Finally the D-day has come, I caught up with the early morning Spice Jet flight to New Delhi. Early morning !!!! yes early morning, what the hell you must be thinking, I wrongly booked the ticket for 300 hrs thinking its 3pm, a costly mistake. Gosh what a way to start off, Dad drops me off at airport at a vague hour, 1am. I wait along with a bunch of sleepy faces around, to finally board the plane. The smell of freshness in the plane as it was newly furbished/prepared for the next days haul and I was among the first few to board it for the day. Long sleeplessly sleepy journey to Delhi, touched down at 5.30.
Picked up byDiggy anna, gosh I kept my eldest of all cousin waiting early in the morning. There we started are long journey to their house in Gurgaon. He made me sure that I was belted and buckled up in like a kid and went on explaining all the important landmarks as we whizzed by them at 90+ something speed. He was telling about his company and work and family as he politely enquired about mine and cautioned against the call centre culture and extremes people get into. Finally reached their place, it was a sunday morning. He had 2 kids, well I hardly knew my cousins from my father's side, rarely get to interact them, so meeting his kids who were as tall as me was good. One I believe was into his 10+2 and the other 8th Std. They had a Kasmiri hunter dog. Don't know its name, but as all dogs this was also fun to play. Though like scooby, an Labrador of another cousins this was more friendlier rather more than required. All my pants and legs were ensured to be kept moist.
As it was still early morning I went out to adventure on the Gurgaon roads, Diggy anna showed me various corporate offices that day.
Then quickly had my breakfast, tried to imitate that I wanted to sleep, before being waked up for the weekly mass of theirs. Gosh am not into it at all, but kya kare had to budge in they will not like my arrogance. We went to Unitech's country club, small gathering. My nephews were performing on the keyboard and drums and they were good.
Later we came home for lunch, good Veggie meals, they understood am not much of a NVian. Loved the Vankaayi which vadina made. This was the first time I was eating in their house.
Later slept for the day and evening we went around gurgaon for the 3rd time. This time to anna's office premises. There's is a European company who are into making of stone crushing equipment, whose head office was in Sweden. Then he showed me the malls and class apartments before dropping me off at my guest house.
My roomy, my batchmate from K were supposed to share the room, but looks like he left for the night. Chak, was getting married to Jyothi in a month, so went to meet his inlaws. I slept for the night, knock knock came chak at 11.30 in the night. Had a quick catchup then slept off.
Next day went to our basement hall for breakfast, were we met with a few other joines. Later freshened up and left for the office in our cabs which came to pick us up, rather a little late.
We came in to the corporate office located at Phase V, we were close to 40 something people from various campuses. There is another batch too but they will join a month later. We were greeted by our Campus coordinators Divisha, Sruthi, Manasi Baaga, who are going to be our facilitators for the rest of the time.
We had various leadership sessions day-in day-out, with likes of Pramod bhasin, Anju Talwar, Steve Rudderman coming in, quite an eyeopener on an industry quite unknown to me. Next day we had our on-boarding where our log-in Genpact OHR_IDS were created. All this happened in 22a, another site of Genpacts in Gurgaon. The names of the rooms here are pacific breeze, hawaiin beach etc.. strange.
Day 3 was floor walks at phase 5, Day four was again in 22a were we got our tags and ids done finally. I really loved my blue id card. Its a two tone card, two shades of blue (robin blue and a navy blue. All this time the HR held us in suspense on our postings and roles, some of them knew right at recruitment, others like me had no clue. I had my inhibitance on location itself.
I was told that I was to head towards Hyd, FCOE. Breather for me.
All this while in Gurgaon, Chak kept his evenings busy talking with his fiance, and one day on Wednesday (day 3) we went to a few malls there. Sahara mall to be precise, was walkable from our guest house, 1/2 hr walk :) , Gurgaon is a strange place, we hardly have or see public transport, even the streets are modestly populated. There we window shopped for a while, then had BigMac burger, then went to PVR for a movie. This was the scary part, the ticket costed 100 a piece, man I've could have watched 3 at that price in Hyd and 4 in towns. Ok, whats so frightening, once we were in the hall, we had lots and lots voids in the theatre, Voids.. no people at all, we were the only two, then as the title started we had our watchman join and accompany us. After 15min we had another couple drop in. That sunday in the same Sahara mall a teenager was killed, was pushed off from the top floor where she had come to party for the night. Owing to this all the malls had strict vigilance, and we were thoroughly mocked by the cinema security staff. Nothing was been allowed even lighters, matches were been stripped off. Anyways thats for the movie, when were done its well past 1am, and we had to walk back the 1/2 hour walk, with bad light and poor memory we lost our way. Middle of no where, no living being along except for ourselves, winds gushing quietly by the side, quite chilling. After some effort and trials we finally made it back, relieved we were after such an endeavour. On the whole a very good, and interesting start of my career. Started with a bang and promising,
On Friday morning we started off for Jaipur to visit the Genpact office there, the trip promises to be good. Would be my first trip to the Rajputannas. Eager to make my fascination for forts and palaces come to life.
