First Interview!

Nope this post is not about my first job interview. This is about the first interview of my life. Confused?
Well I was 2 years and 6 months old and this nerve-racking interview was to gain an admission into a kindergarten of a prestigious school. : O

For many Indian parents, getting their children into the right kindergarten is simply essential. Why? Well, Obviously, the right kindergarten leads to the right primary school, which leads to the right secondary school, which leads to Harvard, Yale or Oxford or the prestigious IITs which leads to . . . Nirvana! :P

So my parents too were under the illusion that the right kindergarten was an indispensable launching pad for an illustrious academic career and they were hell bent upon getting me into one of the very famous school in our vicinity.

Thus started the gruelling sessions of preparing me for the interview, since the day they heard me babble out a few random words, my parents  started pointing out things around me and make me repeat those words. How boring! :P

Sometimes the guest and relatives who dropped by also started making me say things, which sometimes irritated me as they were just doing it for their amusement and never even gave me the promised chocolates.  Bribe a little kid, and don't even pay up!  How very mean. : /

So i would start to  become balky and refuse to answer their questions, and they would try to enact a little tough love by taking away my favourite toys, thereby causing me to go 'Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' breaking all the bearable decibel limits, but of course ensuring that I got back my toys without  having to answer their stupid questions. Smart eh! :D

Dad would sometimes play nursery rhymes on the player, hoping that I would catch a few words and learn them, but I of course found the Bollywood songs more catchy and would start saying random words from Hindi songs and  prance around the room happily while the lady in the tape was going 'Jack and Jill went up the hill.....' , leaving Dad to tear his hair out and yell 'Daivameeeee !' ('Oh Lord!'). Yup it was quite a rhapsody and would have given any musician a severe heart-attack. : )

Though the tunes of all the nursery rhymes sounded the same, In the end, I still managed to master a few nursery rhymes, the only problem being I would pen my own lyrics on the fly by borrowing stanzas from different poems.. : /

So finally the day of my interview dawned and like everyday I made a ruckus about why I was not allowed to wear my favourite pink fairy dress, but my parents wanted me to make a good impression on the interviewer so I had to dress-up appropriately. Really is there a formal dress code for a kid interview too ??  :O
And so the demand for my fairy dress was settled with a bribe of a big milk chocolate. Yup chocolates remain the only way to bribe me even today! :D

The interviewer though din seem so impressed with my frock, but she used it as a prop and asked me to name all the colors in it.
Geez Mom thanks, if you would have allowed me to wear my pink fairy dress all i had to say was 'PINK' but now this multi-colored polka dot frock was gonna  land me in trouble. : (

So i was bombarded with a lot of questions ranging from my name, to what i had for break-fast, different fruit-names, nursery-rhymes so on. Yeah it still puzzles me that if a kid ought to know all these things for an interview, what were the teachers going to teach us in kindergarten. : /

They grilled me for 15 mins straight ( yes it seems like an era in kiddie world ) and luckily for my parents I being an outgoing kid then than the introvert person that I'm today, I answered most of  the questions cheekily.

Then came the bumper question that would seal my fate, the teacher asked me to draw a mango on a sheet of paper.I readily obliged and  drew a big blob with a leaf like thingie on the top and colored the entire blob green.

Teacher - "Baby, mango has yellow color not green."
Me (looking confused) - " Er... This I like."
Teacher (totally lost) - ?

What i wanted to tell her was that, I liked the green (raw) mangoes than the yellow sweet ripe ones. Mangoes will and always remain green for me. :P
Well my love for green mangoes got me kicked out of my first interview and my parents dream school.
Sigh.

After years of changing schools, I again landed up at the doorsteps of the same school that  had rejected me for my green-mango-love.
After going through my excellent score cards of the previous years, the principal was impressed and admitted me into the school even though there was no vacancy (as only 60 students were allowed in one class.)

.....That's how i gate-crashed into my parents dream school and became Class 4 Div- A Roll No - 61 student with an extra desk all for myself. : )

You see Mom Dad, you just had to let me do it my way :D

And even though i din attend Harvard, Yale nor have any plans to attain Nirvana anytime in life, I still  seem to have turned out pretty well. I think. :P