An Interview Memory

I was watching a satire TV show. Someone gives an application to the agriculture department for financial aid since he lost his crops during floods. He faces many hurdles (getting lots of certificates like proving he is male, he is the person who actually files the application etc) and the show ended this way – after seven long years, the funds get sanctioned and the officer visits the applicant's house to disperse the money. The officer meets the son and asked him to call his father to sign the paper (so that he could handover the money). Son shows a picture on the wall and says that his father is no more. Then the officer tells – now there is another issue, please bring a death certificate. And then the dead man in the picture asks – Sir, should I myself come with that certificate?

Then I told my wife that I too faced similar situation to get the insurance money (though it was a small amount) when my father died. That thought lead me to an interview I attended and then to my student life.

The interviewer (the boss) goes through my certificates and asked:

“What I notice is your academic performance went down and down after every course... your 10th, pre-university and degree. And you said you dropped out from your masters. Why?”

“I had personal problems that time”

“Like what?”

I thought I better start from pre-university since 10th grade is the starting certificate with him.

“I had developed some severe eye allergy before my PUC final exams. It took long time to cure thus I was unable to study well...... It was during my second year degree that my father died. There were many complications and I had to run around getting many certificates and it was very hard to concentrate on my studies”

I was telling the truth. Those were years of disappointment and frustration. My father’s post death events were something really odd considering it was a normal death. Police, postmortem, spelling mistake in a crucial certificate which messed up many other things… migraine during the exam days too played a spoilsport…

No need to say that I lost that job.

[Later, I met many of my schoolmates on the road/bus/sales tax office etc. Many of them became post-graduates, including those guys who were not near me in the class ranking (I stood at 2nd or 3rd position, most of the time, during high school days)].

If fate can come in the form of a human, I want to invite him/her for a cup of coffee. It would be a silent conversation, isn’t it? Me looking with ‘why?’ face and fate sitting with a smile face…