It All Began Here...

Another week has passed, although with a better conclusion this time - as the recruitments, being as interesting as they always are, didn't fail to satisfy. Half a score girls walk through the same tunnel we traversed two summers ago. The repeated sensations of dejavu were only justified then, even though it was my first time as an interviewer inside KB. Having missed out on the major chunk of the recruitment procedure last time around, I can unequivocally state that this is the first time I formally sat at the other end of a Watch Out interview.

7th August 2009: What one looks for in an interview cannot clearly be put into words. An abstract quantity albeit intangible, can be felt, though not explained. That being stated, its funny then to see a pattern in the way people retort. You place the same question to a number of persons separated spatially or by time, you will inevitably elicit the same responses! One such question turned the hour glass back two complete circles to my very own final interview in the RJB TV room.

Mid August 2007: I entered the room amidst a grim atmosphere, trying hard not to flash all thirty-two. I didn't want to portray myself as a very serious person also. All the same, I can openly admit today that calling the ambience a little unnerving would be a gross understatement. Some fifteen pairs of eyes stared at me intently as I composed myself. I identified but a few then, mainly from the intro-talk, among the many people I would come to know in the years to come. I remember vividly Lefty with a diary in hand (I'm pretty sure) and Khandu, who sported the kind of a look I would have called 'dashing' back then. Banga looked as innocent as he would ever. SriPri, Middah, Sarthak, GoGo, Bonda, Young-Sahith - everyone was there.

I believe it was Khandu who remarked about the disapparition of my spectacles. The questions which followed where not exactly what I'd have called banal; nevertheless I would be lying if I said that they were unexpected altogether! But then came a final question, after which I was asked to leave the room... It was a question which took me back three years, to the days when the mind cared not about anything significant and a time when thoughts meandered so randomly.

Sometime in 2004-05: Standard 9: The day was bright; the guys in their usual boisterous mood and the girls huddled away in their private discussions filled with frequent giggles. The spatial confines of a room which restricted their activities would never be able to incarcerate the human mind. As things stood, on many desks were already carved ambigrams of our names - such was the creativity and joblessness of those days of yore.

It was a free period, and afraid of letting any time go waste devoid of creativity, our minds drifted onto poesy. That was the day, in that very classroom, a friend - my namesake and I sat down to pen a poem; definitely not my first and perhaps not my best, but one which would inspire me to write more. Many more.

The brightness dissolved into the shadows... and there I was, again in KB, asking the same question I had been asked in in 2007. The answer - one which ought to have been my first blog post. One which I had started typing out way back in December 2007, only to give up time and again in favour of a more pressing topic. However, this interview interrogative, one of the less expected ones, finally brings forth the long overdue and heretofore unrecognized. "What is the most creative thing you have penned?"

At that time only one rhyme brimmed my head.

He will come to every being,
Yet he instils fear
With eyes glazed, unseeing;
An expression calm and clear.

He will come when the time is right
Like the grey clouds bringing rain;
Like the darkness swallowing light
The essence of being, he will drain.

When he’s here, we’ll know for sure
By his chilly, rattling breath;
He is Fear, yet so pure

He is here, here is Death…

The interview was then declared complete.