(6/10) Internship: An Endless Array of Misfortunes

When you’re miles away from your home, you can’t afford taking even a single day for granted. You’re absolutely at your own. Life is pretty good at putting into situations in which you don’t want to be in the zone of your experiences. I had a tough time dealing with some such situations.

Medical Emergency

On a Sunday afternoon, I had strolled to a nearby market place to have some food. As usual, I stopped near a momo point and ordered for a plate of chicken momo.

Meanwhile, my body started shivering with a heavy headache and things started getting blurred right in front of my eyes.

I just couldn’t figure out, what’s happening to me & was scared enough! Not exaggerating, but at a moment I felt like I may get over with my life that day itself! Anyhow, I packed my food and tried to walk towards my room as it was less than some 300-400 metres away from that shop.

Within just some 15-20 steps, I almost felt like I might get unconscious. Having an extreme shortage of energy to even put further steps, I literally settled myself for a while on the roadside.

After a while, fortunately, I survived with a little energy to get back to my room and have some rest to get completely recovered.

Rescue Us!

The PG, where I used to stay, had its kitchen and aqua guard setup at the top floor of the building which could be publicly accessed by the tenants.

So, one late evening, I stepped inside the lift with my roommate Sandeep to fill my empty bottles of water. But that’s when the lift got shut with a heavy scary noise! Fortunately, it didn’t hurt any of us.

The safety button on the lift turned out to be the life saver, as it alerted the supervisor to arrive at the earliest possible notice. Soon to realise, a major issue with the machine which may not be in the arena of his expertise to fix.

Somehow, thanks to his basic awareness, he turned off the electric supply to the lift, and brought his master key to unlock the doors. After a series of repeated failures attempts, finally we could see the light of freedom!

If the supervisor hadn’t rose into the situations and rescued us, l had no idea how much hours we'd have spent inside being locked for no reason!

Please, Refund my money!

The major financial blow came in the first week itself, when I was way too desperate to find a PG for myself. I was like not in a mood to extend my stay in the hotel any more or delay my joining in the office. And, this is where I committed a serious mistake, financial one this time!

The Oyolife followed a payment system, where they manually generate the payment link and send you to proceed ahead! After finalizing my first PG, I was instructed by the customer support to proceed with the payment link, they had just sent me out.

And, without any further delay I completed the procedure and had a moment of relief to have an address for next two months.

But, here is where the twist came in! Soon I was instructed by the customer support to make the payment again with the new link as the earlier link stood expired and leaving me clueless regarding exactly when I’d get my refund!

I had made the payment twice due to my ignorance without having any clarity on getting one of them reversed to my account. It took me to write them multiple mails, calls and requests to get this money refunded nearly after a month. This was the time, when I was almost at the verge of meeting a financial disaster!

Somehow the stipend of the first month got credited in that week and I survived again! Because, when you’re miles away from your home, every penny matters!

The Indian Post Tragedy!

I had witnessed the epitome of unprofessionalism when a friend of mine had sent me a letter via speed post service in my office address. Since the day she sent me the letter, I had kept a keen eye on the tracking of the consignment to ensure that, I didn’t miss it out.

The tentative date, when the tracking status displayed OUT FOR DELIVERY, I was at my place waiting till the late evening for the letter to get delivered, but it never happened! Much to my surprise the status eventually got upgraded as DELIVERED! I couldn’t figure out, how this could even happen! With a hope to receive it the next day, I left for home.

But, it didn’t work out then also and all of my queries with the security personnel and the office reception yield no values in my favour, as they had no entry of postman in those two days.

On the third day, with deep anger inside, I reached the concerned post office, where my letter had got stuck. I started explaining my issue to them by showing them the tracking status on my mobile and requesting them to deliver my parcel.

But, their reactions were extremely disheartening. They weren’t in a mood to accept, there could even be any fault on their end! But, I wasn’t interested to lose this battle.

After having a serious war of words with them, finally they had to put their arrogance down and handed over the letter to me.

This made me realize, how important it’s in life to speak up and fight for your interests, otherwise it won’t take much time for the world to take you for granted and put you aside.

The interesting part is, I had never ever revealed my family any of the misfortunes I had encountered during my stay until I had safely reached my home.