Clean shaven? Check
“smart casuals” as per Anuj Dutt’s mail? Check
Prepared for ‘Corporate Strategy’? Check.. But take the book along any case
Read Anuj’s “instruction” mail once again? Check
Alright… with that, I was ready to leave to the HLL Training Center at Worli Sea Face at 10a.m. on 15th April 2007, a beautiful Sunday morning.
Did a pit stop at the church, where I said a quick prayer and grabbed a bite and was on my way to Lower Parel in the Mumbai trains. It was a steam bath, both while buying tickets and sitting in the train… was just hoping that all that perfume and deodorant that I used in the morning is of some use.
On reaching ‘Gulita’, which was the HLL Learning Centre’s name, I run into the first summer trainee there.. Arun from ‘A’! Later on, I met Sourab from ‘B’! Then Vishwanath from ‘L’! Man, these guys don’t even say IIM before that, coz its anyway understood here! Almost everyone is from an IIM!!
Anyway, I was quite relieved to see the tension on everyone else’s faces. They all seemed as, if not more, lost and confused than me. Then I found out that we need to change our shirts and shoes into the one’s that were given from HLL and mine were lying in the room that was allotted to me, which was in another hotel, called Hiltop Hotel, a short distance from Gulita. So I walked up there, found my room and met my would-be roommate, Sairam. We were just getting acquainted, when he says ‘Man, they are just gonna feed us gas today.. well, everything about this stream is gas anyway!!’ and then he offers me a smoke. My kind of guy! I knew we’d get along instantly!!
After some more chit-chat, we made our way to the lobby, where we met some more fellow interns, and all of us headed to Gulita, where we had lunch. After lunch, we were asked to enter a particular hall, and I somehow landed first in line there. But Shreya from ‘B’ was next to me and I offered her to go in first. She got a garland and a laddoo from two pretty ladies in silk sarees! So sweet! Then I also went in wearing my garland and having my laddoo, when I noticed, my name was missing among the name tags that positioned around some well arranged décor pertaining to the theme of the summer course at HLL this year, Pathshala. I couldn’t even enjoy the ambience that was set up much, as I was anxious to find out what happened to my name tag. I find Anuj wandering around and asked him and he said he would look into it. Apparently, they thought I wouldn’t be coming today and so didn’t bother to arrange for my name tag and other material. I did indeed tell them that my exams would be starting and hence wouldn’t be able to make it until the 30th. But I intended to go for the first day and it turned out to be a communication snag.
The whole thing was so embarrassing! I was just thinking to myself that I have to do this everywhere! Just have to do something that makes me stand out, no matter how hard I try to remain inconspicuous.
Anyway, the embarrassment didn’t last too long, as Shikha, the resource coordinator next in line after Anuj, assisted me to a seat and Haremb, the guy from HLL I befriended during the placement process brought me my paraphernalia.
Soon got settled in and Anuj gave an opening talk and handed the mic over to the emcee for the day, who was a guy I actually knew quite well. His name was Rehman and he was one of the finalists for the MTV VJ Hunt. The reason I knew him was because he was in my round during the preliminary round of the VJ Hunt contest when it was held in The Club, Bangalore. Yea, I had also tried my hand at it, but Rehman was clearly the best entrant for that day and we all knew he had a pretty good chance of making it to the top. But don’t really know what happened to him after that, but I’ve seen him emcee quite a few shows in Bangalore and now he seems to be into this sort of outbound training programs for companies in Bombay.
Anyway, he came up, introduced himself and all of us to the itinerary for the day, broke us into 5 groups and got us working on the first task; choosing a leader and a name for the group. We had one person in our group who was not wearing the kurta HLL gave us, he was definitely looking different and I suggested we make him the captain. Then one of us came up with the name ‘Arjun’ for our group, because of the theme at HLL, ‘Pathshala’, and we thought this would go along with the theme.. Plus of course, make up some gas about how we, as a team, possess all those qualities that Arjun did! Man, these MBA’s can come up with anything!!
Next, we were asked to take 15 minutes to get to know everyone in our group and the captain makes a presentation for 1 minute on his group. Best presentation wins, and giving a good presentation is usually never a problem for any of us, and we are talking about some of the best in the country here.
Anyway, we got to work. Began introducing ourselves and stuff. But 15 minutes seemed just too long, because in just 10 minutes, we were completely out of stuff to talk about. I was just looking around at the other groups and there was such frenetic activity in all of them. One group didn’t even sit down during the entire process. I was thinking to myself that I have ended up in the most boring group of the lot! Besides, there was not a single person I befriended till this point who was there in my group. So it was one more fresh start of trying to remember faces and names!!
Anyway, our 15 minutes were up and we were asked to come and give our first presentation. I had a strong feeling Rehman would ask us to go first, as it was pretty clear that we had no clue what to do. Vishwanath, our captain made a presentation like a typical MBA. Extremely good articulation, but no content! I did sort of expect that, and with the rest of the teams following doing a brilliant job, I only felt worse about being in this group. Little did I know how things were going to change as the day proceeded...
Next, Rehman called one representative from each group to come up and he played songs and asked them to dance impromptu. These were exactly the kind of things I am supremely uncomfortable with, and it was treat to watch the 5 people up on stage, dancing without a care in the world and so full of confidence. Was just thinking to myself that this is what makes MBA’s different from the rest. There are very few things that they really can’t do!
Our next task was to go outside and play tug-of-war. We were to choose 4 guys and 1 girl, and my team conveniently ignored me. I don’t blame them, my role in physical games have always been to cheer from the sidelines, so decided to do just that. With the shrillest whistle and the loudest screams, I made sure my team got the best encouragement of everyone else, and we did pretty well, beating every other team, except one, and ending up in second position.
The next task was to tie a turban on the prettiest lady of each group. We had only one lady in our group, so a chance for a beauty contest was clearly ruled out. My team was also making such a fuss about the fact that we only ended up with one girl, that Sourav from our group was suggesting we rename ourselves to ‘Definitely Male’. Even Parul, the girl in our group, didn’t seem to mind the name change. But anyway, we stuck around with Arjun itself.
Well, we tied a turban on Parul and we were the first to finish and our turban clearly looked the neatest of the lot. But since the criteria was creativity, there was one turban that made this girl look like a sunflower at a Halloween party, and she was given the first prize just for the “creativity”. I didn’t know creativity went hand in hand with ugly! But anyway, we just had to settle with second prize, again.
The next game was to collect flowers from a bag and run them through a needle and thread given to us to make a garland and the longest garland wins. I did my best to grab as many flowers from the bag I could, but we didn’t require more that half of it, as we ran out of time before we could run them through the needle. And during the measurement of the longest garland, with 20 flowers in ours, we came in second for the third time in a row.
Next we had a Rangoli contest. We went into another room, where colours were kept ready for us, and when we were given the go, my creative mind began its routine, bouncing off ideas from what the others were hollering. “We could make an arrow… the leaf-like HLL symbol could become the arrow-head… we could use the colours yellow and red which were the colours of the theme ‘Pathshala’ for the base of the arrow… the bow would be the Unilever symbol… and together, we have a bow and arrow… significant of ‘Arun’…” brilliant!!
The team got to work. We worked like a well oiled machine. I was beginning to get so proud of the way we were functioning. Bouncing off ideas, each person fitting into a particular role, everyone doing their bit and ultimately, our Rangoli turned out to be one of the better one’s on display.
Once we got back to the lobby, we were just backtracking on the events of the day, and figured we’ve fared marginally well in all the events. Coming second in all of them, and though the ‘Rangoli’ results were not out yet, we figured we should be in the top two. So all we really required was a ‘win’ to become the best team.
Then came the final event, we were asked to hold hands and form a circle with our team facing each other, and continuing to hold hands in the same way, we should face outwards. The moment he said it, I figured how we should do it. I tried explaining it to the group, some of them just about got it, but most had no idea. I just told them to trust me as I know what I was doing and follow my lead. I was just so glad I got the support from my team, because when we were given the go, our team followed what I was doing and we completed the task before the rest could even figure out what was going on. We received a huge applause from everyone and Rehman and Anuj asked us to do it once again for the benefit of the rest and we did it once more and it looked beautiful. We were all so excited, high fives and high tens and everyone patting my back for coming up with the idea.
Then we walked back to the main audi where we were initially seated and while climbing up the stairs, our group was chanting some kind of ‘champion’ slogans and the camaraderie between us was just superb. Suddenly, our team seemed to be the best of the lot. What a shift from my initial reaction to it!
Once in the audi, Rehman tallied the scores and announced the second prize winners to be the ‘one-ders’ and the moment he said that, Vishwanath looks back at me with a smile. I knew what the smile meant and was almost halfway up my seat to pick up the award for first prize. When Rehman did announce our name, we all got up hooting and shouting and it was such a good moment for all of us. I was so proud of myself and the whole team.
Following this, we had some presentations on the entire Summer program and with that, the session ended. I took some phone numbers of people that I planned to keep in touch with as I would be joining in much later. Thereafter I went to Hiltop Hotel to pick my stuff, chatted with Sairam about the days events, our project and girls over another smoke. Finally, took a cab to the train station with Karan.
Was sitting in the train and messaging some people telling them about my day, and Vikas, my boss in college, replied asking me to make him proud by converting this to a PPO and that he was confident I would. Felt so good to hear that, especially when I still keep hearing shite from certain people about me being here! PPO or not, I just want to do my best. Anyway, just closed my eyes and rest my head on the seat and kept replaying the entire day and was thinking to myself this was one of the most mentally and physically exhausting days I’ve had in a while and I loved every bit of it…
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