After a few quiet moments, during which I rehearsed my answers to where I saw myself in two, three, five and ten years, Swami shut his laptop, muttering agitatedly. Something he had seen on his laptop had upset him. He grumbled about having ‘only two freaking mines left. Almost a company record …’

I sat up straight waiting for the expected résumé-based grilling.

Swami then asked me for my résumé.

There was a moment of hilarity when it transpired that neither of us had copies of my résumé. In fact Swami had never even seen my CV before. ‘HR has a fantastic way of screwing up, I tell you, Robin!’ he said.

So he told me to start at the top and work my way down to the present day.

Can you believe my luck? I had prepared this question in great detail just for such an occasion.

I began with the nail-biting description of how I was born on a stormy, rainy Tuesday after a tense seven-hour-long labour, during which, at times, my conception itself had seemed doubtful. Swami could hardly say a word as he sat spellbound.

I had just begun a vivid account of that time in seventh standard when I was robbed of a surefire third place in the poetry recitation competition by Andrew Menezes, that vile teacher’s pet. I was about to tell Swami how once again I had maintained composure in a time of stress and pressure (wink!), when he received a call on his mobile phone.

He excused himself by getting up and walking to a corner of the room. I could not help but overhear him say to someone that ‘Project Parabola’ was on an ‘accelerated timeline’ and would quickly achieve ‘critical mass’ as soon as ‘resource optimization’ and ‘incremental scaling up’ had been achieved and that there was still some ‘brainstorming’ and ‘storyboarding’ to be done.

At that moment, Diary, I swear, I knew that management consulting was the career for me. I could literally hear myself discussing projects like Swami was doing on the cellphone. ‘This is senior principal Varghese here. I called to say that we have achieved zero hour despatch capability in order to roll out paradigm strategic shifts on Project Tachometer. All systems are go. I authorize resource launch in fifteen minutes!’ Awesome.

When he returned he looked at me blankly for a few moments before I reminded him that I was taking him quickly through my personal and professional profile. His eyes widened and he told me that I could skip directly to my academic scores and summer internship experience.

Ten minutes later he told me that the meeting had gone well and he wanted me to come back and talk to a partner with the firm. I assumed that this partner was someone senior to Swami in the firm. I thanked him profusely and told him that I hoped I would be able to come back soon but then who knew with all the mad scheduling and hundreds of interviews going on.