Impressions-----Part One

If Induction seemed like an endless Sahara, Impressions was definitely the oasis, or so it seemed. We had heard a lot about Impressions at SIMSR. It's not the official Freshers' Welcome, but as they say it is the ice breaker between the seniors and us.

When the seniors came and explained to us what this whole process is going to be like, we were taken aback to say the least. They said it will comprise two parts. First the serious part, in which we had to find our buddies, take the assignment(s) from them and submit it(those) to them within a week. Well finding our buddies was easy. Let me explain what this buddy system is. We all have our roll numbers. Now if my roll number is 12, my buddy will be the senior whose roll number was 12 last year. Purnima took the responsibility to go to the office and ask for last year's attendance sheet and the office bearers were kind enough to oblige her. Phew, we had our buddies. Now the difficult part, get the assignment they give you, done.

My buddy, Anand, was a sweet and extremely co-operative guy from my hometown itself. But as they say appearance is always deceptive. He smiled sweetly over the glass of tea and told me, "go to the library, find the Asian Case of Journals 2008 issue. On page 73, there's a case study, that's your assignment". As if doing the case study wasn't enough, I had to go and search a few thousand books first.

Somehow I managed to get hold of the journal but what was that? The case was a 20 page long one. I had no clue what and how to write. The obvious things like googling and finding out whether any other batch mate had got the same assignment soon turned futile. Trust me, for someone like me who comes from an engineering background, studying after a gap of four years takes some effort. The table lamp which the hostel authority gave us on day one found some use at last. Somehow, to my amazement even, I ended the assignment. I was over the moon with my valued inputs as to what the Korean CEO should had done to check the plummeting sales figures.

My exuberance soon died down like the effervescence of a Coke bottle, when Anand returned my assignment with comments which were, well, not the best, to put it politely. The policies which sounded logical a night ago, were rubbished by him, and I could only stare at the pages which would had made Prakash Karat happy. Anyways, I got my desired ticket for the fun filled second part of the Impressions, thanks to Anand's signature on my submitted report.