Then I said to myself, "What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?" And I said to myself that this also is vanity. For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.
-Anonymous
Sometimes you have a chance encounter with a picture of yours from a different era, and it is like being introduced to your Neanderthal twin from a different world. An emaciated look, sallow eyes, with the only thing worse than your hair-do is your sense of dressing, when wearing oversized tee shirts or tooooo-low waist jeans were in vogue. You look at yourself from the past and wonder, who is this obnoxious creature? I guess it is okay to make fun of oneself publicly. I had one such chance encounter, but not with a picture of mine from the past. Well, it was a picture sort of, but more of my academic achievements, or the lack of it. It happened one day that the TnP in-charge of my branch, Gaurav Choudhary, sent a text asking to prepare a CV and then e-mail it to him within two days. As ordered, I sat down to write, or type, my first ever written Curriculum Vitae (CV), and it was like having a glimpse of the outdated, backdated, anything but the glamorous past.
So......it was the first time I was making CV for myself. Maybe, it’s an indication that I will be out of college soon and will need to fend for myself. The dreams for a lucrative and money-spinning job have just started to take shape, and an impressive resume seems like a good idea to make initial contact with the aliens. Yeah, the feeling is something akin to that. The only trouble was, there was nothing much impressive for me to show off. Not a very rewarding summer internship, no fellowship, no real research experience. However, something had to be written, and that was what I did. Over the next few hours, I took a ride into my past and dug out everything, every single pettiest thing that I ever did and blotched it all over my resume. After continuous hard work, I was finally able to write a quasi-decent and quasi-presentable resume. All the facts about my life, which I had brought to my mind from the hinterlands of don’t-ask-me-where, were all there. For the next few hours of my life, I sat there wide eyed; looking at the wreckage from a disaster movie, my blotchy and mottled, a catawampus CV.
It started with a very confused and baffled-looking picture of mine (who gives their pictures in CVs?) with that desperate look on my face, as if begging the HR to recruit me. What was I thinking, they would take one look at my “handsome” face and let me in? Then came the information no one cared about... Address, Telephone number, Father’s name, Ancestral property’s location, Name of the first pet. (Some of these are exaggerated of course, but I will leave it to you to figure it out.) What, were they going to write me letters? The next “ahem” part was, well, “Sex: Male”. I am impressed I did not mention caste, mother tongue native language, and the name of ancestral village.
Then came the “Biographical Information”, which was fine I guess, but for the parenthesis that said, “In reverse chronological order”. Yeah, as if the order mattered, and more importantly, as if it was rocket science to figure out what order things were in. Of course, every institution I attended had to be listed with the “marks obtained”, because how can one trust the transcripts of my great university, assuming the transcripts reached them on time? Then started the actual meat of the CV thankfully, institutions attended, random projects undertaken, with the mention of everything, from holding a shovel in the lab to ramming a core-cutter into the soil last week. Even things like “had 95% attendance in class”, “recited nursery rhymes 18 years ago”, “sung a song on Teachers’ Day”, or “could eat during class without getting caught” found an apt place in the CV. Then there were awards and accolades. “Stood 7th out of 120 innumerable students in my school”, “won awards in debates and collages” (who cares?), or “sat through boring seminars” would find a place as well. If this was not insult enough to my academic achievements (or the lack of it), there would be a separate section dedicated to extracurricular activities, because being a house captain, an indispensible member of the Cancer Aid Society, playing Santa Claus for play-groupies on Christmas, standing behind on stage holding the Tricolour on Bapu’s birth day, anchoring soporific events should also count, or giving numerous super boring paper presentations continuously. Not to mention learning gazillion words from Barron’s, or the ability to gobble 50 gol-gappas in a minute.
Whether I like it or not, this will be an indelible part of what I was. It might take years of grooming, feedback, and doing some fruitful experience to build my credentials in the field, and to evolve as a professional. To put it differently, the present me is because that was the past me (though the college in between has metamorphosised me a lot positively, but still........12 years of schooling and 3 years so far for college; do the math!!). I looked at my CV with a mixture of both love and hatred. Is this who I used to be? Desperate to get recognition even for a seminar I attended and slept through? Or being exceptionally good at “plagiary” when it came to writing a test? Was I hoping my experience with being a part of a cancer club, or being a good counter-strike player was about to get me recruited in my dream company?
Yeah, I know we all have to start somewhere, and build from there. Just that early men did not have that polish doesn’t mean they were any less successful in their environment. However, call me smug, arrogant, thankless, whatever, but it doesn’t hurt to make fun of thy own once in a while. Except that 10 years down the line, I would be reading my CV and laughing again. “Went to XYZ dam for an inspection and got the Project Engineer suspended”. (my batch-mates will understand this ;P) Who cares?
