My Summer Diary:- Part 1.(Mumbai-Chennai Journey)

Its March 28th,I remember the day precisely.... the day ..end term exams came to a close, the first year at scmhrd has come to an end!!Phew...and what an year it has been, the year in which acquaintances fostered into great friendships, a campus which has become very dear and a life which I now miss..... when away from campus.

I hardly had 4 days at home after which I landed in Mumbai, The location-Vikhroli at the huge Godrej Campus for my induction. There were 21 other trainees from IIMK, IIML, IIMI, IMT Ghaziabad, SIBM apart from 9 of us from scmhrd. The day went on quite well with a cute Godrej Mug as souvenir along with a group picture taken during the day.

The induction ended with a get together at the Club house atop a small hillock in the Godrej Campus. The Corporate HR took us through all the Gyaan about the company, its history, the next set of growth strategies, plant visits, brief introduction of the divisions of the company and also the CSR initiative of the company through the mangroves maintained over a huge plot of land. The watch tower atop the magroves area gave a view of the Hiranandani's in Powai besides a view of the Mankhurd bridge which links the city to the Pune road.

The day ended pretty late at about 10 p.m after which I had to take a local train to Dadar to vacate the guest house where I was put up and then reach my cousin's place at Santacruz, closer to the airport .....to facilitate myself boarding the flight to Chennai next morning.

Next morning as I was dropped at the airport by my Jiju, I bumped into the famous Page 3 Director Madhur Bandharkar, seen waiting eagerly outside the airport. Meanwhile, the IC 671 to Chennai was delayed and with the Airport authority not making any announcements the passengers started exchanging heated arguments with the Indian Airlines ground staff... near the gate of entry.

It was sad to see the executives finally accept that since they were a government run airlines, the state of affairs with respect to the announcements was this bad. Meanwhile during the 40 minutes wait at the airport on account of the delay I saw how Mr.Bandharkar was busy reading the newspaper ..while... suddenly ..... the TV in the waiting lounge started showing a scandal of an Aaj Tak journalist discovering the vagaries of Page 3 life and ..then we have Mr. Bandharkar on Tv himself. This interested our Mr. Bandharkar, seeing himself on TV and he then got glued to it. Narcissism was at its very best!! He had changed his hairstyle a bit, had applied some brown colours in real life unlike on TV where he was looking a through gentleman. I guess must be a way to hide his identity, and had worked too successfully since not many people apart from myself seemed to have recognised him.

It was quite interesting to see him behave in the flight too, where after the take off he was seen walking and inspecting the entire flight, perhaps for a change of seat. It was itching for me to ask him, " Are you looking for Page 3", but then I resisted myself from any such antics. Godrej had made the flight journey possible since they could not manage a 2 AC tickets to Chennai for which I was entitled, but then at the end of the day it turned out better for me!

We soon landed at the Kamraj Airport and then started the Summer Days for me!! I got a first hand taste of the Chennai heat and it was precisely 12.30 in the afternoon. The whole lot of Greedy auto wallahs and Taxi drivers seemed determined to strip me off whatever little cash I carried in my wallet, before I finally settled for one. After a quick bite and freshning up, I landed up in the office situtated far away from the main city and reported to the HR Head. The evening went away in meeting both the HR head and my guide discussing about the project and expectations. I reached home late just in time to catch up with Saurabh (My college junior, in whose house am put up) and we had a Gujarati Thali for the night.

Next Part on:- The Chennai Days