Who is leading your group?

You might have heard of lost chances and grabbing things with both hands, going for it, etc... but here is something that happened in real life. This incident occured when I had gone along with friends for recruitment to Bangalore. I know that going from Surat to Bangalore 'just to get placed' is definitely going to raise eyebrows of some readers here, but rest assured when you have not been able to trick some comapnies into recruiting you, you are quite desperate to pull it off on the next one in the line. That is a different story... some other time, maybe.

Well, on the day itself, after reaching the UVCE campus, I got separated from my group. Maybe I was just plain concentrating, drinking water or something, but during the PPT, in the large hall, I found myself sitting in a very different bench from my buddies from the college. It was ok, kind-of, but then missing your milieu at such a time was a bit disconcerting.

Once the PPT got over, I saw the HR people asking something to the folks there... specifically the NIT Surat guys, and my heart went aflutter... was it something important that I missed?? With a thumping heart and a mind conjuring up a thousand images, I madly raced to the spot. By that time, the HR lady was gone. I grabbed the person (my friend of course) who the HR lady seemed to be speaking to, and this is what we spoke:

Me : Hey! What was she telling?
My Friend: There you are! Yeah, she was confirming our numbers, etc.
Me : And any particular tips, etc? Anything she said... ??
My Friend: Well, nothing much. Just that she asked "Who is leading your group?", and nobody seemed too inclined, and so we quoted your name. She said she will be talking to you if anything needed to be told, conveyed, etc. [And now with a sheepish grin on his face, he added] Guess you enjoy this kind of work... so there you are

I was stumped... !! I mean, I had heard of such a thing as missing the catch because you slipped... but this was simply letting the ball slip through your palms because you are afraid it'll hurt!! I told him, silently, then, "Dude, you missed your chance of getting recruited and sealed my chances". Come on, man... no amount of rambling about how responsibly you organised your annual fest or how you co-ordinated your project team in the college could have equalled your assuming the responsibility then and there. It must have shown through... because at the end of the day, I was recruited and he wasn't. I knew then and there that I was going to be recruited.

Invariably, the thing came up during the HR interview... and nobody likes to miss a chance to praise himself. I immediately launched into the usual blah-blah-blah of webmaster and sys-admin and 'responsibilities' like that. When I was strolling about in the corridoors later that evening, one of the HR people came and told me, "Mr Sudipta, right? We have some good news for you". What I had suspected this long was now confirmed... 3 hours before the actual results were declared. Sorry, my friend, you had done something which you should not have. Right now, even though you are placed, can you answer the question, "Who is leading your group?"