MicroSoft (LXXIV)

  Reviewed by Padu :)

It was a Friday morning. Dad called me early in the morning to inform that he was going out of station. I got up, and Elvia was still snoring. I tried sorting out our room which was full of scribbled papers.

Elvia’s mom entered the room with lingering aroma of coffee. On seeing her sleeping, she yelled, “Hey Microsoft today is Friday. At least today give some thought about getting up early.” I was not surprised. The previous day, one of Elvia’s cousin had called her, as she was in the bathroom, I picked up the phone, “Hey Microsoft, how are you doing?”

I never dreamed about Mic as she did. Our last week continuous preparation for Mic inspired me with the slightest thought, and a mildest hope of getting placed in it. I was fighting hard to keep up with her pace. Though she had loads to study and practice, she always patiently cleared my doubts.

Her room had completely changed. She wrote MicroSoft in big fonts, and stuck it all around her room. She took color printouts of the logo and stuck them on the cover of her books. She jotted down the key points, time and space complexities of algorithms in papers and stuck them on walls. Her room was more like John Nash’s deciphering room.

She had already mastered Cormen-the divine book for algorithm lovers, Silberschatz – Operating Systems for beginners in the respective semesters. She also made a schedule for revision. She almost finished an exercise e-book for Data structures which she downloaded for $11.5 with her dad’s visa card. She had downloaded half a dozen other e-books priced in dollars.

Certainly most of them were available for free, but Elvia’s Dad always used to say, “Never think, while you spend for academics”, and she took it exactly like a computer would take an instruction. She had no time to search for an illegal copy from creepy sites.

Every evening we went for a long walk to relax ourselves. Elvi looked rather she didn’t need any relaxation, as she naturally enjoyed all that crap. Even while walking, she discussed many puzzles and aptitude questions. I always admired her hard work and determination towards her goal.

The beauty of being a CSE engineer is that, one can practically experience almost everything he learns. But when it came to OS we couldn’t work out everything that we learned.

She crashed her windows for the nth time that week, trying to manipulate some dll files and other system files. Anyways she really didn’t enjoy much of OS, she rather found pleasure in making modifications, and analyzing the performance of existing algorithms.

Divya called us, and said that the placement schedule has been put up in the placement cell’s notice board. In the first few slots there were mass recruiting companies. Dream company schedules were yet to be up. Though I wanted to attended the mass recruiters, Elvia was ‘Do or Die’ about Mic.

She asked me to leave for college, and attend those placements, but with the past month with Elvi I became confident that though I may not make it to Mic, I will at least be good enough for some other high pay, good profiled company. So I stayed back.

Elvia rarely spoke of the break up. But she couldn’t stop herself from bringing in Shantanu. For every thing we did, she used to quote some line of Shantanu’s. Whenever I found it hard to solve puzzles in data structures she encouraged me saying, “Harder you hit, stronger you get.”

Though we weren’t there in college to attend the first phase of mass recruiter, Divya told us how students were nervous to attend the interview. They had announced the results for the first mass recruiter at 21:30 pm in front of the auditorium. The whole area had burst with claps and cheers. Faculties and wardens didn’t control the students since they were excited and restless about their first job.

When Parvathi called complaining, that she had failed to make it in the first mass recruiter, Elvi again quoted Shantanu, “You will for sure get what you deserve, if you don’t, you deserve something better.”

She even started acting like she didn’t care about it anymore. She talked about Shantanu just like she did about others. But she didn’t stop writing MicroSoft with the ‘S’ in upper case, and never stopped listening to ‘Teri Ore’ before going to bed.

One fine morning when Elvia just then got up she got a call, “Hello” she said drowsily.
“Hey loafer still in bed, Microsoft placement schedule is up in the notice board.”