my first day at work

The day i recieved my call letter, i was extremely relieved, cos it took quite some time to come.. as if Wipro had, at some time, even forgotten that they had hired me! Nevertheless.. all was fine now and i reached chennai on the 15th of this month, well in advance of the day when i had to report, that being the 20th. but i also had to attend a marriage and a reception the very same weekend that i came here, which was very painful because there was nobody of my age whom i knew there and i swear by the bible (or the bhagvad gita, in my case) that i am very bad at socialising!!! sometimes i even wonder y do ppl even have to make such a big fuss out of their marriages by inviting so many ppl 'cos, trust me, more than half of them come only to eat! get married, go home, celebrate with ur loved ones and go to bed.. thats enuf i guess. nw plz don tell me that all the ppl at the marriage r LOVED ONES!! its probably more of an obligation to invite i guess. it jus doesn make sense to me and probably this ignorance is reason enuf y m so bad at what ppl call as SOCIALISING!anyways, i ended up surviving the weekend cos i happened to meet some of my uncles after quite some time and of course the groom who is a distant cousin of mine and that was the only good part cos there were verrrrry few ppl whom i recognized at the marraige. i had to face loads of "do u remember me dear? how would u.. u were a small baby wen i last saw u" stuff. n they told each other,"look how big he s become!"..as if kids here are stalled from growth.anyways..then i had to go to my college to collect my certificates and the 18th was spent in searchin for a home which is still goin on by the way! the 19th, as i had thought and decided, was spent almost entirely on putting all my certificates in order, gettin the neccessary photocopies, and filing them all up. don't be surprised 'cos i actually DID take almost the entire day doin this and was as meticulous as possible 'cos i jus DID NOT want anything to go wrong on day one at work! evening i was thinking of what to wear the next day 'cos mom had very strictly asked me to be presentable, at least on day one! i thought and did all the permutations.. finally comin up with a grey t-shirt and a blue jeans. "that looked presentable enough", i thought to myself. but wen i told god(my friend, bro, ethical advisor, current roomie.. anything) abt my dressing plans they got changed in 2 seconds! i won't even bother tellin abt wot i finnaly decided to wear 'cos it was extremely formal and even the thought of it makes me claustrophobic. GOD alone knows how i wore it the next day cos,trust me, god did not know else he wouldn have asked me to wear it! after that we had a small tandoori fest at dinner, watched yuvraj hit stuart broad for 6 sixes in an over and i did not even watch england bat 'cos i went to bed early as i had to wake up early next day and leave on time to reach wipro in Shollinganalur at 9 a.m.
it was 7 a.m on the 20th wen my alarm rang me awake. i was not really hyper excited or anything but it was just the normal boost of energy that u have wen u happen to be goin to a new place and u realize that its important. well, i shaved off my little goatie if that is any indication of how important the day was to me. it takes a good couple of weeks to grow and as i shaved the goatie off my chin i realized that i will not be seeing "him" for a long time to come unless i got to work for paris hilton! anyways.. i must admit i was pretty cool and not gettin workep up about the whole "first day at work" fever that normally catches on people and even god was impressed, tho' he din say it to me. well, i had to report at 9 a.m so i left home by 8.15 and i have never been one to reach a place well in advance to have spare time 'cos i never felt it was neccessary! if u have not done ur work till then how will the spare time help u out?!! being on time was jus perfect for me and i obviously couldn afford gettin late on day one! however i reached the office gates by 8.40 and was jus wondering if i should go in now or have a cup of tea from the vendor outside and wait till 9, but i decided against it. i walked into the office, all dressed up lke my cousin who got married a week back as i looked at some other employees havin id cards around their necks the way pets r differentiated from the stray dogs, realizing that i was also goin to be one of them in some more time to come! it's ok, i thought, 'cos, here, pets are paid! i held a file which contained all the essentials that they had asked me to bring along on the day of reporting. i was just a bit weary 'cos the scenario was not as expected. there were not many freshers waiting to report and i seemed to be the only jackass in the building with a file and not knowing what to do!were they calling ppl early cos they take it for granted that we will be late.. knowing it for a fact that after all we were engineers! i decided to wait n see if i could see anybody with the same issues as i but seeing no one, i went up to the receptionist and asked, "ma'am, i know i am a bit early but i was supposed to report today at 9 a.m, so could u please help me out by tellin whom i should be meeting for the same?" she looked up at me, as if i had disturbed her in a meeting where she was negotiating a multi-illion dollar business deal with bill gates, and she said, "u were supposed to report today?". i mean how stupid was she? i spoke in english, right? i did not say that aloud and said "yes" to which she asked me to wait for a moment and did something on the computer in front of her and said, "i am sorry, u must be mistaken but u are supposed to report not here in shollinganalur, but in guindy at 9a.m" i jus wished for a second that some huge meteor hit the earth and the world came to an end!! it would be just fine even if the meteor directly hit me and only i came to an end! BUT I WANTED AN END FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!!!!! it was 8.50 and i had spare time for the first time ever which as i always beleived was of no help cos the guindy office was atleast an hour from where i was and it was all the more difficult during office hours!!the day was off to a rocking start already and i flew as fast as i could to the other office and yet i reached not before it was 10:20 a.m.i signed at the gate and was directed to the mezzanine floor by the receptionist who stared at me like i had flown in from planet jupiter when i said that i was suposed to report there at 8:30! nevertheless i rushed to the hall upstairs only to find some of my college mates laughin away at some joke that some smart ass had just cracked. y do these ass 'ol's ever crack jokes at the wrong time?? they suddenly looked at me rushing toward the hall and one of them said, "hey vinod, we thought u were not joining.... dude.. this s not college man. do u know u r late here too??!!" "oh really? i thought i had time to spare.. was jus tryin to loose some fat!!", said i as i stormed into the hall where the lady addressing the freshers jus proved that females think alike and gave me the same receptionist look! i told her that i m sorry and tried to explain as the rest of the newies looked on in astonishment 'cos not only was i late but i was now holding up the presentation as the nice generous lady decided to spare a few minutes for me so that i could fill up all the neccessay forms and complete the documents verification process that had been goin on for so long. just as i finished the process, i thought to myself, "this s all they were doin here for the past one n a half hour!! y did i not take a nap b4 entering?" anyways... my being late was almost being forgiven wen the female asked me for my appointment letter that was apparently missing in my file.. and wen she did ask, i jus felt that a single meteor would not do the trick!! i should have had an explosive in my file as well that could have blown up automatically whenever i was in THAT kinda situation. well, and almost immediately as i was trying to figure out what had happened to the second letter that was apparently supposed to be with me, my cell phone rang ALOUD! AND ALOUD IT WAS!! it was just a message but the tune sounded like a death knell to me! the lady looked at me in utter disbelief and i jus felt that somewhere within........ really somewhere deep deep deep within she had to have felt for me and my rotten luck, if she was human. thankfully she figured out that the other letter was not supposed to be with me as my colege had sent it to wipro automatically but then she did gimme the "switch off ur mobile within the premises look!" i gave her the "yeah, m sorry but GOD probably wanted to have some fun and so he created me for THIS particular day" look. As i took my seat in the last rows of the hall, i took out my cell to switch it off and happened to check my message. it was delivered 3 hrs late.. screw airtel for that! it was from dad and it read, " ur first day at work joe, so here s wishing u all the best. hope u have a nice day." well, dad, u son s not worth a shit s all that i wanted to reply and i switched it off.probably the wishes from dad worked as the rest of the day went off ok and quite a few ppl came up to me and asked y i was late and wot had happened. " just outta college guys.. gimme some time to get this working." a few of them even asked me y i hadn't call them up to find out about he reporting details if i wasn't sure. but who cared now!it was quite a long day and the same female, who started off the day, finished the final session by sayin that we all meet on the 24th at 9 am. and wen she said that, she made it a point to look towards the last row at me and say "sharp" as i saw a few heads turn backwards and wondered what lay in store for me on day two at work.....