Last day ...in my first company

Well ...as the last days always go ... first you have this countdown and then ...a sudden feeling that time is running off faster than you can live it.... the same time that seemed to be stagnating some days back. And then you realise ..ok its time to leave and you wonder if you will be missed at all....whether you really managed to make any difference while here...then there are those couple of lasts...
the last time entry into the cyber gateway building
the last time swiping of the access card at the entry door ...( tomorrow I will be denied entry through these same gates and I have to stand outside a guest awaiting permission and a paper-slip for entry)... it is strange - the wonderful feeling of belonging and the exactly opposite feeling of being estranged from what was once yours ...
the last lunch at the sixth floor cafeteria ... (this will be quite a paragraph), our cafeteria has these sloping side walls, made of glass. And each floor of slanting walls commands quite a view...views of shilparamam, or rather dull views of the nest building. The best thing, if ever you get a chance, is to watch the rain fall and the drops slither down the surface ... they create an amazing pattern by their trails and their shadows on your face. Well...Vishnu was there and after quite a normal round at the buffet table we tried out something we have been meaning to do for days.
We climbed the staircase that runs the length of the whole building to the terrace. ( no ...that is not the thing we have been meaning to do for days... :) ). The terrace doors had been locked and all my unlocking skills also could not manage to open the wire which had been tied to the door handles. We gave up on trying to get in and took some photos of the view around...... me with my hand over Cyber Towers, Vishnu with TCS building in the background ...and I was down to my last but one snap. We were dishearetened that we missed the top view of cyber gateway (yes.... this had been our aim all along). Then guess what !! :) Vishnu just jumps over the side wall and lands on the terrace....I followed suit.
Now cyber gateway is a building which has two wings so to say, and beams joining them at the very top. Both the wings slope outward with their glass walls at a 120 degrees angle to the ground and then end flat. Thats what I call my spaceship :).
Once on the terrace, we quickly moved to the beams, and after comprehensive and judgemental viewing, from all possible angles, I took the last but one snap of the top view of Cyber Gateway. Childish pleasures ... I agree ... but sometimes the world revolves on them. And I would not have my last day.... in my first company ending on any other note. We also took one of the view of Hyderabad and hopefully our speck of a house. And with that my old camera sort of grinded to a halt ......
Sometimes small moments touch you in such a way that they just touch you ..... (sorry for the bad description but I usually do that when I run out of definitions) like the day I had parked my cycle and run under a mango tree in the IIT kharagpur campus, collecting mangoes falling by the dozen ....their stalks probably weakened by the fierce rain ...I was collecting them in my dupatta which was equally drenched as much or more than me ... with two small girls of the security guard probably, who were competing with me, and sometimes seeing my despair at not being able to match up to their running skills, throwing some my way ..............and another girl, some years older to me, who had dragged me off my cycle in the first place...whom I had met just some days back and didn't even know the name off. It doesn't matter probably that the mangoes turned out a bit ripe and a little sour, nor that we could hardly see the road in front of us while cyclingback because of the heavy rain and had to keep stopping our cycles. It was just that the moment stood out ... like todays' climbing over the wall :).
Cheers to all such moments and those many more to come ... which keep you a child and also help you to grow.
Very childish ...yes. Senti yes... but then I am richer at the same time by much more. So why cry !!!

Yesterday Rajesh and I treated the team at Mainland China. It has some of the most awesome chinese food in Hyderabad. The non-vegetarians had a great variety to try out from ...considering that we tried lamb, chicken, prawn and duck ...all in one day :). But more about that later some day.....in a post probably labelled "my team in IDC".