Odysseus' friend

At the end of an eventful one year of handling millions of mails a day ( forwards to be exact) , scrolling repeatedly through the available contacts in Google Talk,taking commendable number of tea breaks in between socialising through mails and messengers,bitching about Project Managers,Tech Leads or anyone of their kind who ever tried to throw their weight around, I came to be known as one year experienced .Or rather the realisation came in its full force when some of us, the 1-year experienced, were asked to give a piece of our ""hard-earned knowledge"" to the Oct-2007 fresher's batch.The task was simple,mentor a group of 200 odd 'just out of college-eager to get into corporate life' (yaaawwwnnnn) or 'just out of college-give me a project' (double yaaawwwnnnn) proffessionals.

And an irony it was that the topic of mentoring had escaped all the 4 years of study in college.We had a big white book for the subject.It would not even have served as a head rest as it would position the head at 90 degree to the torso,thanks to its volume.If I had to open that book today I would find the fossil of the ant which got in between its pages as I opened the book the first and perhaps the last time to savour the smell of new paper.The last nail to the coffin was laid the day when the coordinator for the whole mentoring program distributed the slide show for the day of mentoring.What little notion I had about the topic had gone down the drain.

The night before the mentoring Letha and I sat on our beds with giggles that could not be escaped.Ever since we came the engineering ways we had been inseparable be it in sharing a room in hostel or doing the final year BE project.In the next day's act we were again comrades.Flying the slide show hard copies we pulled the blankets for the day.


On the D-Day we dressed smart,an act to look unreachable and distant to the freshers.Would they not shun from asking you their doubts regarding the topic if you put on an act and tried to look condescending and intelligent(which requires hell lot of effort and practice ofcourse) .The act crumbled as soon as we entered the lecture hall,swimming with young,ready to pounce faces.Without further delay,the session started and the mentors for the day were introduced."Seek their help whenever you need it while you solve the problems for the day".....GULP...."Give over your solutions to them.They will validate it for you"....MORE GULPS.. with more gulps to come.


The dare-devil 'act' had given away to kitten in hot water looks.I must have looked very reachable for they summoned me for discussing every thread of thought that passed their mind.I retorted in the smallest decibels, lest another guy in the next aisle got to hear my template answers .I went "Errrrr dont you think this solution involves more number of iterations" or "dont you think that is not an optimal solution" or "yes!absolutely!you are in the right track" gags.God lone knows the number of times I repeated the same comment to a single person or perhaps some angry young men steadfastedly attacking their problem had counted too for I wondered whether there was a depreciation in the number of summonings.However it is worthy of much praise that we ,the mentors, escaped unscathed.Maybe they were saving the stones for another appropriate moment.


At the end of the day,when the session came to an end the coordinator complimented the mentors for their cooperation and without whom the session would not have been a success.So this was how people learned to make template statements in public.The first taste of it.