How to hit your foot on the axe!

Life had never been busier before! In the last part of the last month(February), I’ve been so much involved in various activities that, its difficult to remember what exactly I’d been doing at this time of the day, yesterday. Traveling has never been so hectic & so frequent for me. After attending the GD/PI call from NIRMA on 23rd Feb at Kolkata, I had to get back to work for the XIMB interview that was to be held today. The Budget & Railway Budget were almost on the tip of my tongue. I hardly had searched for current affairs topics this diligently ever before! But all of this homework were thrown into the trash bin, nothing paid off as I went for my GD/PI today from 9am-11am at XIMB campus.

First of all we had the GD. 7 candidates, around 7 minutes, 3 panelists, 1 min thinking time, 1 minute wind up time( but the group never wrapped up ), Topic: Is nuclear collaboration with the US desirable for India
I did well to come in 3rd & gave a new point of international scrutiny into our fast breeder reactors not being acceptable. I talked for 3-4 times & tried to give a concluding sentence at last but wasn’t allowed to complete by others. We actually had no wind up at all…..maybe I rate myself as 2nd or 3rd.
We had been called as per our percentiles & I was the second in the group so my call for pi was also 2nd. The guy before me is a friend of mine since quite some time. His interview went well & being an electronics engineering student, he was asked electronics based questions & he did well. He was asked 4 GK ques out of which he answered 2 & missed on the other two!

My turn came & I went into the room. First they asked me to introduce myself in 1 minute. I was also asked to speak things not mentioned in my form. I felt a bit awkward for that 1 min limit yet I did well but missed about my family background. Thankfully one of the 3 panelists asked me to put light on my family & I did that. As I mentioned cricket in my hobbies at last, one of them asked who’s the present captain of England, I answered. Then they picked up my essay which I had written in the XAT exam & asked me my views on brain drain. I answered & maybe this was the place where I showed that I could communicate well, the initial jitters were done away with & I was speaking fluently now. I believe my views about the problem & possible solution was also acceptable & appreciated by them. Then came the academics part, they asked a few things like virtual memory & the process of swapping in a microprocessor(swap I tried to link with linux swap partition but he stuck to microprocessor & I finally accepted that I didn’t know much about it).I answered the virtual memory part well. He asked I more thing which I answered confidently but I don’t remember what. Then a question on registers of microprocessors & program counter, I said I couldn’t recollect. Oops! earlier I was asked the full form of ICICI bank & I couldn’t recollect that too. I kept saying that there’s some industrial & investment in there but I couldn’t really remember. Then he asked about Spywares & I tried to cash in. I told him the works done by a spyware & stuff & when asked about the anti-spywares, I named 2-3 as I already have a good number of spywares & antispywares(useless) in my pc. Maybe this was the last thing I answered confidently.
Then he jumped to GK, asked me, CM of Delhi-----I thought for 1 full min before I recollected & almost shouted Shiela Dikshit! Man was I relieved or not! Their wait of that 1 min paid off for me but this was just the appetizer! They asked me how many women CMs do we have in India, I couldn’t remember anymore! Some more anxious moments, they gave me hint who’s the CM of TN, I couldn’t remember & kept quite. Then they asked me who’s the Vice president of India, I said Bhairon Singh Shekawat, asked from where is he, I said Rajasthan,one of the three smart men(they always look smart when they are on the other side of that table!) tried to confuse me by saying that he’s from MP but I stood my ground, so he asked which party, I said BJP. What was he? A renowned politician of Rajasthan(What a precise answer! LOL). Then they asked me the CM of Rajasthan, & hell broke loose when I said(god knows why?????)---Om Prakash Chautala. They laughed as if I was performing in the Laughter Challenge. I smiled & said, “sorry sir I just got confused!” One of them asked me the capital of Gujrat, I said Ahmedabad & then changed it by saying Gandhinagar! A few more questions which I don’t even want to remember! A few I could answer & some with which I failed miserably.

Had I seen the CM list earlier then it would have saved me but who had known that they would hit me at this point & that too in this way! I surely knew that Vasundhara Raje Scindia & Jayalalitha were the CMs who could have meant much more than CMs to me but at that moment my memory deceived me badly. But that’s no excuse! The fact is that I’ve just kicked a golden opportunity at my feet with the maximum power possible!

My interview lasted for exactly 15 minutes as it did for all of us in our group. In the end they said the clichéd line “Suvra! it was very nice talking to you, you have done well & all the very best to you & please send the next man, ask him to stand outside and tell him to come in when the bell rings”.

So with this I am past my interview of a real premier management institute of India, but now I should just be happy that I got this far & really do away with the hopes of studying here because I’ve made a mess of it already! Pray for me guys! Only your good wishes can prove me wrong.