“Son, you are too young to understand”
That was what my father told me one sunny morning in 2009. We are standing in front of our new HIG plot in Patuli, Kolkata and construction is about to start on our new home. 13-year-old me just cannot figure out why there are yellow colored bags of ‘Ultra Tech Cement’ all over the place. “Dad, why are these funny colored bags here?” I ask. My father smiles “Son, you’re too young to understand”
Its 2010.I’m in the Bal Bhavan, New Delhi, for a national science workshop. It’s a chilly night. Me and a few of my friends are sitting in the mess hall. Tomorrow is Samrat’s birthday and he wants to call his mom to ask for birthday goodies. He dials the number on his Samsung phone. The call doesn’t connect. He tries again, no use. He’s crestfallen. Dual sim phones weren’t a thing back then. Seeing him morose, I hand him my Nokia 1110 which my father had given me a few days back with an Idea Sim in it. The call connects. Samrat, now one of my best buddies, hasn’t forgotten that phone call-he’d managed to convince his mom to get him a bike he adores to this day.
Fast forward a year. My first professional interview-for the Preliminary English Test (PET)-is in a week. My father takes me to a store in Raja SC Mullick Road called ‘Peter England’. “That’s a funny name” I tell myself. Again, 15-year-old me just cannot figure out why, when there are Amitabh Bachchan endorsed clothing brands, we’ve come here. “Dad, why are we in this English store?” My father smiles. “Son, you’re too young to understand”
Its 2018. I’m off to leave my home city for the first time for my first job in Mumbai. As I’m packing, in a retrospective mood, I open my cupboard. An undersized formal white shirt with ‘Peter England’ below the collar falls out. My mind goes back 7 years. I remember how I was awarded a ‘High Distinction’ in my PET.
There’s an old Nokia and an IDEA sim-case beside the PET certificate. I remember Samrat’s overjoyed look when his mother promised him a bike that night.
I close my cupboard. Mrs. Chowdhury, our neighbour, is in a heated argument with her builder over how her, like so many of our neighbors’ , 4-year-old house has developed multiple cracks since the Metro line construction started in the land adjacent to ours. I look around our house. Solid, with not a single crack. I now understand why my father had bought those funny yellow bags of Ultra Tech.
I also understand why he gave me an IDEA sim and bought me that Peter England Shirt all those years ago.
As I come down the stairs to have my final dinner before I leave for Mumbai, my father is on his laptop getting ready to transfer money to his new mutual fund scheme. I look at the screen. It says “Aditya Birla Sun Life”.
My father turns around. This time, I smile.
“Son, you are too young…”
“Dad, I understand”
Part B - Don’t count the cost
“In life, it is not about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you get hit and keep moving forward”
I used to treat quotes as fiction- lines that embellish a movie or a story; nothing more. That was up until September 2017.
I was in my final year of engineering and yes, campus placements had just begun.
The first company to come visit our lush green campus was PWC. It was Day 0 – the coveted Day 0 when the best of the lot get selected. I was determined to make it to that lot. I checked every box – formals, shoes, a haircut, extensive research on the company and the role they were offering. I was thorough.
Come Day 0, everything was going well – I’d aced the written test and the first round of interviews went great. I was elated, sure I’d make the cut.
However, after an hour of waiting, the interviewees for the 2nd round were announced. To my utter dismay, I wasn’t in that list.
The following few days went by in a trance – I just couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong, especially when I’d topped the written test and the interviewer had explicitly praised me in my interview. That was the first major rejection id suffered in my life – the one that really hit. Hard.
I wasn’t allowed to sulk for too long as the next company to visit us – HSBC – was there in a few days. I prepared wholeheartedly for this one – even better than the last one. A superb GD and PI later, I again found myself out of the final shortlist.
This one left me heartbroken. Two of my best efforts had fallen short. For someone who’s stayed ahead of the curve for most of his life, I was crestfallen. I didn’t eat and skipped college for days.
During those days , I used to lock myself and lie in my bed staring at the ceiling or watching something on my computer. One such day, I happened to watch Rocky Balboa and that’s when I came across the one quote that hit me equally hard -
“In life, it is not about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you get hit and keep moving forward”
I sat up and took account of my life. Id faced what? 2 rejections? That’s it?
Suddenly the number seemed too small to have elicited such a response from me. I checked my placement portal – in my self-imposed state of guilt, Id missed interviews for L&T and 2 other companies. I might have taken two hits, but Id also missed 3 rounds in the ring.
I left the house and bought myself a notebook. From that day forward, I decided to take every hit that was bound to come and learn from it.
I didn’t miss a single interview thereafter. What followed was months and months of rejections but this time, my mindset had changed – I noted down every pain point I had in every interview in my notebook and learnt from it. 8 months and more than a dozen failed interviews later, during my very FINAL interview at OTIS , something clicked – every scribbled note, failed GD, miserable PI , broken expectation and shattered dream- it all came together. Every question in the interview seemed like a moment back in time- moments id been through. Experience kicked in and that was it - I’d made I made it to their graduate associate program. I remember 24th April 2018 – id shed tears of joy that day.
Looking back, the fact that Id faced close to two dozen interviews to get through on the very last day seems extremely scary but there was one thing that kept me going- I’d stopped counting the cost. If I’d looked back then and counted the cost- my failures – I might’ve gotten scared, I might’ve stopped. I’ve had far worse rejections since then – some painfully personal, but I’ve learned that at some point in your life, you’ve just got to stop counting – do as many as it takes to get where you want to go.
Maxime constituta vincit
(The most determined, wins)