‘Who are you?’ he asked, trying to agitate me. Little did he know that I had spent three afternoons in the previous week preparing for stress interviews just like this one.

‘I am Robin Varghese. I am here for the interview. And you are?’ I spoke slowly, confidently and with composure. Just like it said in my notes: ‘Part C—Stress Interviews’.

‘Oh. Right. I completely forgot. Sorry about that. Did I keep you long?’

He was quiet for some time as he looked at the papers in front of him and then began the interview. He kept referring to me as Mr Geese and even said I was the first person he’d met who had two birds in his full name. I genuinely laughed at that one! He told me his name was Vishal Kaul, but I could call him Vicky.

Vicky started with some of the usual questions that I answered with little difficulty. Then he asked my why I had applied to Dufresne. I was halfway through my seventh reason—to satisfy my innate ability to solve problems and communicate solutions using multimedia tools—when he suddenly asked me which place had the best Gujarati thali in the city.

Alternating between casual and stress questions is an old trick. A trick Einstein was well prepared for.

I told him that Govardhan was good but Parikrama had the best, most calorie-intense experience of them all. He told me that he looked forward to having dinner there later tonight.

Gasp!

My heart skipped many beats. When a company makes any references to ‘dinner later tonight’ most people dismiss it as a harmless statement. But true experts of the campus recruitment phenomenon know that this is a secret way of saying that they like you … that they would like you to join them for dinner later that night when they throw back drinks and celebrate your baptism into the congregation.

He then asked me what I planned to do tonight after my interviews were over.

That confused me a little.

But I decided to make the best of my answer and I told him that I would probably make a few diary entries, catch up with the latest in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Financial Times and sleep while thumbing through any of my many books on corporate strategy, post-merger integration or India entry strategies.

He smiled and asked if I was ‘blowing smoke up his ass’. This was new usage and I assumed it was one of those consulting terms like the ones I had heard Swami use. I nodded vigorously, adding that he could blow ‘smoke up my asshole too Vicky!’

He looked genuinely impressed at my rapid education in consulting lingo.

Vicky then said that he was done with his questions. And he asked me if I had any. But just before I could respond Swami poked his head into the room and said he had to talk to Vicky in private. They asked me to wait outside.