The Dreaming Tree

I could see the end so clearly, before the beginning. Lonely again with my heavy olive rucksack and a broken spirit, staring at the airport doors. Just like it was beginning. I stared blankly at the permuting arrival lounge information board. The green lights next to every flight lit up, except one. People in ties, suits, shorts stormed out of the glass doors. All looking for a familiar face.

In a time when anyone would have a thumping heart and moist palms, I was morose. And as if the overwhelming sense of precognition that showed me the end wasn't enough, my iPod began a song I otherwise loved.

I could see everything. How we'd walk in through the same gate, through the same half built bridge, and dump our bags in front of the cafe. Sit together, have a sip. And before I could blink it would be time to go.

Through the glass doors again, past the burly guards. And I peered through the glass, slowly the sorrow dawning. The misty glass blurring my last glimpses. A lump in my throat, no crying of course, grown men don't cry. What if she turned back to see me?

In my quest for employment I chanced upon 14 prospective employers who innocently rejected me in the written test.
But there are very few souls as lucky as yours truly. There are people who have been through multiple long, torturous and most unfortunately failed interviews. That, and my interviews, cumulatively prove just one thing, interviewers depend a LOT on the gut feeling.

It is tough to accept the fact that humans, in the form of interviewers or any other, may like or dislike WITHOUT reason. Sometimes you just can't form a good impression of something. Like potato chips in a box. I find that really stupid. Who eats potato chips out of a box? and why? You need to be either extremely dumb or American. But look around now, everyone loves potato chips in a box, and no one knows why.

Interviewers think very similarly, being evolved mammals like us. Of course the inevitable question is- Why? Why was XYZ rejected?

And for a period of time, the length depends on the IQ of the interviewer or how much his company pays him, he is puzzled. He finds no reason, and of course he can tell the man who heads our placement operations that he just disliked the candidate. and thence continues the long, winding and recursive process of interview, lies and fabrication.

First our college lies to them.
Then they give us a presentation full of deceit, including efforts by one of the world's leading electronic chip manufacturers to prove that their "Dosti Cell" helps cure loneliness.
Then we tell them a truck load of bullshit in the interviews and make American Universities seem as stupid as American Presidents. We also stop short of declaring a fatwa on the GRE.
Then they lie to the college about why they rejected so many.

These of course form the main layers of deceit. Their sublayer, processes and sub-processes have been avoided to conserve the lucidity of the text.

Of course there are some really creative employers and in their excuses we find some traits in their personality exposed.

Here are some REAL excuses.

1. He salivated from his left side.
Everybody knows that salivating from your right side is standard business protocol. Although salivators are generally avoided since most of the world leaders have salivaphobia. Also salivators dirty keyboards and microphones.

2. The Middle Earth was unhappy.
Nothing left to say. Tolkien fan I presume.

3. He doesn't even know that a Bangalore Electrical Engineering firm has a branch office in the Breeze Hotel on the ground floor.
My favourite because the interviewer pointed his finger at me and said it as if branding me a heretic. I don't think winking and sticking my tongue helped, but the HR panel found it funny.

4. He wore a black tie.
What a fool! All IT companies have 2 standard advisors, the how to save Income Tax money people and Linda Goodman. And black ties are thrice as unlucky as two black cats walking anti parallely across the street. Stupid Engineer.

5. I don't think you are suitable for this profile(NOT the other way round).
Firstly, I sat for the company because I want the profile.
Secondly, why the fuck did you shortlist my CV?

There are so many more still to be documented that I could make another blog out of it.
Anyway, bottom line is placements more often then not are lotteries. You can do anything without luck, apart from trip of course.