Infosys Mysore

Well friends, for a long time... I was searching for some topic to re-invigorate my blog after a long dead period. Not surprisingly though I am writing this today on 5th of May 2015 - exactly a year after what was the platinum period of my life. Yes... that period is my Infosys life, and more importantly my Mysore life... in that so-called heaven "Infosys Mysore Campus."

ABOUT 367 DAYS BACK...

May 2 2014:

My nerves were jangling. My heart was racing. Tears welled up in my eyes. It was a sleepless night. I had just returned that morning from Vishakapatnam after a quick tour at my home town. Just wanted to meet everybody before I started working. A trip that was supposed to be super long but was cut short because a bomb of a mail landed on 9th of April confirming my offer of employment at Infosys. I was excited yes, but far too worried for two main reasons:
1. I was scared about what the training would offer as I sucked at CS related subjects and
2. This was the first time I was going to stay away from my parents.
Add to it the fact that we couldn't carry our laptops inside the campus. I really didn't know what I would be doing there without my laptop. With a heavy heart I finally packed my luggage and was ready for the sojourn - only physically.

May 3 2014:

It was a long day. Advises from near and dear, wishes pouring in, emotional dialogues, impending disasters and an unclear mind. One of those days where I just wanted to be alone. "Forget everything that's happening, close your eyes and sleep," my mom said. "Impossible," I told myself. The clock was ticking. The time had come to start my journey to Mysore. None of my close friends from the college were accompanying me. It felt strange. It was time for a new life. Me along with my parents and brother reached the Chennai Central Railway Station. I was more than delighted to see Naveen, Richard and Venkatesh at the station. My college mates. Naveen was coming with me to Mysore. Richard and Venkatesh had come to see him off. We talked, exchanged greetings and then boarded the train. As the train left Chennai station, my mind started wandering to far off places. I knew it was going to be a sleepless night.

May 4 2014:

I opened my eyes only to see that Kaveri Express had already reached Mysore Junction. At the station I was joined by one more friend from the college: Harikrishnan from EEE department. Hari left immediately to the campus as his reporting time was much earlier than mine. Meanwhile me and my family along with Naveen and his mom checked-in to Hotel Chandra Palace near the railway station. We freshened up quickly, completed the daily rituals and trotted along to the bus stop with our big trunks. It was time to go.

Bus #119 brought us to the much famed Mysore Campus of Infosys. From the outside it didn't look anything extraordinary but as soon as I stepped inside the campus, I fell in love with it. I was finally there. It was the beginning point of my new life. My heart was filled with numerous thoughts and emotions. On our arrival at around 11 AM, they took us to the registration desk where our names were verified and were given a temporary ID card - pink in color. Meanwhile I found some more familiar faces in Kowshik and Sibi, also from my college who joined me and Naveen and together we were in hot pursuit. Then we were taken to the biggest building of Mysore campus - GEC 2. It resembled our parliament building and from that day onwards we started calling it the parliament.

GEC 2

First time in my life I was seeing such a beautiful building in reality. It has the capacity of accommodating more than 5000 students at one time. Right in front of this building is a musical fountain which operates in the weekends' evenings.

Musical Fountain

The building incorporates around 70 to 80 classrooms and a huge library. All the classrooms are equipped with PCs, projectors, white boards, mikes and speakers.

GEC Classroom

 The dome shape on the top of the building is the board room. The first time we walked into this building we felt like we were in Hogwarts. The experience was surreal. It was a pleasure to study in this building. After the allocation of ID cards, we were allotted hostels. All the boys hostels have single occupancy rooms and I was allotted room no. 16 in ECC 83.  Aha! the rooms were simply awesome. You live like a king there. Housekeeping is done everyday. So you need not worry about anything. Felt like I was living in a 5 star hotel.

Hostel Room

After feeling like I have won a million dollars in treasure hunt, I decided to go back to the entrance where my parents were waiting. After 1.5 hrs of getting lost in the humongous campus, I found them at Fiesta Food Court. Waving them goodbye with little sorrow and heart filled up with enthusiasm and new energy I started going back to my hostel. On the way back I was just amazed by the look and feel of the campus. Having been too tired to walk, I picked up a blue color ladybird cycle and started cycling around the campus.

It was looking like some group of great architectures of Rome or U.S or some other foreign country... having pure exotic flavour. I was seeing the picturesque views of the campus... the giant and beautiful glass buildings... none of which were made like the regular cube shaped buildings... each building was having a different style... these were some of the things that we were crawling like crazies... It seemed like we entered a different world altogether.
Well, in the evening, the awesome food in those giant food courts, and that giant structure of the dome (multiplex) were the things that provided elation to mind and soul.

The Multiplex

Well, from the next day onwards, we had to attend the induction program. The first night on that awesomely creepy bed is still one of the best nights of my life. I had never seen such erotic and beautiful dreams in my whole life as that night. Well, I was just thanking god from the core of my heart to let me enjoy this level of living about which I had never even dreamt of. Anyways night passed, sun appeared, the little sunlight from that glass wall passing through two layers of curtains just struck my face and it was time to wake up.

MAY 5 2014:

After a warm-shower, got ready just in time and at sharp 8:30, we (myself, Naveen, Sibi, Kowshik, Ajay, Azeez and Vignesh) were outside Multiplex standing in the queue containing fresh engineers waiting for the induction program. 

Waiting for Induction Program

Well, waiting there in the hot sun for around 1 hour from the scheduled time, I realized I'm still on earth in a country called India... 

Well, even after entering in that giant multiplex after severe checking of your dress-code, we were just seated in that hall with no one attending us for around 2 hrs., I guess that was because we were the pilot batch of that session. For that whole time, the “Infy song” was continuously played to increase our torture or we can say ‘to increase the capacity of ‘how much we can take’. Well, for first 15 minutes, I liked the song, but after I spent the next two hours listening to that song and practically doing nothing else, I learnt a lesson…i.e. no matter how much u like a song , when u are compelled to continuously listen to that song for 2-3 hrs, that becomes a very peculiar form of mental torture termed as ”Infy Induction”.
Anyways  the same sort of story was repeated for the next 5 days primarily aimed at telling us about the etiquettes in Infy campus and especially ASHI. Well, this "thing" is not so voluptuous as it sounds, as it stands for "Anti Sexual Harassment Inititative" by Infy.

Induction Hall

Nevertheless, the actual training activity of Infosys started from next week which is so-called very high level and difficult to undergo and all that…..There were 10 people from our college and 2 of us were put into each section: Azeez/Hari in one, Vinod/Ajay in two, Me/Kowshik in three, Naveen/Vignesh in four and Sibi/Afreen in five. I hadn't talked much to Kowshik previously even though he was from my college. But when he came and sat beside me in the first row, I was the happiest person on earth. Beyond any doubt, he is my best friend today. Thanks to a play we enacted as a part of L&D session on the first day, he popularly came to be known as Father of the Nouns.

Well, the thing about training is that which makes it so special is it’s properly structured, performed by highly trained faculties, done in highly sophisticated facilities and heavily competitive environment failing which a student has to undergo the same exams and training again and again. Moreover, the passing percentage for each of the exams is 65, the figure at which most universities in India award a first division. And, this is the bare minimum passing percentage. If you have to live a respectable life there and avoid repeating the similar courses again, you have to score at least 85 p.c in each subject. Well, no offence, but If I’d have scored this much p.c. in my college even once, I’d have topped and would have got a pretty good company to work with. Well, the irony is that then I couldn't have enjoyed this Infosys campus of mysore: the heaven of heavens.


But is it that simple??? Let me explain you the lesser-bright side of it. The weekdays are like the life of the local train users in Chennai, you just get up early, get ready, get to the food-court fast because if you are going at the peak time, there will be a long queue at every counter and also you won’t get the cycles to reach there in time. I don't know at what time other people used to leave from hostels, but for a 9 A.M. class, even when I left the hostel at 7:30, all one thousand cycles (placed in the parking of each hostel) were gone. Well, I don’t think, I ever enjoyed the pleasure of reaching the classroom in cycle in the morning after the first two weeks. And, if you are lucky enough to get a bicycle even after 8 A.M., let me suggest you, immediately go and invest in the MCX market all you have got and you will become a billionaire overnight for sure. 


Well, you have to rush, reach food-court fast, eat fast, and get to the classroom even faster if you are short of time. While going to the classroom, you see thousands of engineers walking in front of you, all of them in the same direction, and same pace (unless they have exam that day), same footpath, none of them on the road. Well, the pace of the herd (yeah, I mean it) varies according to time. If the time remaining is less, the walking speed is more than the normal running speed of a normal person. Depending upon the speed, I bet I can tell the exact time up to the precision of a minute if not seconds.


Well, after reaching in the classroom building (GEC-1 or GEC-2), you have to swipe-in and finally reach the class “BEFORE” 9 A.M…because even if you get into the classroom at precisely 9 A.M., you are at the mercy of the trainer whether you are going to earn that day’s salary or not. Well, for this particular salary-loss thing, there are other sophisticated ways also, like you can accidentally miss a swipe, or make a wrong swipe, you can miss one attendance etc etc. If you are caught playing counter strike or any game or even listening songs with headphone…..beware….u could be fined heavily. Anyways, you get into the class, give your attendance, learn your stuff till noon, go out for the lunch, again stand in those mile-long queues, get your food, get back to class, complete the practical exercises by the end of the day. If you want to save something, you have the luxury of storing it in your huge “10 MB” capacity mandrake, because every other place in the hard-drive gets formatted every day.

This routine is the normal routine of a CS-IT guy who manages to get home by 6:30 to 7 P.M.. Now, if you are a non- CS-IT guy….may your soul rest in peace…I had some friends from non CS-IT, poor guys, some of them just used to go out from room in the mornings at  6:30 A.m to their classrooms., used to return around 9-10 PM..sometimes didn't return at all..doing night outs in night labs. Most of them used to go to GEC on weekends also. All this labor was done just to get passing marks and still, very few of them succeeded to clear all the modules in their first attempt. Well, I can say for sure, if there is a non CS-IT guy who has completed training from Infy, there is nothing in this world that he/she can’t do, nothing else in life they will find difficult or tedious or obviously laborious.

Swimming Pool

Badminton

Well, the thing is that training life in Mysore is something that could be called as the best of your life that you can ever have. You get the opportunity to have a life that is challenging….aka “Toofani” and those weekends that you ‘earn’ after striving hard for those 5 crucial days every week, you gotta enjoy them…every week, 2 hours before each of the 6 shows of movie, you get the pride of standing in a well organized, punctual long queue (containing around 1500-2000 engineers: perhaps the longest queue in the world for engineers….i don’t know why infy hasn’t claimed for Guinness record yet). In the morning you just get up, wearing trousers and t-shirt and a small bag may be having TT bat or swim suit( which I used to have) and u just get out…don’t know what you will do today as there are hell a lot of choices like to play every sport you can know of, and any leisure activity you can think of like, watching movie, food, swimming pool ,guitar classes, TT, lawn-tennis, badminton, pool, bowling etc. etc. etc…….


I don’t know how many changes training has brought to me technically, but socially, Infy at least made us learn a couple of things …the first of it is to become a good citizen of India. Some times I feel every politician in India, before entering into politics, should have a 4 month training here so that they learn to honestly follow the rules . In Infy, the way management team performs the management of these 25k people, the country can learn from it. Regarding everything, there are clearly defined rules, and for every rule, there are clearly defined people who hold responsibility to make sure those rules are followed. E.g. people use cycle to commute themselves from one place to another within the campus. Well, there are speed limit boards that are placed every 50 mts. And if you are exceeding the speed beyond that limit (usually, that limit is 10 kmph), the guards are there to put an obstacle with their clear signals in your leisurely ride that u are having. One thing is really special about Infy. Even if there is some place where oxygen or light or any earthly possible thing can’t reach, I can bet on all my salary that the security guards will be there. Guards are omnipresent there, I know it’s difficult to hide yourself from GOD…but if you’re able to find a place where you miss the sight of all the guards of the campus, well…you’re more surreptitious than “Batman in stealth mode”. 

DJ Night

Amongst all these we finally completed our generic training which had Java, DBMS, HTML and SE as the 4 main focus areas. Me, Kowshik, Hari and Azeez got through generic in the first attempt. My other friends decided to spend some more time in Mysore. Generic training would have been so boring if not for some of my lovely classmates like Kowshik, Shilpa, Sashi, Lavanya, Praveen, Shweta, Nikhilesh, Kiran, Shriram, Akshay and Kashyap. I would like to thank all of you for being a part of my journey.

Generic Class

 Now it was time for stream allocation and again we were all tensed. We had got used to being around some people now and we didn't want to get separated again. Meanwhile friendships were becoming stronger, the hesitancy among people more weaker and the enjoyment at Mysore higher and higher. Time at mysore just flew by and one of the main reasons for that was my gang of friends. We called ourselves the happy holics and had Kowshik, Ajay, Azeez, Vignesh, Naveen, Sibi, Koushika, Keerthana, Swati, Shilpa, Lavanya, Praveen and Sashi in the lineup. The awesome moments I had with these people and the noise we used to make as a group was just unbelievable. Some of our favorite moments used to be "kalaichifying" Kowshik with Bindu and his other girl fans, teasing Naveen with Neena and many more. I also remember when some 15-16 of us went to the VIP movie. We had a great time!

VIP movie tickets

Coming back to the stream formation... so the people who cleared generic in first attempt got nailed first and then subsequently others. It so happened that me, Kowshik and Azeez ended up together in the MS stream. This is where we really took off as friends. Important to mention here that after a few days in stream, I met this girl Vishaka (the scene podadha seriya girl) through Kowshik and at that time I never thought that we would become such great friends. In one of the eventful evenings, Azeez gave us a treat in Floating Restaurant because he was leaving to US for higher studies. It was another memorable evening.

Floating Restaurant

After Azeez left me, Kowshik and Vishaka - the three of us had the time of our lives. There's nothing we didn't do - studying, playing, pranks, parties - you name it and we did it. I am so lucky to have both of them in my life today. One of the best things that has happened to me in this one year is you two.

3 Idiots

While we were 3 in our class, once we stepped out we became 5. Koushika and Keerthana from the May 12 batch were also part of this gang. Who can forget the late night talks we used to have near oasis, the fun we used to have, teasing each other. One particular incident that I fondly remember is when Vishal Sikka came to mysore. After his speech, we were very hungry. We roamed like nomads around 4 or 5 FCs but couldn't get any food. And even the  Dominos in Vista was closed by the time we reached there. Thanks to Shriram, he was generous enough to share his pizzas with us. As the days went by the friendship between the 5 of us grew stronger and stronger. The only people whom I have today, whom I can completely trust are these 4 idiots only.

The Gang

Apart from the training here at the Mysore campus, Mysore as such was a great tourist destination. During my stay at Mysore I had the privilege to visit many places like Shrirangapatna, ranganathittu bird sanctuary, sravanabelagola, somnathpura, sivasamudra falls and BR Hills to name a few apart from the local sightseeing places we have at Mysore. Coorg and Ooty are also very near but having seen those places earlier, I did not visit them again.

During one of our outings

Watching a movie in the multiplex is something you cannot afford to miss if you're at mysore campus. Even though the multiplex remained closed during 90% of my training duration, I managed to watch amazing spiderman, x men, malificent, heropanti and singham 2 there. And not to forget the movies like VIP, entertainment, kochadiyaan, bobby jasoos, jigarthanda, ek villian and transformers which I watched at Habitat Mall and Mall of Mysore.

If it was the day before exam entire class used to stick to their systems and learn as much as possible in the last minutes. Preparing templates for hands-on exam and the only moment that took away our breaths was the screen “Your Score is being calculated” , people really would peep to the monitor as soon as the screen appears.

Walking in the campus at 11:00PM from GEC to our Hostel Room’s was a wonderful experience I ever had. The nature was calm, cool and so silent, cool breeze passing by, and listening to melodious music used to really take away all the stress I had since morning. The silent talk with the nature was so soothing for me those days and I used to love spending time in going round the campus and one single blog won’t be enough to describe the natural beauty of Mysore Campus.

Finally amongst all these stuff the stream training also came to an end. In the last FA we had a wonderful team in Me, Kowshik, Nausheen and Srimanti to complete a successful project of InEssence Bank and we were one of those rare specimens who cleared the entire infy training in the first go itself. Of course, in between we had our postings which were not as we expected. Kowshik and Vishaka got posted to mysore, Keerthana is in mangalore while me and koushika are in trivandrum. We all waned chennai but none of us got it. 

Last Day

MAY 5 2015:

As I type these words today, a lot has changed in my life in this one year. The journey which started in Mysore is continuing now in Trivandrum. I don't like this place but once again I've been lucky enough to have great friends in the form of Koushika, Disney, Akshay, Sandeep, Jasobanta, Debdutta, Sangita, Pratisruti, Nishi and Ankita with me all the time. They make my life here easy. But all through this one year, the only thing we will never forget is the time we had in mysore. However hectic the training might have been, those were the days we really enjoyed. We miss those group chats, we miss those GEC classrooms, we miss the aroma of arena, we miss the DJ nights, we miss those swimming pools and steam baths, we miss those late night walks, we miss the movies at multiplex, we miss those birthday parties but most importantly we miss our friends. I have learnt a lot from mysore... both personally and professionally. If you are smiling after reading through this entire huge heck of a post, I'm sure you also miss mysore as much as me. This is just one story that I have. There are people who have a lot more to tell, more interesting tales to tell. That's why mysore is unforgettable. When I look back at my life after 10 years from now, I may not be in Infy but Infy especially mysore will never be out of me. Thanks to all my friends who were part of my memorable experiences of training at Mysore. To the MAY14LC1 batch, happy anniversary! :)

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