Eye of the Tiger - 2

(Continued from Eye of the Tiger -1 post)
I was suddenly woken up with a start. A sobbing noise was coming from Deep’s side. I came down from my bed and going towards Deep’s bed I found him on his back staring at the ceiling and sobbing. Seeing me beside him his sobbing became almost an inconsolable weep. I was aghast. At 2 AM in the morning, a full grown man crying like a baby. I sat beside his side. What’s the matter? Please don’t hide and tell me? I will try my best to see thru any problem you have. No, ID!! No one can help me. And still he was crying. After fifteen minutes of cross-examining him, I came to know that the root cause of Deep’s distress lies within the premises of Infinite Technologies or IT. I came to know that IT has a stringent way to test the incoming trainees thru exit tests for all the training courses. Actually they try to select the wheat from the chaff using their certified testing techniques. As per Deep, any one is always counted as good as his last success. You might be good in one subject and not so good or bad in other. But the goodness in one area here loses all its meaning once you fail to acquire even the passing grades in another. Being a management grad myself I was terribly shocked. Coz I have always personally felt that every entity has got its core competencies and the success of that entity can only be gauged as per those competencies. What will happen to me, ID? If I do not get an A in my next round of tests I will be shown the door straight away with a month salary in advance, he said. To console him I encouraged him by saying things like C’mon.. this is not such a big deal. You will surely get an A next time. He just kept looking me blankly in-spite of my ramblings. Then he laid down another fact which actually made me feel the pre-morning nip in my bones. ID.. Do you know Grade A means here an aggregate of minimum 80 %. I have 3 papers left and even if I manage 80s in two of them, the paper on UNIX is a very difficult one. I have already failed once in that paper. So is it possible for me to get an A Grade there as well? I became silent in front of his questioning looks. How much time is left for you tests? I asked. Ten days. That night none of us slept anymore.
Till next morning I have swore to me that I will be doing whatever I can to make Deep overcome the bad time. I made him swear that he will give it the best. We stopped going outside. I even called up my office to say that I will be unavailable for any client meets for next 2 weeks. We started having lunch and dinner "dabbas" at home although both of us hated them. Whenever he was studying I made a point to make tea / coffee, bring the extra ration of smokes, encouraging him every time by telling him he is not alone etc. His phone calls became shorter until he started using me as the receptionist for himself. Every time some called up my job was to be as inventive as possible. On the D-Day before going to office we both visited the nearby Kali temple, where a confirmed atheist like me also prayed for him. May be I was a bit selfish too, as I knew that if Deep loses his job, he will go away, leaving me to count the costly rent all by myself. May be I was also afraid of staying alone as well after such a good time with him. ( To ended in the next part..)