Those were the days

This is the story of a batch, t58. Those were the heady days of the dotcom boom. IT companies where the dream place to go. Like everyone, I too had applied to TCS. In those days all the TCS freshers had to go through a mandatory training at God’s own country, yes that’s right, at trivandrum @ Kerala.
People recruited from anywhere in TCS had to mandatory undergo the training for 75 days in Kerala.
TCS being TCS everyone had to join at TVM, i.e. one had to fly down from their respective homes to TVM. The reason I guessed/or as everyone would have guessed is that it saves TCS the money in a travel to TVM.
Hence you had all sorts of people from all over the country landing up at Kerala. I had been given a joining date of 4th Jan, 1999 and all my local HR gave was a funny name of a hotel and address Phillips International, TVM; be there for joining on the 4th.
Imagine my plight on landing up at the hotel. If anything it was an exaggeration to call it a hotel, it was more like a lodge, wherein there were 20-30 single rooms adjacent to each other with no television or food available in the premises.
Before I delve further into my experience about the trip to Philips International from the airport, let me tell you something about myself. I am from Mumbai, and I wish I could say that I was dying to go to Mumbai, leave the safe haven of my family and live a carefree life. As one may say live life as I like. However that was not the case with me, given a choice I would have any day preferred to be working/training from Mumbai.
I reached TVM on 1st Jan in order to avail of cheaper fares, yes in those days when we didn’t have the cheap carriers as today, we still had cheaper fares. Hence I landed at TVM 3 days prior to my training, little did I realise that I may not find company for the weekend.
As soon as I landed, I was given the keys to my room. It was a small room on the first floor, room 104. As I was the first one from my batch to land up, I was given a choice if I wanted to share my flat with 2 people or one person. I opted for sharing with one person. It was a small room with a double bed, small lofts to keep our stuff and a table to do some work. That was all the room had. There was a common television for the whole hotel.
As soon as I had checked in, I went to the reception to ask if there was someone else from my batch who had checked in yet. As a part of the check-in process, one had to enter one’s name, the batch one belonged to and your native place. As it turned out I was the only one who had come that day and there was no one else to accompany me.
I had given strict instructions to the receptionist sir if someone comes my batch, pl inform me. I am desperately looking for some company. Friday night was a very tough one to pass by all alone, it seemed more like a bhoot bungalow to me.
On the 2nd day as my luck would have it, I found some company, few people had come from my batch, there was a RP and Mickey.
I used to frequent the reception desk a lot that weekend to check if someone had come. Every stroll to the next door hotel was accompanied by a trip to the reception desk to check if someone had come and most of all is there a girl, has my roommate checked in. To my surprise, there were some people who had checked in. I saw a name Mickey, T58, Kerala. I was like o god, after a day’s wait no female to accompany me and all I find is some guy from south, v bad luck. Just then I saw some new face in the lobby (if you can call it so).
Out of curiosity I just asked, “Mickey”?
He looked more like a north Indian guy and not someone from Kerala). And I was standing there dressed casually, oily hair, with my floaters on. Looking like a behenji I thought and decided to stop oiling my hair on weekends as well.

Hi, Ya, that’s me. (Whoz this nerdy!)
Which batch you in?
I am in T58.
Me too, Richa.
Hi, I am Mickey. Going out?? Come over to my room
Need I say, I was just glad to have found some company at last in the god for saken place. No more hunting for dinner joints or breakfast joints.
As it turned out Mickey’s room was bang above my room, room @ 204.
So, where you from?
From Bombay, am a CA
Oh. I am a mechanical engineer from College of Engineering Trivandrum.
As it turned out, there is an engineering college in TVM itself and supposedly a lot of the people from that college were in our batch.
Mind if I smoke ?
Go ahead
The casual conversations or the breaking the ice always started with name, location, qualification and batch number. The batch number was THE identification for everyone as long as one was in TVM. Later I realised, that in addition the qualification, people do talk of the platforms they have worked on. Being a CA I had never got a chance to work on the computers so exhaustively to know or understand what is a platform. To me platform all but meant a train station to me as in Harry Potter the platform number 8 ¾. We parted after a while and decided to go dinner together. As Mickey was from CET, he was familiar with the area around, the restaurants etc. Gradually we started having some more company. People started checking in to the hotel. Sunday we all met up during the lunch time, we had an addition to our group, it was Mickey, GP and myself. The plan was to later go for a movie before we start work, none of us were aware of what lay ahead for us in the 75 day training period. We exchanged room numbers and left post lunch for rest.However the evening came and went and I didn’t see Mickey again for the rest of the day. I was waiting for him to call me for the movie and I guess he was waiting for me or rather wondering if he should go and call me. Next day morning, I was getting ready for work and around 730 AM I got a knock on my door, it was Rashi my roommate, she had finally arrived.