Internship with Adhunik Group — Surojit from IIT Kharagpur
Daily Winner for: – 30th July 2012
Name of the intern: – Surojit Chakraborty
Institute: – IIT Kharagpur
Organization interned with: – Adhunik Group
It was in the midst of my final semester examinations and on the eve of the toughest paper, I got my internship confirmation letter from Adunik Group. Suffice it to say, there was hardly any scope for celebration and I just had a glance at it before drowning again in the hopeless pursuit of making some sense out of the book open in front of me.
The beginning of a sojourn: Finally it was the 30th of April and now I had to leave for Kolkata as my internship started the very next day. All my friends had already left. It was only with a tremendous amount of determination in the face of extreme lethargy that had set in the day my exams got over, that I finally managed to throw the minuscule knapsack on my back and started for the great city of Kolkata.
It all starts here: It’s the 1st of May and I am sitting in the office lobby of Adhunik Group while my friends are increasing the footfalls in malls and pubs thanks to the holiday they call ‘Mazdoor Divas’. After a restless one hour I am ushered into the room of the Group President- HR where I finally get to choose my project and voila! I am officially an intern here. The rest of the day is spent in running between their two offices a hundred yards away from one another, soaking in the whole atmosphere of the company.
What goes on within the four walls: The next week of my internship went in planning the entire project and receiving excruciating phone calls from home asking for every minute details of my stay in Kolkata — whether the office was good, how the food was, where I was staying and so on as if I were in Siachen being constantly bombarded by mortars. Anyway, it was a novel experience for me as it was the first time I was officially sitting in a conference room in formals devising new strategies at the drop of a hat as if we were going to war the next day. I was staying at a friend’s place and needless to say, “out of the office and straight into a mall” was our motto though we hardly ever bought anything but that is another story altogether.
So where was I again? Yes, the conference room. I spent some lonely days in there as no other interns were visible in the vicinity and Facebook was an alien word (damn those web filters!). At last the planning was done and it was time for the plant visits.
Off to the city of steel: One night just after I had shifted into the guestroom that was finally allotted to me, the dreaded call came. I had to leave immediately for Rourkela and visit the plant the next day. So after a quick dinner, I found myself dozing off in the 3rd AC compartment of my train. I reached Rourkela the next morning and the next phase of my internship started. The HR guys were great there, very warm and cooperative, a welcome change from the monotony of the conference room. It was the first time I was visiting a steel plant and just as the gargantuan structures in there left me spellbound, the heat inside left me breathless and not in a good way. I spent a good 10 days there making much more headway in my project than I had ever expected and before I could say wow, my next call came.
Tatanagar, here I come: I left for Tatanagar on a very uncomfortable afternoon in the third week of May where the next part of the adventure awaited me. I had had enough of guesthouses by then and decided to put up at my aunt’s place. I arrived in the evening and after having a home cooked meal after a zillion years, fell into a deep slumber getting ready for what lay ahead the day after. The company had two plants there about an hour’s distance from where I was staying and I caught an auto early next morning, having missed the company bus; a habit I could never get rid off since my school bus days. As it turned out, the road to my El Dorado was hardly a road and by the time I arrived at the plant, being constantly thrown up and down in the auto all throughout my journey, I was pretty sure my kidneys had changed places and my appendix was stuck in my throat. But it was all worth it as the employees there were as much, if not more friendly as those at Rourkela. I spent the next week and a half there before dropping anchor at the adjoining plant which was still under construction.
Without boring the readers any further, it would be enough to say that my days there were spent mostly meeting and collecting project related data from the executives, rushing between different units of the plant with the scorching sun beating on my head and with an afternoon trip to the canteen to satisfy my gluttony. I met the deadlines I set myself with aplomb and having satisfied myself that my job there was done, I finally got on a train that took me back to Kolkata.
Back to the four walls: I was overjoyed when on returning to the four walls of my conference hall, I found two more interns who had just joined and the dread of another three weeks in captivity vanished in a jiffy. The nine hours at office seemed less what with all the project work and my next couple of days were spent compiling and streamlining the information I had collected so far. Then one fine morning, my mentor asked me to take up another small but vital project as I was almost done with my core one and that only added to the workload. If there was one thing that saw me through it all, it would definitely be the two great friends I had made there. For once we were out of the office, there was no looking back and the “adda” and the tomfoolery that we were a part of were legen-wait for it-dary!
All good things come to an end: At last, the two months of my internship were over and I submitted the project report. I got exceptional feedback from my mentor on both my projects and I was more happy than proud as the two months of hard work had finally borne fruit. I left a couple of days early as I had completed the projects before time and while I was delighted on one hand, I was sad at having to leave the “City of Joy” and my friends behind. But the experience that I had garnered and the memories that I was taking with me more than compensated for the same and with dreamy eyes and a heavy heart I finally boarded the flight to my home town saying goodbye to the wonderful city…. until next time.
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