Oh Those Ten! - 8

Getting into ELS

I remember seeing Paul Franklin in all Kriya meetings at IM canteen in the first year.He inspired a sense of awe which even Anto Inigo could not manage.Inigo might have been the Chairman but still he was just a member of the club of which Paul was secretary.Me and Ajay used to talk in hushed tones : "Dai!Paul da!ELS Secretary da!" whenever he crossed us.English Literary Society meant a lot to me right then.When some seniors asked my ambition in college life at a Post-Kriya '08 dinner,I replied :"As of now,it is to get into ELS".

When the time for ELS recruitment arrived,I promptly applied for it.The question paper itself was so ELS-ish-mischievous yet rigorous.I took an entire day to fill in my share of stories,essays and comic strip-fillers.I thought I had done exceptionally well with the story.But the panel had a different opinion.My application got rejected and it was a day of utter despair.That evening,I got really irritated when our batch did not get output in the Digital Electronics lab.While others thought I had turned sincere,I was merely showing my emotions at not getting into my Dream Company.

ELS was forgotten promptly and when the recruitment forms were up for grabs in the third year,I did not even care to apply because I have always been afraid of defeat.When I met

Anil George (There cannot be a more genial person than him) that night,I gave him lots of tips on how to improve the brand value of ELS.He gave me the recruitment form in return and told me to apply one more time.Friendship is such an overpowering relation that all fears were buried and I wrote the prelims again.

This time I got through to the Interview-thanks to an amateur poem written in the last row of a Computer Networks class.I waited till 7 : 45 PM in the night for my turn.While every other interviewee was surrounded by a group of ten charming ELS people,I was left alone as the late hours meant many interviewers had left home.Hari Babu (A person who had radically opposite views to me in every issue that matters) interviewed me all alone.More than an interview,it was a highly stressful conversation.

Unlike any ordinary interviewer who keeps stressing the interviewed with the refrain "you are unfit for this",Hari Babu was convincing me "You are fit for bigger things.ELS is nothing compared to them".I had to pull off a delicate balancing act of extolling ELS without any hint of self-deprecation.It went on for an hour atleast and I was half-exhausted.Hari Babu did not even have a stock smile at the end of it all triggering worries within me.The tantalising wait for results began.

When the results were announced by Joseph to me (After the scare that Ajay created by saying they had decided not to recruit Third years) after the Measurements lab session got over,I was overjoyed.I had got into the club that had always been the envy of everyone in the college.Envy that always made a lot of people resort to mud-slinging trying to tarnish the image of ELS.

From then on,the story gets murkier as I got involved in too many activities and was unable to indulge myself in loads of absolute fun at ELS.I was not part of the Two Remarkable Plays in which Shuba and Lokesh became overnight stars.I could not attend the 2011 edition of Verve-an event mired in bureaucratic trouble right from the beginning.I could not attend many of those gratifying ELS meetings at IM canteen where the angelic Chanda always had a reassuring smile for everyone of us.I could not attend the ELS farewell because of my own department farewell planned on the same day.But the awe,that sense of awe which I experienced when Paul Franklin crossed us in the corridor in the first year,still lingers.

I could not contribute much to ELS but it gave me a sense of pride and a set of sweet friends.I cruelly said "No thanks" to ELS many a times in these past 2 years but at the end of it all,I cannot help saying a heartfelt Thanks.