenal growth and Mastek has really been
kind to me, I still feel the best duration of my stay at Mastek was the
L&D period. I made some good relations and I also made some bad ones. I
connected awesomely with a few and the others I hardly knew. I know Mandar, I
irritated you ‘hadh bahar’ and Nikhil, I don’t think you will ever have such an
annoying partner ever in your life. Vyoma I loved your 'khakras and
fafda’s' and the rest ,I enjoyed all our endless banters.
Manish was one of the best trainers anyone could ever have and Joel, Ha ha!! I
still remember his 'dhamkis'!!. The carrom period, I doubt anyone of us can
forget. I know I played the worst but Manali came close next. Our
customized cakes were awesome (Gotta thank Dukhande for that). And yeah Ruman,
our Admin, my activa ride is still pending!! Vinod Muda, our java
specialist, I loved your TekTalk presentation and I am glad you are doing so
well. Since I just lost contact I am not sure as to how all of you are
doing. I know every one of you are ‘killer’ busy with work and are doing
awesomely well too. I doubt if everyone even has the time to go through my
random thoughts. Therefore, I am not stretching it too much. But I must add,
our ‘couple-making’ sessions were too funny! Mandar was the scapegoat (getting
paired with girls as well as boys). Now, times have changed drastically, the
same room which never experienced solitude has pin drop silence. No
one I used to know is around me any longer. Although I am not
complaining, I will always cherish the memories and the time I spent with all
of you guys!!
