Placement Guide for freshers

This is a short guide I have prepared for all the people appearing in placements, it’s strictly based on my own experience and what I have heard and seen during placement procedure. I don’t claim it’s 100% correct but I am just sharing my experience and perspective and I hope it would help many.

First of all, we have to analyse any placement procedure from the company’s point of view. They need to hire people. Either they would recruit a lot or recruit very less, either they would recruit according to capabilities of candidates or they will have a fixed number in their mind and accordingly they would recruit. All in all, there are lots of factors involved and you have to balance your performance somehow so that you can clear the process. I would try to draw a general picture here and then point out specific difference between mass recruiters who hire in bulk and normal recruiters who hire less people.

   1)  Written Test

The first phase in most of the campus recruitments is a written test and it’s a very crucial phase because many capable people fail to clear it. It may be entirely an aptitude test or may be a mixture of aptitude and technical. Some test are adaptive and some of them have sectional cut off. Let us look at all the general sections:

 a)   Quant: It comprises the basis mathematics that we all learn till 10^th class. Typical topics are linear equation, time and distance, speed, geometry, permutation and combination, statistics, functions etc. It’s better to revise all the formulas though by instinct you can attempt most of the questions as they are easy and do not require much calculation. Still, practice will give you confidence to attempt most questions in case there is negative marking. Try to attempt as much as you can and hunt for easy questions which are direct formula based. It’s a scoring section as everyone has at least 12 years of exposure to basic mathematics and all are comfortable in it. It’s not much tricky like other sections and mostly direct questions are asked.

 b)   VA: Verbal ability is not only vocab. It covers the entire English section. So let us not call it VA, let us call it English ability section. You might be asked vocabulary based question like synonym, antonym, and pattern based questions. There might be para jumbles, or RCs. The important point here is, you can’t mug English and can’t prepare for it in 10 days. You have to learn to develop an instinct for it and have faith on your instinct. One should try learning English in the most unorthodox ways and the best way is to get exposed to it as much as you can. Watch SITCOMS, MOVIES with subtitle on and watch them closely, listen to commentaries and news, read novels and newspaper, read as much English as you can and you would not require any dedicated preparation. Still, for the sake of gaining confidence, you might learn some basic grammar rules and their exceptions, mug up a few general words and practice some question to get a feel of how to attempt the section.

  c)   LR: LR has  most interesting questions and some people are naturally good at reasoning so they won’t require any special preparation for it. All you need is to focus on the problem as you don’t need to learn any formulae for it. It just requires brain, but as we say again, practice would make you comfortable while attempting this section so better try a few before the actual test.

  d)   DI: There might be a separate section for DI or not, it’s an easy section. You need to study a chart or table or some other structure and answer accordingly. If your calculation speed is fast, then you can collect lots of marks in this section and it’s a fairly easy one.

  e)  Technical: Technical section may contains variety of question like output of C/C++/JAVA program, or finding errors in a program, or theoretical question. It might have question from algorithms or subjects like network/OS/Software engineering. The point is, you can’t learn whole 4 years of your engineering in a week so better you take a gist of all the subjects instead of deeply studying everything. It’s better to master one or two subjects and be thorough with the basics of other subjects so that it might help you in interviews too. Even if you do not know a language or a topic, still same rules and concepts are applicable in technical and by careful analysis and some presence of mind you can eliminate few choices and make a very good calculated guess.

General rule for clearing any written test would be proper time management. As there are many other rounds afterwards, so mostly major chunk of people are able to clear the written and they are designed in the same way at least for mass recruiters. So the important thing would be to attempt wisely all the section, attempt at least few questions from everyone for a balanced performance, don’t take anything on ego and be confident. It’s always better to have a little practice beforehand and speed and accuracy should be balanced properly.

    2) Group Discussions: There may or may not be a GD. It varies from company to company. Still, there is no such thing like only those who are brilliant speakers can clear this round, they certainly have an edge, but there are various other factors. So one should never be under confident about this round.  In a GD, listening is as important as speaking. If you have no clue about the topic given, you can just listen to what others are saying, form some perspective and valid points and then speak in the end. If you are not able to speak a single line in a GD, still some co-coordinators give such person chance to speak and in that case if you listened carefully you can give an impressive performance. It’s always better to be short and concise and more importantly say only relevant things, don’t say anything for the sake of speaking else it would do more harm than benefit. It’s always better to know the current affairs and some sensitive topics that are raised more and often and are always debatable still you should be prepared to speak on anything that you are not even aware of.  You can practice in groups for it or practice alone at home to get more comfortable.

    3) Case Studies/ Video Analysis/Others:  Generally mass recruiters do not have this round. Only a few companies have such round. They will give you a case study and ask certain questions from it or they would show you a video. They are interested in the way you can ‘infer’ from things. It’s a game of presence of mind and how well you can present your thoughts and ideas you have just formed. It’s better to go on your instinct and trust on your capabilities for such round instead of giving too much thoughts and getting confused and under confident.

   4)  Interviews: Interviews are the most feared, misunderstood, overestimated rounds. As they are usually the last phase so they are very crucial and it always involved lots of uncertainties, an environment which can make you uncomfortable and nervous, a single mistake and a heavy fine for it. There is no abc for cracking interviews, as it has lots of variables in the equations, still what matters is giving your best performance and having the mental satisfaction that you did the best you could. Let us first have a brief discussion on resume first,

a)   RESUME: Resume is another thing people stresses a lot, thinks a lot, consults a lot and are always confused whether they had the best one or not. In short, resume is like a menu card and instead of setting a general menu card, it’s beneficial to know beforehand what the customer wants to eat and only present those contents. Resumes should vary according to different companies and so should your mindset when you appear in an interview. Let us look at all the section that must be included:

General Information: The upper side of resume contains your general information like your name, contact number, email etc.

Objective: Don’t copy your objective from someone and don’t try to make it too much fancy and complicated, just look at the role you are applying for and accordingly write a simple statement that you can justify keeping in mind your capabilities. Objective should be written with the perspective what companies want in you rather than what you want in your life.

Academic Qualification: Just write that in tabular form in a presentable manner.

Skills: Usually comprises technical skills or depend on the company you are applying for, prioritize according to that order and only write those skills in which you are really skilled instead of the casual flamboyancy we usual do, because really deep questions might be ask from the skills section.

Training: You can write about any professional training you have attended and have a certificate of proof for it.

Projects: Write the name of the project first, then explain it in details if it is for a technical company or in short if for other company and write all the relevant technologies use. Try to write a content that tells the working of project in a neat way. This is a major point in most interviews so be very careful about this.

Seminars Attended: If you have certificates, you can write it also, rarely any questions are asked from it and you are expected to know the gist of the seminar you attended and relevant questions from it.

Achievements: Usually we write achievements after 9^th class and usually those for which we have certificates, they may include both the academic and extracurricular ones.

Extra Curricular: If you are getting short in technical stuff, extracurricular might save you, if you have a diversified profile then you can turn up a bad interview into a good one by explaining all the extracurricular activities you participated and your experience/ learning from them.

Hobbies/Strength: They are optional and if you have space you may put it. They are asked sometimes and you may be able to give some very impressive answers during cross questioning.

NOTE:  Take the printout of the resume on bond papers and always keep at least 3 or 4 extra copies of it because your interviewers might ask you for extra copy.

b)   FOLDER: Your folder is the complete package for you. It should contain your resume, all the mark sheets, certificates and various proofs. It should be well organized, neat and clean and all the things must be in proper order. Generally, you do not put your folder on table, you keep it in your hand and hand it over to the interviewers only if you are asked to do so.

Interviews are an assessment of a person from various different angles. You can google it out on internet the general question asked but do not go by the answers given in it. Interviewers are not fool and you can’t make them, don’t give the usual answers like disguising your strengths as weakness or the usual stuff that coaching classes make you mug up. Be genuine and yourself, that’s the best policy as you will never feel guilty or regret about it later but don’t be stupid. If you are genuinely stupid then also try to act sane for a while. Firstly, appear in the proper dress code, always keep a pen, look neat and clean, and be confident, your body language must advocate for you. Don’t be nervous or anxious. Just be calm but don’t be casual. Don’t answer too much but balance your answers accordingly. Wait for a while, think what you are going to say and then only say it. If you are not able to reply for few questions or replied incorrectly, don’t panic and mess up the rest part. It’s natural; they don’t expect all correct replies from you. In fact, they might not even be concerned about the quality of your reply and may be assessing only your body language and communication skills. Don’t have any prejudice about interviews, as there are no definite steps to crack it up, it’s always uncertain because the person who is interviewing you is also a human. He has his own perceptions, prejudices and mindset and it’s not always the case that you would be able to please it. It will remain uncertain and unpredictable and that’s the beauty of it. You don’t require any preparation for it, just knock the door, walk in there and give your best performance because the only thing require there is to present yourself in the best possible way.

Let’s go through some general tactics for mass recruiters and normal recruiters:

a)  MASS RECRUITERS: These are the companies who recruit in bulk i.e. they took a major portion; hence they focus on certain skills rather than giving stress on specific technical skills.

1)  Communication skills: Yes, if you are good at speaking then 70% of your work is done because it is often given a large emphasis. If you are good at convincing and able to talk properly even if not fluently then you would easily make the cut. However, in no way it means that those who do not have good communication skills won’t make it, it’s just one of the factor still try to focus on it most because those with nil technical knowledge also gets in because of good soft skills.

2) Aptitude: Aptitude would certainly helps you as there are many companies who do not include technical section in the test and there will only be the aptitude test.

3) Basic Technical Knowledge: There would always be some technical questions and mostly they involve basic knowledge so you must be through with the basic concepts, they may ask you real time application of this basic concepts or something that would relate them with real life so at least brush up them once.

4) Project Work: Your project work will remain key to your entry, if had worked on good projects and you are able to explain them, it would work as a huge plus point.

5) Knowledge about company profile: Just go through the company’s profile once, or google it out and read it, mug all the people who are in key positions and some brief highlights from the history. They could act as bonus questions.

b) NORMAL RECRUITERS: They do not recruit much people, mostly in single digit and are interested in specific people who satisfy their criteria.

1) Knowledge about the role and how you fit in: Whatever role the company is providing you should be thorough with that role, and how you fit in that role. You have to sell yourself for that role and prove that you are the best candidate.

2)  Deep knowledge: If it’s a technical company, you must have deep technical knowledge about all the important subjects and also practical knowledge. They can ask questions from anywhere like databases used in Facebook/picasa, or how much memory a word document takes or all the network layers and their uses so you have to do hard work for it.

Lastly I don’t want to dishearten, frighten or scare anyone or say something negative but it’s a fact. Interview processes are not only unpredictable and uncertain but often unfair sometimes. You may be perfect candidate for a role, far better than any other person and then also you might get rejected and a person far below your caliber may get selected just because it was his day and not yours. Never get disappointed and sad because of few failures. Those who are capable will sooner or later find their way and achieve much larger success. So don’t pile up all of your expectations on a single process and get so much attached to it that you would stake your entire self-confidence on it. Be hopeful and positive and expect the best, you would end up learning no matter what the final result is and that will surely help you in later life.

PS : Those who have any specific placement related question might ask me in the comment box and I would try to reply as soon as I can and others with the same query would also get benefited by it. I would share my personal experience of seating in multiple companies in the upcoming post so that it would further help the candidates.

Life of a common boy.... !!!!

Yes, he was a common boy, with not a very distinguished identity, rarely known by his name anywhere except his friend circles, and his life was also very common. It was neither tragic nor very shining, instead it was just ordinary. He also faced all the common problems like any other common boy does and he also dealt with it in the same way. Though he also had dreams and ambitions, nobody cared to listen about them. He also got hurt sometimes but there was no one to comfort him. He was also disappointed and sad many times in life but there were not many to comfort him. He just represents faceless existence of a general mass.

He was common throughout school, neither very naughty nor very bright. He used to pass with marks, neither very high nor very low. He did his homework, neither so good that would bring praise nor very bad that would invite criticism. He had some hobbies and participated in few activities but again as a common boy. Nobody knows whether he ever craved to top the exams, or win a competition, or do something different in the class. The only time his name was taken in the class was during the attendance time rest he was identified by his bench number, second last bench, boy in the right.

Story didn’t change much in college days too. He was just some boy who came to college. Nobody knew about him, not even his name let alone about him. Mostly, he spent his time in herd of his friends, doing the same thing as they were doing, laughing and enjoying. His life was not bad, not very unfortunate, just unknown. Teachers used to ask him during practical exams “I have never seen you in my class, did you ever come? “, all he can do was to just smile as he knew that he was never noticed. Nobody cared about how much marks or grades he got, even he too, he was not one of the toppers. He never stood up in the class to give an answer, or to ask any stupid doubt which mostly people do just to catch the attention of the teacher. He never liked it; he thought it’s cheap, asking silly doubts just to fake sincerity.

He also developed feelings for girls, almost everywhere he had been. But somehow he knew, they are of no use. He was not the Mr. charming, how could he get a girl. No girl was interested in knowing in his name, accepting him was a far away dream. But still he liked his fantasies, short little stories of escape that were born, lived and also died away happily in his own mind. All he could do was to watch from distance all the boys and girls talking, occasionally he also get to chat, during practical labs or some fun event or when out of the blue he was honored with some attention but these moments usually never lasted long and nor did he longed for them to last long. To interact with girls and have their attention was a luxury he knew he couldn’t afford and he was sometimes frustrated because of this but with time he was at peace with this fact. He enjoyed talking about girls in his friend circle though and there were a lot many like him, he was happy at least he wasn’t alone.

He was neither a matter of pride nor a matter of disgrace for his family. Yes, they had expectations from him. Every parents has, every parent wants to see their child go as high as he can. He was often compared with some achiever among society or relative. He was jeered and taunted. Indirectly, he was shown a mirror in which he was nothing more than a loser and why not, he never topped any exam, he had no abilities, he has done nothing so far to get some lime light and bring pride to his family. He has no identity here too. He was just someone’s son or someone’s brother. His little achievements which were very specific and generally not in accordance with usual convention of achievements were discarded soon or rarely listened. Lastly, even the brightest of people are never given the choice to live life according to their own will or to choose their own path, then how could he raise his voice and decide his own fate.

Amidst all this oblivion, there was indeed one day in the whole year which gives him the privilege to know that he also had an identity i.e. his birthday. With due thanks to facebook, he also had lots of wishes on his facebook wall at least and he was happy with it though he knew that most of the people had just written it formally but he felt nice about it. There were few who bothered to wish him via whatsapp or SMS and very few had called him but it’s a nice experience to be known by people no matter for what reason. It’s a delightful experience to express your gratitude to all because they wished you but somehow deep inside he knew that this stardom has an expiry date of only a day and he would be forgotten soon and to be remembered only the very next year.

Very little people knew about common boys but yes every common boy has dreams, passion, will to achieve something, certain talents that are hidden but would surely emerge out at the appropriate time. Some of these boys are great painters, who can paint far better than reality or even better than imagination, some of them are excellent singers but their voice can be heard only during silence, some of them are great at writing or poetry but their content is hidden from the world. Every common boy waits for his turn, his time when he would sparkle in the fullest to dazzle the world with his talent. All he wants is some respect, some appreciation, some acknowledgement, some identity and he is planning from the beginning to have it.

Even those who think they have got no talent at all, nothing in the world to create a unique identity, they must search it again, search deep inside, introspect carefully. God never creates anyone in vain; he has equipped all of us with at least something that we can use to create an identity. All we need is to identify it, work on it, and carve it carefully like stones are carved into beautiful statues so that everyone can admire their beauty. Every  superstar has spend days in loneliness, when they were nobody, you got to take a stand, challenge the conventions, fight for yourself and make your place in the world else you would remain part of the crowd. Whenever one starts afresh at a new place, all start from square 1, and it always involves a lot of struggles to make your own identity. To be or not to be a part of crowd would always remain your choice, all you need is some courage, some will power and an urge to appear different and you would surely shine even when you are part of the crowd.

Life of a pretty girl.........!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, she was a pretty girl, and the world never missed a single chance to remind her that, in both ways, good and bad. The one thing that annoyed her most was the unwanted attention that never left her ever since school days and that’s the one thing she could never get rid of. Being a pretty girl, she was popular, famous and known everywhere. She was approached by many; she was tired of tackling with multiple futile attempts to get close to her. Even if someone is not trying to talk to her, she knew that she was not alone, she was always accompanied by constant gazes and stares of people that followed her till she didn’t disappear from their sight and she knew that she would still continue to exist in their fantasy world.

She was judged for all and judged by all. Her every act was scrutinized in detail by everyone around her. If she is enjoying her life, then they will tag her with all sort of negative adjectives. If she is scoring good marks, then people would be astonished and surprised that how is she doing that despite being a pretty girl. If she is participating in any extracurricular activity, then she is selected to increase glamour in the event, if she won then solely because she is a pretty girl. Numerous times she is snatched with the credit of an achievement and eventually all her accomplishments were summed up as one single accomplishment, “She is pretty”. 

Though she was always surrounded by people, she was close to only few people, and even those few  misunderstood her time to time. It was very easy for any person near her to feel intimidated by her and sometimes she herself was scared from it. There was always a long list of people who hated her. Boys hated her because she didn’t talk to them or didn’t reply to them or didn’t behave nicely with them. Girls hated her because they felt envy and insecurity because of her and she had a tendency to take away attention from them. Teachers hated her because they thought she had neither brains nor will to hard work, she has no sincere plans to study. Her cousins hated her because they feel inferior because of her.

It wasn’t the case that everything was gloomy and negative in her life. There were lots of pros associated with her life and she has learnt how to use them, though she was tagged as ‘opportunist’ and ‘exploiter’ but she has learnt not to mind harsh adjectives as they were going to remain a part of her life. She knew that the attention she gets can easily be used to get some favors without harming anyone. She knew people were willing to help her and she has somehow convinced her mind that she is doing no wrong  by taking help. Little did she know that what appears casual to her was deep inside raising hopes of many persons.

One problem she constantly faced since growing up, lack of a good friend. She always felt that she requires a confidant, a mature and strong support, an understanding person who would show the right path to her every time she felt lost. In the process of finding a friend, she lost many. Often people confused her friendship with love and as it happens, everything is ruined. So many times, she craved for a helping hand from a friend, she got a helping hand but it was of a friend disguised as a hidden lover. How to maintain and balance a friendship without raising anyone’s hope and without hurting anyone, something she never learnt and failed miserably whenever she tried.  Often, she ended up hurting the other person and in turn hurting herself. Being guilty of crimes she never did haunted her life forever and she couldn’t redeem herself from them.

One big mistake she often did was getting affected by every bad experience she faced and letting it influence every other incident of her life. Her prejudices made her so biased that she lost the proper vision and neutrality while dealing with any situation. She started confusing situations and people. If someone is helping him even without any purpose, she always tried to find any reason for it. Even if someone has intention to be only friends with her, or just a casual conversation, she would always consider that as an attempt to hit on her and she would repel and scare off that person. In the process of staying away from people due to past bad experience, she missed various nice people and many good experiences of life.

There were few things that she learnt gradually like she would remain a matter of public gossip and discussion no matter what she does, she can’t avoid it, she had accepted that as a part of her life. She knew she can’t keep a low profile. People would always be interested in her life and to maintain a low profile while being a pretty girl is impossible. What she loathed was how she had become a brand people just wanted to get associated with. She no longer was considered as a person, or as an individual, or as a friend or something. She was just a brand name everyone likes to have so that they can boast it off. If she had talked with someone for the first time, then that’s an achievement for that person and he would boast it off among many people. Having frequent conversation with her was the ultimate proof of being a ‘cool dude’ or ‘stud’ after all you have tamed the untamed and reached the unreachable.

However, the biggest drawback of all of this was in the process of restraining and constraining herself to attain momentary peace of mind, she stopped being a nice person. She started losing her inner beauty which is far much serene and valuable than any external trait. She started degrading something permanent while tackling something temporary. She was always so obsessed and equipped with her own problems, she was cut off from those who were always there for her and now needed her. She started wasting too much time in useless people and valueless issues that she forgot to invest her time in people precious to her. Just to tackle with people who only looked at her face, she started losing people who were attached to her soul. Her outer being gradually killed her inner being, and she unaware of it, blamed situations and her bad luck that she is left all alone. All she needed was to act like a normal person, taking some time for her friends and family, keeping her problem aside for a while and helping others in their problem.

Yes, her life was hard but not as bad as it looked like. “There is nothing worse than being ordinary” famous dialogue from the movie American Beauty. She should consider her life as a blessing as she was given so many boons and gifts that others just crave for. All that is required is to channel all the negativity into something positive and use it for something constructive. No doubt, her life was not as good as it should be, but it was not as bad as it could be. All she needed was to learn with more freedom, to breathe freely without any thought about others, to care less about other view and more about her own wills. All she needed is to walk and roam around freely unaffected of anything and all she require is to take that one step that would led to that road.

Being born pretty was nature's gift to her, being beautiful is something she has to do by herself.

PS: The content is not aimed at differentiating anyone on the basis of anything. It's just an attempt to look into the problem of those people who generally get more attention than the usual crowd and learn about their mindset. Everyone is beautiful and pretty in their own way and everyone should learn to appreciate that.

Boys who write and girls who read...................!!!!

Not many boys write. From those who write, not many write for themselves, most of the time it is for an image they want to acquire, or to show the world that they can write, or they write for the sake of writing. ‘Writing’ is never combination of few fancy words on an offbeat or mainstream topic; neither is it flamboyant ornamentation of vocabulary. Writing is never show off of tough, not so common words and trying to ape some particular style heavily influenced by some movie or novel. Writing, in its crude form is just expression, and serves only one purpose i.e. to express. A boy, who writes, wants to express.  He wants to express every emotion that he feels, everything that he goes through, every joy, and every pain, everything that affect him in some way.  He wants to sketch a picture of all the scenes irrespective of whether they are beautiful or ugly around him and represent a complete lucid picture of what he wants to show.

A boy who writes knows that he can’t control the world. Sooner or later, he would just be slave of thesituations. But he can create an alternate world which only he can control. He can create characters he like and make them do whatever he wants them to do. He has full control over a world. He is king of a hypothetical world, he is the supreme authority and no one can challenge his powers. He can show the real world a mirror through his fiction world. He can draw characters inspired from real world to unmask people and their hypocrisy. He can inspire, he can give messages which can change the entire perception of people. He can motivate, re energize, revive, and support people. He can create magic and be the magician that can dazzle people.

A boy, who writes, often finds himself incapable of finding a suitable medium to emit all his frustration and hence chooses ‘words’ as the medium. He is not much concerned of what people will think, who will read and what would be their response because mostly his concern is his expression, the one right no one can take away from him. For all the turmoil going into his head, uncontrolled thoughts, blurry images, half baked ideas, complaints, tensions, stress, he got only one solution, to write it up. Writing is more of permanently bookmarking something. Something that happened and you are sure , you would forget or become unaffected soon but would like to visit it somewhere later in the future and hence you create a save point by writing it down.

A boy who writes is often lost into thoughts. He may appear completely normal, doing mundane task, doing what he is suppose to do and doing it pretty perfectly without raising any doubt or he may be completely quiet, completely lost in some other dimension, temporarily transited to some other world where only he and only he is allowed to enter. In both the cases, he is thinking, he is thinking and shaping words. Words, that pops up automatically into the head. Words, that needed to be given a direction, a shape, a proper orientation and converts them into something that would make sense, that would be meaningful.   

A boy who writes is quite often not a charming one and thus attracts less attention. He is not well known. He doesn't have a mesmerizing voice that could charm any listener. He doesn't have any dancing moves to impress anyone.  He is not a rock star that would become one with his music instrument and completely change the atmosphere. He is least known and lives his life mostly away from the lime light. He might have a limited fan base and that’s all he wants and expects. He doesn't want to be appreciated but to be understood. He is not loud, he is quiet. He can’t make you dance on his beats but he can make you tranquil. He can’t fill you with energy but he can provide you peace. All he has is words, words that he himself is puzzled off, and often gets confused but somehow he struggles and tries to align the words into something more meaningful. He can sing with his poems, he can make you move with his rhythms and flow; he can generate music by his intensity. He is a dancer, singer, musician all in a disguised form and only for those who would take interest in understanding him.

Some girl reads. Out of those girls who read, only a few reads for the real purpose of reading. Reading is a tough habit. Very hard to develop, much harder to maintain. Some girls read because other girls tell them something to read, some reads because their teacher told them to read, but a few girls reads because they find it worth spending their time. Reading completes them. Through reading, they get to know a part of themselves that they can’t access in normal world. Reading take them to a fairy world, where they can meet their prince or to a place where they can realize that they don’t need a prince, they are the princess of their own world.

A girl, that reads, doesn't live in a fiction world. She lives in reality and knows how to convert the reality into fiction. Reality is harsh, fiction is an escape, you have to find a mid lane and a girl that reads knows how to approach it. Reading makes her strong and prepares her for the battles she has to fought daily. Reading gives her support and pampers her. Reading encourages her to take steps she is afraid of taking. When she reads, the characters don’t judge her. She is free to roam in the world, unafraid of anything that might harm her. Whenever there is a void in her life, that she can’t feel, she would read and find something that will feel the incomplete.

She reads because she knows world is not perfect and is hard for a girl. She reads because she needs strength. She reads because she knows that the world would never understand her and won’t even try to understand her. She reads because she wants to immerse herself into something sane, something dignified, something gentle and something comforting. She reads because sometimes there is nothing that can explain life to her apart from the words of the book. She reads because that is something she does for herself, where she doesn't have to prove something to someone, where she doesn't have to fought any battle, where she could relax and take deep breadth and lost in the flow of words.

Not many boys write, not many girls read. Not many boys get people who would like to read his work, not many girls get writers who would write what they want to read. A boy who writes need not always require a muse for writing but can write far more impacting and touching content with a muse. A girl, who read, could be a perfect muse for a boy who writes. Let’s hope all those boys who writes get a girl who reads.

Sheep in the big city......... !!!

For those who find the title weird, it was an animated series about a sheep that, due to some unfortunate conditions, was forced to survive in a big city. Most of us are like sheep, small town people, who don’t know much about big cities and find it very weird and then there is always a general feeling that you do not belong to this place. Whenever a small town person arrives in a big city, the feeling of curiosity and excitement is soon overshadowed by feeling of fear and awkwardness. In any case, transiting to a big city is always adventurous and it’s never as straight and normal as it should be, thus lots of stories are created that are cherished and enjoyed forever.

Initial few days are always great and enjoyable, whenever you arrive in a big city. It’s more of a holiday or a picnic, you meet new people, you see new places, you taste new food, everything is new and big and something that so far you haven’t experienced. You click lots of pictures and upload them on your Whatsapp and Facebook with very catchy captions. But then, the later part if completely opposite, if not completely opposite then far more troublesome and full of struggles.

First thing is finding the accommodation as you have permanently shifted from your city to this one and you have to settle here now. I don’t know about other cities, but here in Pune, or particularly in the area where I have to stay, it’s a very challenging task. There aren’t any ‘TO LET’ boards here everywhere so that you can go, enquire the owner, and happily return with an accommodation. Internet is not much of a use, as it only points in a direction but not at a particular point. If you are lucky and know somebody who is already staying there then you won’t be having much trouble but if you are on your own then you are trapped in a vicious circle of various brokers who would ensure you that it’s their responsibility of finding an accommodation for you but you would get to know the reality soon.

You would roam around with the brokers at various places, searching for the perfect place. Sometimes you will roam around for days and would return empty handed daily. In most of the cases, you would indeed find a flat or a PG or something; you have to give a very large sum as brokerage to them. Those who take flat give a token money, and return very relieved and ensured that they have a place. But wait, there is a catch. Just a day before, when you have to shift, your broker would call you that the flat has been given to some other person, or the owner said that he won’t allow bachelors to live in his place and you could take your token money back. Now, here you are, with nowhere to go and no place to live, completely betrayed and doomed, and all you can do is to control your anger and somehow think of a temporary solution for the time being. A poor helpless sheep, lost in the big city.

If you are lucky (unlucky), you would also understand the meaning of “each men for himself”. Self interests indeed overpower greater good at times, and you will have a piece of it sooner or later. On the other side, you would find unexpected unpredictable help out of nowhere. New hands will always be there to help you out and take you out from various problems. There would always be support and comfort.

One more big change that ‘sheep’ like us observe in this big cities are, there is a very noticeable line between simplicity and sophistication. You don’t eat like people here eat, you don’t talk like they do,  you would fumble a lot when you are speaking English or you would be very uncomfortable. Your plate, your eating habits, the kind of food you are having would always be very different and far away from sophistication. Your dress, your demeanour, your body language, all would make you realize again and again that you are way out of league here. Inside we all are human, but the place where we live in changes our interface. Everyone who has arrived here has started from streets. They felt the same discomfort, same cultural change and there comes my greatest fear, of losing the small town guy in me and becoming the same sophisticated person.

It’s very easy to lose yourself, your soul and the small town guy in you in these cemented structures. At times, you feel very small in front of all big skyscrapers. You feel lesser because you don’t fit in. In the process, you try to be one of the sophisticated guy, you tend to smile less and be serious more. You tend to not enjoy the small happiness of life. You tend to work more and dream less. You become a part of a structure where you are just a digital part of a large circuit running forever in a loop and producing no results at all.

As much excited and curious I am for this newer phase of life, I am afraid in equal quantity to not lose the inner small Towner. I don’t want to be formal and professional. Life is good in this way. I can laugh and make laugh. I can eat and treat. I can pull legs and make a fool of myself. I can think and act. They say life here is a golden cage, it will give you an illusion of comfort and you would be trapped here forever. We all have wings, but with times we just forgot to fly, all I wish is to retain both the wings and the determination to fly.