Hello Readers,

It has been a long time since I have written anything personal on my blog!
Reasons? Well sometimes this heart becomes numb and you just do not want to go
within. Yes, we all close ourselves to outsiders and sometimes we close
ourselves to ourselves as well. I had trouble writing fiction as well. Many
think it is very easy to just imagine things and build castles in the air. But
only a few will agree that it is a difficult task and sometimes it does mentally
tire you a lot. The characters do not just appear when we want to! I think,
they have their own timings and speak out only when they want to be spoken
about. I have not been able to construct many of them in past few days, because
probably I have been going through imposter syndrome. Sometimes you feel, you
are the cheerleader for all and when you want it, you see how deserted everything
seems. It was a small incident in the office today. Normally I carry my phone
charger every day and mostly my colleagues take it in between work to charge
their phones. And today, I had forgotten to carry it. And towards the end of the
day, the battery was about to die down, I called up one of my colleagues who
stays nearby and goes home to have lunch to bring her charger for me. I was
relaxed thinking at least I have managed to do it and she is a regular
seeker of my charger and will understand my situation! But alas, she comes back
and very casually says ” Hey, I just forgot !” I felt very angry and
understood how lonely one can get when you are actually in trouble. There
probably would be no one, absolutely no one for you. I know it is a very small
issue, but probably on some rainy days, the gloomy atmosphere gets on your
nerves! Maybe! Well, breaking the monotony here (as I do not enjoy playing
the victim card in real life) let me take you through the bylanes of my memory.

Recently, I saw a tweet of a teenager about getting her first salary and
that helped me recall my own state of mind when I got my salary for the first
time! I got Rs. 7000/- for my internship at Hero- Honda Motors Company.
Yes, it was a single conglomerate then unlike today, where we have two
entities. One is Hero, the other is Honda! I was in my first year of MBA and
we were hired as management interns for our summer internships. I had marketing
as my specialization & I absolutely enjoyed it. Out of all the three
specializations ( marketing, finance & human resources ), the least number
of females were in marketing. It never bothered me.

Well, many think marketing is all about sales, but it is a very wrong notion.
Marketing is so much more & deals with all the 4 Ps ( Product, Price,
Place & Promotion) . Whereas sales is just a tiny little part of it but
yes, the most essential part as it is the only medium of revenue generation!
And without revenue, nothing can be sustained. And I had prayed that I should
not get placed in sales, and neither did I want to work for a monotonous bank. So
during my placements, I chose only profiles that dealt with core marketing
& it was my luck that I got placed for a US-based MNC which was a fortune
500 firm with a proper marketing role and I learned so much when I was a part of
it!

Anyway, coming back to my internship, was so eventful that it felt
like the final placement! No other company had conducted such a tough screening
process to select just six of us into their realm. We had the first screening
process of our certificates and our performance in all our semesters in the
masters was judged. This was followed by group discussion rounds and then we
had one-to-one interview sessions with the sectors. I remember my interview
had lasted for around 45 odd minutes and I was asked everything under the sun!
It felt as if I was being interviewed for civil services and probably, it was
my day! Not only did I answer everything well but probably I did leave a positive
impact on the interviewers. I remember I had worn a white collared shirt with
multi-colored stripes on it & paired it with black trousers and a black
blazer along with black closed boots with square heels. I felt tired only after
coming out of the interview room and realizing that I was grilled for around
forty-odd minutes unlike my other friends who had it till about twenty-odd
minutes. I was extremely happy and looked forward to my first corporate stint
.

Six of us were divided into three groups and we were paired with our
classmates and each pair was assigned a different project which had to be
submitted after conducting the required research and presenting the report along
with a PowerPoint presentation to the board of directors on the final day !

I realized the difficulty when I started working with my partner! She was a
female from Haryana and had an eccentric personality! I had very different
conditioning as compared to her & we somehow had difficulty in matching our
frequencies. The company was about to launch new models and we had to survey on
competitor models, their price points, consumer behavior analysis, and
recommend a proper marketing strategy for the launch of the product. It was a
time when I had literally slogged from reading everything about the Indian auto
market size , the behavioral pattern of a two-wheeler consumer, competitor
models analysis along with the locational marketing strategy that the two-wheeler companies adopted to maximize sales . This was a time, when instead of
staring at handsome dudes riding a bike, we girls would look at the bike and
understand which segment it belonged to . I have forgotten so much about it now
! Anyone belonging to the lower middle class family can understand, how difficult
it can get to sustain oneself while pursuing a professional course and
especially if you are the first born and the first responsibility you have is
to secure a job and provide financial assistance to your family . Some of my
class mates belonged to ultra-rich families and life for them was a completely
different ball game then. The summer internship tasted me on many such parameters
as well.

Anyway, our project was not only appreciated but me and my partner, despite
having a lot of trouble in working together, got pre-placement offers from the
company with an option that if we bag better jobs , we were free to join it .
Both of us did get better deals and hence none of us joined the marketing team
of Hero Honda. And yes , we could never become friends. We remained just as
batch mates after the internship got over.

I was on cloud nine after bagging the pre-placement offer. It was like a
safety net to fall back upon. But when I received those seven thousand as my
first salary, I felt I could buy the whole world with it. I have no words to
describe how happy I felt that day. The first thing that I did was treat one of
my closest friend in Mc Donalds with a burger and I remember we both had softee
ice cream and as I was licking it, I had envisioned myself becoming a manager of
a big company that day (which did become a reality afterward) and own the
whole world! With those seven thousand rupees, I had bought gifts for all, my
parents, my siblings, my uncles, aunts, and even my grandparents. I treated my
friends too. I do not remember what I bought for myself though! So many
calculations had gone into making all that happen! However many times I wonder,
with time, my earnings increased but never has it ever felt so big as those
seven thousand bucks!

As they say, firsts are always special. Be it first love or first
salary !!

So, what are your memories of your first earnings? Do share your story
with me.

Love,

Chinmayee