I Missed Him

Today in our college, we were distributed our offer letters. Students placed in the year 2007-2008 around 500 odd from both RMK n RMD Engg Collg were given their call letters. TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HP, Caritor, Tata Elxi, Patni and many others. We were in our audi block. Away from friends as we were given numbers according to the companies placed. And I gotta sit for the first time in the first row. The probs sitting in the first row is you gotta stay glued to the podium, listen or atleast act like listening to all the stalwarts speaking. Two delegates, one from Oracle and the other from TCS were the chief guests. One man started off ' This is just the beginning... You haven't proved anything big....the IT world is competitive....in corporate only the fittest survive...blah...blah...' I seriously don't understand what is the problem with these people, they very well know we are not in a mood to listen. Then came the other man, ' I know todays youngsters don't like advice' I thought he will end it there, but hell he went on speaking for 45 mins...extreme mokkai. One thing that I remember from his speech, it seems he had done his Phd on ' Employee attrition in IT industries' being a Mechanical Engineer. I seriously had no idea what had Mech to do with IT, didn't he find any other area of interest in his discipline to work on. N yaa the words repeated by both the chief guests ' Innovation, out of the box thinking'. I really wanted to stand up and tell, first you say something originative then we will think of out of the box. But then came some precious moments, offering the call letter. That's the only thing I got by being in the campus(I wont use the word studying) for 4 yrs. These 4 yrs have been a kind of static period in my life. I would never miss my college life but for this offer letter. Yes it meant a lot to me, my first step towards being independent. Within few months I would sign my first cheque, my first company TCS. Being a bit futuristic and with lots of inbuilt confidence, I could ideate of going heights. Thanks to my college and lots of thanks to Mom(I was sick during my placement time June last year, without her it would have been difficult). Then my mind wandered to students who are passing out this yr along with me from my own college and from some other collgs but haven't got placed yet. In some colleges there are no campus placement facilities. I know quite a few deserving candidates who are working in BPO's possessing good technical skills. Then I remembered one of my dear friends who wasn't present in the crowd. We are friends right from the starting of our college life. Coming from a village side and lacking the fluency in English, he was rejected in many HR rounds. He has not made it yet in placements on and off campus. I wonder sometimes , Are IT companies looking for programmers or people with communication skill?? What has speaking good English to do with writing code, isn't it more than enough to know languages C and Java better than English..? When I called up today evening, before I could make any consolatory statement and while I was searching for words, he said ' Hey I m pretty much fine, right now doing courses in Java and Oracle and hey thanks for all that you were trying to tell all this time'. He was fighting back all odds. I felt proud having a friend like him. Hey yaar I missed you a lot today.