The Perils of a Summer Job - An Introduction

Well I am updating my blog after a long longggggggggg time. So sorry to all the avid readers, but let me assure you that this post is going to be worth the read.

This post is about my summer job and the perils associated with it.

I have got my summer job at a firm in Belapur (for the uninitiated it is supposedly on the outskirts of Mumbai). The moment I had got this job I knew I was in for a life changing drama. Unfortunately I came to realize that the drama would be a traumatic one rather than a pleasing one.

On the first day itself I realized the importance of being on time. There is a single train from Andheri to Belapur at 7:40 a.m. This is the only train by which you can reach office on time. As Indians we are always used to reaching late and beleive me I am a true Indian when it come to reaching late. But the very fact that if I miss the train I will have to change a million trains to reach Belapur was motivation enough for me to reach the station on time.

The train I think is the most hated thing amongst the people standing on the platform. Just the sight of it makes them break into a war cry. The first day when people broke into the war cry I thought there was a huge fight somewhere only to later realize that it was a mere daily ritual that occured at the sight of the train. As soon as the train stopped everyone tried to pounce on it as if it were more beautiful than Aishwarya Rai!

Once inside the train I got to know another dark side of humans. The art of chemical warfare! Beleive me instead of Iraq, UN should be looking inside the Indian railways for chemical weapons as you can smell the most obnoxious odours in the trains. Especially the summer season brings out the true fragrance of human body. The sight of Belapur was truly amazing. I have never seen such greenery and mountains near Mumbai in my life (which confirmed my feelings that Belapur is some distant village in which my office was located). The walk to the office was pleasing with great scenery, looking at so many mountains I started wondering if I would have to climb one in order to reach offcie. Luckily I did not have to.

The office building was pristine. It was the most amazing site I have ever seen. I used to think only the Indian government offices used to be dillapidated, but this building can easily give any government office a run for its money. It was a tribute to the constructor of the building that inspite of such severe damage the building was still standing. As luck would have it the lift also was so well maintained that the 5th floor button (the floor on which the office was located) was not working. But we were a committed and optimistic bunch and so we marched onto the 5th floor. The site on the floor was amazing. All we could see were 4 doors. First one was unnamed, second one was for some water pumps company, third one was some unheard of firm and the last one was an empty room with a few chairs. Luckily for us a lost soul told us that the unnamed door was the office of our firm. God bless him else we would have never found it.

The empty room with chairs turned out to be our training room. And what a training week it was going to be.

Stay tuned more on the training week........