‘Your location for the internship at Royal Bank of Scotland is Gurgaon‘ was the communication received through an email.
Wait, that wasn’t the shocker. The fact that I was the only one placed in that location startled me ,my family and friends to a great extent. Endless calls , emails and arguments before my parents were convinced to send me to a city so many miles away from my city. The next two weeks passed way too quickly and it was time to leave to the land of rotis and paranthas for the next two months!
With eyes filled with tears , I bid goodbye to my peeps and landed in Gurgaon on 18th of April , 2015.
Let me first speak a little about work , the sole purpose of me coming to this place leaving my loved ones back in the beautiful Chennai.
The first day at work is something I would never ever forget! In a room filled with people speaking Hindi , my eyes started hunting for a place to sit. Everyone had their own groups and no one cared to speak to others. Extremely hospitable , I must say. The very thought of ‘How am I going to survive here?’ crushed me and didn’t let me focus on anything else.
Day 2 and 3 passed by in a similar fashion.
Thank God for day 4 😀
One of the employees told me and a couple of other interns that we would be working not in this building but in ‘DLF Cyber City’. What a blessing in disguise!
Got introduced to my team but not my team manager who wasn’t available at that time. 20 minutes later a lady walked up to me and introduced herself as the team lead. Truly hospitable 🙂
Since then there has been no looking back. Might sound weird. But unlike the rest of the world which awaits the arrival of weekends , I await Mondays. I look forward to going to work , meeting my team , working and talking with them , learning new things and enjoying my tenure at the organisation. Its definitely one of the best places to work 🙂
But why do I dread weekends? Crazy? Weird? That’s my current state.
The first 2 weekends went by absolutely fine because of the super cool aunt and her family’s presence here.
Shifting to a pg wasn’t the hard part because of my previous hostel experience. The hardest part was surviving alone in a city without knowing the language , in a city hated by the Sun God , in a city where roads have more dust than coal and finally in a city which doesn’t have Ven Pongal. Oh , most importantly a city which gave me this stunning experience of 3 earthquakes in 4 weeks.
But probably being all by myself has taught me a lot of things over the past 5 weeks and gave me few experiences to cherish throughout my life.
Riding in a rickshaw was never on my mind till I saw hundreds of them on the Gurgaon roads every other day and then decided to ride on them to the nearest market. Amazing!!
Watching a movie alone? Not even in my dreams. This city made me do that as well. 36 vayadhinile on a Saturday morning in the only theatre which was screening the movie. It is the most memorable experience till now :’) Little did I expect to see every single seat being occupied with Tamilians from 6 to 60 years. Probably the magic of Jo! The connect when Tamilians meet in a different city is something unbeatable. The lady sitting beside me had a small conversation with me , we connected quite well and since then she has been making sure everything is fine at my end through messages. Faith in humanity restored. One more point to substantiate that was one of our family friends taking an effort to visit me in my pg only to ensure that I was in a safe locality.
Otherwise my weekends are usually in my pg (hostel) which has a caretaker ‘Rooma didi’ who takes care of us like her own sisters. From ensuring that we all get food on time to cleaning our rooms to making tea , shes the ‘All in all azhagu raja’ here. Lets not even discuss on the food. Till the time its rotis its more than being decent. On Wednesdays when Idlis are prepared its nothing less than a disaster! 😛
Oh. Not to forget my room mate Shrishti , a very cheerful and friendly person. We aren’t the best of friends but share a cordial relationship and never bother each other. Each of us mind our own business.
All said and done being alone is not at all easy! I start thinking about the most weird things , start missing my peeps and end up in tears. That’s the most dreaded part of the weekends. 4 more to go before I get back and my only wish is that it comes soon. REAL SOON.
5 weeks in this city and I would give it a 60/100. Its the 23rd of May and the temperatures have already touched 44 degrees. Unbelievable? My hand washed clothes got dried in a record 40 minutes today and that speaks volumes about the heat. The next time someone cribs about Chennai , they will get a punch from me right on their nose.
And that reminds me of this conversation with a colleague last week.
Chennai vs Gurgaon.
Colleague: Tell me why Chennai is better.
Me: Reason no 1. We have a beach!
Colleague: See. So danger of Tsunami.
Me: Oh please. 3 earthquakes in 4 weeks in your city!
Colleague: hmm.
Me: Even watching a movie here is so expensive. 300 bucks for a movie ticket? Please come to Sathyam and then speak _/\_
Colleague: Seems to be a nice place.
Me: Chennai. FTW \m/
And there I complete 5 weeks here and its been a good experience so far. Not great. But good. Not a bad place to live in.
4 more weeks before I get into my routine MBA life.
Can’t wait to see what’s in store for the coming year 🙂
Tears rushing down as I finish writing this? No. I have become much more stronger than what I was a month ago. And YAAAY! I have my own blog and yaaay , I do understand bits and pieces of Hindi now 😀
Curd rice shots 