The last man standing
It was the first
week of August in 2016, I believe when I rushed to Bangalore to start my
internship a full month after everyone else. It was my first time in Bangalore and I remember being intimidated by
the city itself. It was very different from everything I
had known. The very next day I was to start my internship at this management
consulting firm called Zinnov. I knew one college senior who worked there, so
it was a relief that I’d have a known face around.
I enter,
fill out a heap of forms, and then I am ushered to another building on the
same fateful “Jyoti Nivas College road”, barely 20 steps from the main office.
The words BSR arcade glare at me as I enter the office. The HR brings me to the
first floor, I see about 20 people working on their laptops. I am introduced to
everyone there, I barely remember anyone’s name. I am assigned a seat and I am
told to wait for the manager, who is busy with a meeting.
I open my
laptop and wait for it to start, and in that time, two boys, one really tall
and for some reason very familiar and another a little shorter looking half
stoned approach me. I am already nervous by now. I think they are employees, so
I brace myself. They sit down and start talking to me animatedly, shooting random questions at m. It turns out these two were also interns. Over the course of time, these two idiots would become very
close to me. On the same day, there is this woman sitting next to me. She realizes
how nervous I am, and she talks to me trying to calm me down and filling me in
on a lot of details.
Then there
was this really goofy guy sitting near the back of the office, which seemed to
be a zone of a lot of laughter and commotion. He was a senior from the same
university and probably the most fun person there. You might have read about
him in my blog, I call him lil bitch. This goofy guy gave me some really hard-hitting
advice when I was at a trough in my life and has helped me in so many ways, I
have stopped keeping a count now.
My first
project there is with this guy who seemed to know everything about everything,
and his look went from good schoolboy to stoner ***** in about the two years I
was there. He was an oddball and I loved that about him. He’d recommend some
awesome books and bizarre tv shows that I loved and made the best home-made
fries anyone ever could!
Eventually
I became a little chill and would go to grab an occasional smoke with my goons. One such
day, I saw this man wearing grey formals on Diwali when the entire office is
dressed in ethnic colors. And this guy is talking about some movement that took
place in some remote corner of America. We ended up becoming really great friends,
emergency ice-cream buddies to the person I’d call at 3am in the night to just
chat.
I became
really close to all of these people over the course of my two years there at
Zinnov. I am still in touch with most of them. What propelled me to write this
blog is that day before yesterday I got a message with a screenshot of a resignation
letter. The last man standing had finally put his resignation in. The last of
the lot. Over the course of the last two years, we all became really close
breaching the boundaries of a work friend, extremely engrossed in each other’s personal
lives. The GEIP people. Now if I go back to BSR arcade, I will recognize that
sign, and the stairs and even my seat but I think that’s it. The floor will
have completely new faces who have no idea who I am. Hell, even the name of the
team isn’t the same anymore. But somewhere in those tiny conference rooms, the
rasam soaked cafeteria and the laughter emerging from the last row, a bunch of us will always be there laughing and trying to avoid work. Or so I'd like to think.
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