My college hostel, where I lived for 5 years, was very close to the Coimbatore Aerodrome. Every Sunday after our lunch we friends used to go the airport to see the kind of people who used to come down. If luck favoured us we used to get blessed by the holy darshan of few celebrities. We happened to see the shooting of Ishq & Raja Hindustani fortunately. Not that I had not gone by plane before that; my father had taken us a couple of times - thanks to MTNL & their copper wires.
I had this dream of being sponsored by someone or some company for my flight trip. And it came true. I had quit Expressindia in 2000 and had moved to Chennai on a new assignment, and I got a mail from Yahoo.co.in if I would like to join them. It was only 3 months that I had joined my new company, and it wasn’t a good idea to quit even before the induction was over. But then nothing stopped me from attending the interview when they said they would be sponsoring my air tickets!!
I landed in Mumbai by Jet Airways after 1 hour of fantasy-filled thoughts, which starred those pretty airhostesses inside the flight.
The interview was at the Oberoi’s lounge, and I was there on time. I never knew an American would interview me. I always found their accent beyond my understanding, and I was not sure where a face-to-face conversation would lead me. That is one of the reasons I don’t watch English movies, which doesn’t have subtitles.
He called me and I handed over my resume and also the copies of magazine, which my sister and me had published for Spencer Plaza, number 1 shopping complex in Chennai.
He started off the interview with the same question I hate to answer – tell me something about yourself! That question makes my mind blank, and I always fail to understand where to start from - my schooling days or my PREKG days or my college days or my present job or my sexual fantasies or the girls I loved or my aim of setting up an ashram or my thoughts about uselessness of life!
To save the time I started off with my schooling days. I found the interviewer looking at few sexy babes who were wandering around while I was putting my complete effort on making him understand about my past, present and future. I was kind of pissed off. I stopped mid-way. He looked at me again, and said continue. I told him I cannot talk if you don’t look into EYES! He was taken aback and he apologized.
From then the conversation went on smoothly. He asked me to write a piece/article about the future of Internet in India, when I reach Chennai and send it across. I did the same. It is 4 years now, and I am still expecting a reply from him. Sometimes I feel I should not have bothered to disturb him when he was engrossed in an interesting bird watching episode!
Please Note – It is ok if you spend few 100s more, but try traveling by Jet Airways and not Indian Airlines. Indian Airlines is known for its largeness - the flight, the seats, and even the airhostesses?!!! Hope you got what I am trying to imply. I came back by Indian Airlines! :(