“Average”

“Average”         

This is an old story- around 11 years old. We had completed our graduation (B Tech) and I along with a friend had moved to Noida in search of a job. We were staying in a pigeonhole of a room in one of the posh residential area of ex- army personnel. These people had understood this new rising need of unemployed people like us for cheap accommodation, and had sublet their servants’ quarters to us. So basically, it was a very very small room which my friend and I were caged in. The days use to be very boring and mundane, and our only objective in life at that time was landing ourselves a job. Frustration was setting in slowly as days passed by. It was difficult to face the harsh realities of life when all we had done till then was enjoy ourselves in the protected environs of college. Money was definitely an issue, and the worst was travelling in public transport. Metro has not come up then, and DTC busses were a nightmare. Overall, life was not great and every failed interview was taking away a slice of our confidence slowly.

There were some people from our batch who had already found a job, and they were the revered lot. One of them was a guy S, who was always considered a rock star of our batch. He was technically very sound and possessed a very pleasing personality, and we all felt that he must have done something terribly right to get a job straight out of college.

One day, amidst the heat and humidity of July, T came up very excited to me to tell about a brilliant “about me” she had created to introduce herself in an upcoming job interview. She told me that just like S, she has also prepared a very good introduction for herself which she plans to use in the next job call. S- the rock star batchmate – had come up with this very cool sounding “about me” (which sounds terribly cheesy now, but remember this was like 11 years ago, and back then our definition of cool was something else altogether.:D). He would say- “ I can describe myself with three P’s”…and then he would go on using some fancy words like Persistent, Perseverance etc etc to describe himself (and of-course we were yet to come across the 4 P’s of marketing).  T told me very excitedly that she had created something similar for her, and started describing it in an animated voice as if she was in front of an interviewer- “I will say that…here are the three A’s which describe me..”A- Agility, A-Adaptability…”..and some other fancy A word..! “hai na..how does it sound??”..she said with a gleam in her eyes…I was very impressed…so impressed that mentally I started making a similar introduction for myself and was thinking of the letter which had the biggest adjectives to its credit. Only to be stopped by T to share …”You know what…I will also add one more A to it…”…”A-AVERAGE”…..she said in a matter of fact and serious tone. “That’s what describes me the best!!” I went into a total- “ha ha ha ha…” mode after this. For many days, infact even now…I laugh mentally when I think of this episode. The timing and the humor was so correct that it could straight away go to some movie script…:)

Infact on a serious note, this one sentence totally captured the essence of our life then. Aspiring for plum corporate jobs, projecting ourselves as the master of all trades, we were some really ordinary brained folks, who were out there competing with thousands like us to get a job and more importantly a direction for our suddenly uprooted lives. Thankfully this period of uncertainty lasted for only few months and both T and I got a job by winters. But I would never forget that phase of our lives…it was very special and taught us some critical life lessons.