PR.. Did I really know it!?

PR PR PR(Public Relations)..
Every time someone asked me ‘’Priyanka what are you going to take up!?
I proudly answered ‘PR’
At the end of the first year of my course people asked me what specialization was I planning on taking up and I still proudly answered ‘PR’
I reach pune for my internship at Perfect relations and am still convinced that am fit to do PR.
As I reach the office of perfect relations at 9 in the morning expecting a very cool and fancily cool designed office with hunky dory people I realize that its not that nice and awesome as it looked. I waited for a good one and a half hour for the first person of this office to walk in. The very appearance of that person got my expectation lower than I thought it to be. But that little hope that things would get better also gave way to a huge disappointment when I saw Murli sir, my boss who had taken me as an intern.
The first lady who walked into the office strolls across the room towards me to increase my aversion towards this place!
She said ‘’ what can I do for you?’’
I said ‘’am here to meet Mr Murli!?’’
She said’’ You are here for a internship right!?’’
I replied ‘’Yes mam’’
Then with a low voice that she possessed she said ‘’ You have to write a test of 1 hr’’!
That simply added to my frustration of waiting and the ambience of the place that I existed in… after months of fantasizing of working in a PR agency!!
I dragged my feet sloppily to a room in the office where I felt like I was a school girl writing an entrance exam all over again! The room looked very grey and dusty with a table and a couple of chairs along with a telephone and the server. But there was just one thing that I really liked about this room was the small and composed balcony which opened out to a space with a huge tree which partially sheltered the balcony and the pub Thousand Oaks that it overlooked. Taking a deep breath and trying to be positive I walked into the room and was seated on the chair to get my question paper to gauge if at all I was really fit for the job! I received the question paper only to know that I was not bad as I expected myself to be as I was really not prepared for it! Thanks to my semester exams which had just finished a day ago. As I sat through answering the paper I noticed the number and the kind of people who walked into the office which totally threw my expectations for a toss! But the last bolt on the coffin came when my eyes met Mr Murli Pillai, my boss who had taken me as an intern. The pains of finding his profile on facebook and flipping through his fancy pictures that had led me to expect that he was real cool and a handsome looking guy which turned out to be a disaster! He was a thin puny guy who was dressed in formals which looked as if a skeleton was given some clothing to avoid being ridiculed with shame. But the fact that his name sounded like a south Indian still kept me shutting out from the last ray of light that came from a pin hole. I had finished giving the test and I apprehensively waited for the results with fingers crossed just wanting to know that I would be working here for the next two months as I had made my trip all the way from Bangalore to pune only for this purpose!
After a long wait I started getting partly jittery and was almost on the verge of calling my dad to book my return tickets when Mr Murli turns up with my paper. As he walked into the room I stood up shook hands with him and introduced myself. He pulled a chair and sat down opposite to me. Then he flipped through my answer sheet and said "Do you read newspapers regularly!?
I hesitantly said NO thinking about my situation back at the hostel
Then he asked me "Why aren’t you reading newspapers being a media student’’!?
I had to tell him something other than plainly grinning at him so I said ‘’Sir, I was busy with exams of late so I haven’t been following it up’’
He sensibly said " That’s not a reason to avoid reading newspaper
At the max how much time will you take reading a newspaper!?"
As usual, I shamelessly smiled at him which I thought made it clear to him that I DON’T LIKE READING NEWSPAPER ALL THAT MUCH
He said in a very sweet and diplomatic tone “This is our bread and butter without which we cannot survive’’. That very truth really struck me hard regarding what I expected things to really be.
Then he gets a copy of Hindustan Times, a mainline to be precise and places it in front of me while I watched it happen so blandly like my dad just declared despotism for 2 months! Then he went on to explain the different sections in the newspaper and the way to look at a newspaper in a PR’s perspective. So there I sat with that one newspaper for 134.5 minutes when I felt that mother earth was way too elated that I was reading a newspaper for so long that it came to a standstill!!Those 134.5 minutes felt like 60 long years of my precious life!
There was a cacophony as I raised my head from my siesta as to where they wanted to head for lunch! I realized after the never ending 134.5 minutes I dozed off on the table that I was seated with the newspaper (that explains my interest in a newspaper)!It suddenly struck me that my boss said that he would be back by the time I finished reading the newspaper and that time had still not arrived! Did he really expect me to go through it for sooooo long!!?A bell impinged on my hallow.. “Welcome to the world of PR”
My boss quickly makes an appearance to inquire about my lunch.
He said “Priyanka, What about your lunch!?Do you have a Dabba!?”
“You made me wait for so long to tell me if I had plans for lunch!?” was exactly what I wanted to reply.
But since I had to put up with him for the next couple of weeks I confirmed his query saying “No sir, Thank you. I’m good. I have a Dabba”
He nodded his head and walked off. I sat down with the other members in the office and had lunch. That day was probably the longest ever day in my life! After lunch I continued reading newspapers up till 6 in the evening. Then I hysterically left office like a fish that needed to breathe when taken out of water and took a deep breath as soon as I got on the road just to reassure that I would turn up ritually the next day too!