My 'In Between' Interview

This year on a cool Jan Sunday, suitable for a picnic with friends on the outskirts of the city, I was called by some organization for an interview. I won’t like to disclose who had called me or what was their motive, but I would tell you my experience in my first Interview.

The Institute had a campus in Salt Lake, but for reasons unknown they decided to call me in Mohanpur, some where ‘in between’ Kolkata and Kalyani (My school has got branches on both these places – just a piece of unnecessary information). Given it was a Sunday, and the reporting time of 9am, made me upset, since it is the time for my sleep. Also it was ‘in between’ my Pre Council exams, which constant made me more and more worried. After waking up, I had to hurry to reach on time to catch the bus (actually 2 busses). After that a train, and then again a bus would take me to the location. So it was a pretty long and tiring journey.

The place was very romantic, and can be described as something ‘in between’ a fully developed town and a fully developed village. I was heading for a university, but while going I saw full farms growing crops.

The University campus was some thing ‘in between’ under construction and a dilapidated abandoned place. A building which had not been painted for past two decades was marked as a place for ‘trainees’ of some program to stay. A few yards apart that sign, on a corner, it read that it was ‘Pig farm’ I did not understand why the authorities referred to the students (trainees) as pigs. But after considerable amount of research I found out that it used to be a pig farm, when it was a part of some Farm. Now it had been taken by the University and a new sign board put up, but since the high authorities did not order to put down the old sign, it remained.

There was also a pretty large and long lake resembling a small branch of a river. If you love someone, and you are sitting next to it, then it will surely make you think of your girlfriend. The life of the students must have been romantic. A bridge was there for people to cross, it was made of wood and it resembled real countryside. The Campus was pretty clean and the people there did not dispose plastics here and there. If I knew of this lake, I would have got a fishing rod, but sadly life is unpredictable.

The mode of transportation was great. Though busses plied but those were only on high ways. For local transportation, the vehicle was ‘in between’ a motorcycle and a cycle van. It looked weird, but I was just amazed to see how people (and even women) were using that mode of transportation. It was a Green County, because it recycled even the motorcycles. In those vehicles, the front part resembled a motor cycle and the back part resembled a cycle van. So it was a recycled product.

The ladies, whom I met in the bus, were mostly headed to Kolkata. And they thought that it was illegal to chew betel leaf in public and so they (over)used lipsticks as a substitute to keep the lips red enough.

Finding the ticket counter for the railway was again another difficult job. You could see the station and even get to it (and to the trains) even without noticing the ticket counter. This was because the counter was housed in a small room beside the station. But incredibly the queue for buying tickets was long enough to waste 15 minutes. This is India, we don’t travel without tickets.

While coming back, my co passengers in the train were highly intelligent ones or maybe the ones ‘in between’ highly intelligent and not at all intelligent. I overheard a conversation which made me think this. The train had stopped suddenly and no sound (of the train) could be heard. This usually happens due to traffic control when another train approaches. This gave my co passenger a chance to prove his intelligence to a little boy sitting next to him.
He said, “All is over now”.
The boy enquired, “Why what has happened?”
He answered, “The worst has happened – there is a load shedding”, probably he must have been in great hurry.
After some time the train began to move as usual. The man was a bit surprised as to how the train had started to move again but the little boy answered, “Hey they have switched on the generator.”
“How can a train run on a generator?” said the man.
“Then what has happened?”
“Well the load shedding must have been over,” said the man pretty confidently.