Suddenly Shashank came and stood next to me. I straightened my tie, took a long pranayamic breath and stood up. I felt a pulse of positive energy thrum through my body. And the taste of adrenalin in my mouth; metallic with a hint of red wine.

‘Is it time?’ I asked him.

‘Dude, McKinsey have finalized their people and they’ve stopped all interviews. They wanted me to inform everyone who was left on their shortlist. Sorry, man.’

For a brief moment the room began to spin around me. Then I instantly collected my emotions admirably and stopped sobbing in another thirty seconds or so. Shashank didn’t say anything but he put his arm around me. ‘Don’t worry, Einstein. You have more interviews lined up. And besides, Pathak told me that JP Morgan were very happy after you left them.’

I said nothing. I tried to think happy thoughts. I tried to think of Chandler Bing. It always helps.

Shashank walked away and I decided to step outside for a cup of coffee and one of those terrible sandwiches they supply every year during placements.

As I went down the stairs to the snacks counters I began to wish, just a little bit, I had converted my summer internship into a job like Shashank. He had interned with UBS in London. They liked him so much that they had offered him a full-time job.

Shashank is a good egg though. None of the airs that those banker types put on as soon as they smell an offer letter from London or New York. Not like the Rahul Guptas of the world.

There was a girl giving away sandwiches behind the counter. I approached her and gratefully accepted two sandwiches. Of course I accepted them only after she insisted that she did not work with Goldman Sachs or Dufresne Partners in a Human Resources capacity.

Once bitten twice shy has been one of my lifelong mottoes, as you know.

I had barely settled into a quiet corner of the adjacent lawn with my sandwich and a machine-churned coffee when a placement committee member approached me at a fair clip and told me to go ‘at once’ to the Dufresne Partners panel for my first round interview.

I took a couple of deep pranayamic breaths and told positive things to myself, as Deepak Chopra tells us to in his weekly email newsletter. ‘Dufresne Partners needs you, Einstein. Dufresne Partners needs you, Einstein. You don’t need them. They need you. They want you.’

I kept repeating that mantra to myself till I reached the Dufresne interview room. There was nobody around. Not a single soul. Not even the student representative. I stood around awkwardly for a while before deciding to grab the initiative and create some momentum: I walked up to the door, knocked twice and then walked in, a look of determination on my face.

Inside there was a gentleman with his back to me, facing a corner of the room with his pants down around his knees. His shirt, thankfully, was long enough to cover his behind. There was a tube of some sort of ointment on the table next to him. He turned his head around and looked at me. Oddly enough, he looked calm and cool, collected even.