"Vista Food Court" - Infosys, Mysore Diaries - #BlogChatterA2Z

 After our hurried trip to Udipi, we came back to the campus on Sunday night. 

“For the first time, I feel relaxed coming back to the campus on a Sunday night. We have no important classes tomorrow nor an upcoming test. Feels great”, I said.

“Same here”, Myra replied, “I can finally spend some quality time with Chetan”

“Spend all the time while you can. We have about 14 days left on the campus. “, Arjun replied.

Myra looked taken aback and worried, “You’re right. Let me call Chetan right away “

Arjun and I looked at each other. We sped up so that Myra could talk to him in private.

“Lucky fellow”, Arjun said.

“Who?”, I asked

“Of course, Chetan”, he replied.

“Do you like her?”, I asked without thinking.

“She’s a good friend. Nothing more. I did get a little upset when she started dating Chetan and that did confuse me. But would I ask her out? No. I cannot spoil what we have by asking either of you out.”, he said. I was surprised that he’d given such a long explanation without any prompting. 

“Nice thinking. But didn’t you like anybody in these 6 months?”, I asked. Arjun smiled. 

“Come on, you must’ve liked someone. I had a crush on Gaurav. Myra dated Chetan. “, I chided him.

“It's a secret.”, he smiled mischievously. 

I was annoyed and did not prompt him anymore. 

“Priya, where do you think we’ll be posted?”, he asked me after a minute.

“Hopefully, Hyderabad. We listed Hyderabad and Bangalore as our preferences, right?”, I said in a worried tone.

That was the only worry remaining: our posting location. 

“We’ll have to wait a week”, Arjun said.

“Yes”, without realizing it, we had reached our hostel. Myra was far behind us. 

“Let’s meet tomorrow? She seems to be busy.”, Arjun said.

“Sure! Good night, take care”, I replied.

I always felt nice talking to Arjun, he was a friend in a true sense. No judgements, no complications, just a friend with whom you can have both simple and deep conversations. 

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The next morning, we had a short session about projects. The instructor gave us an overview of what they’d be expecting from a typical project.

“You have about 10 days to complete the project. You are all expected to work in teams. Each team can have about 5 members but that’s flexible. We have a list of projects and you can choose one. If you have ideas of your own, please talk to me.”, he said. I mentally chose my team members.

“Each team has to work on all steps of a typical SDLC (Software Development life cycle) which include: Requirements gathering, Analysis, Design, and Implementation. You have to submit deliverables for each step of the SDLC. For e.g., for the “Design” phase, you’ll have to submit a high-level and low-level design document. I’ll share a document with all the details. Your project is deemed to be complete when you submit all the required documents. Also, on the tenth day, you are supposed to give a demo of your project. You can now form groups and you are welcome to work with your groups in this classroom”, he concluded.

Anusha, Rishi, Swati, and I gave one another a thumbs up. 

I could see Myra and Arjun walking towards us. 

“Let’s check with the instructor. We’ll be a team of 6”, Arjun said.

“You are smart”, Rishi said to Arjun. 

“Of course, anybody could guess our group members”, he said.

“Let’s go”, Myra said. We walked towards the instructor.

“So quick?”, the instructor said, looking at the 6 of us.

“Sir. Can our group have 6 members?”, Myra asked.

“Sure. Would you like to register your group?”, he asked us to which we agreed. We finished the registration and came out of the class.

“We have 10 days to finish the project starting from tomorrow. So today, we are officially free. What shall we do?”, I asked our group, coming out of the class.

“Let’s explore the campus. We haven’t been at all the places on the campus”, Rishi said.

“Nice idea. Let’s make a list of the places that we haven’t explored on the campus.“, Swati said.

We went to the Magna food court and came up with a list. 

“Let’s visit the place where the word “INFOSYS” has been formed from a cluster of buildings. We can see this from the aerial view of the campus”, Myra suggested.

We all agreed, had a quick lunch, and started to the place. This was located far deeper inside the campus. It was nice that we had lunch before walking to this place. After a while, we reached the location and could see the buildings. They were just normal buildings and did not look as if they were intentionally placed to form the word “INFOSYS”.

“This is clever”, I said.

“But disappointing. It’s just some buildings.”, Anusha said.

“Fortunately, there’s a beautiful food court nearby. It’s called Vista and it’s not operational all the time. It’s mostly for the ICICI employees working on the campus”, Rishi said.

“Have you been here before”, Swati asked him.

“No, but Manish told me about it.”, he replied.

Arjun pointed to a sign. It said “Vista food court” and had directions to reach it.

We walked towards the food court. We reached a clearing and on crossing it, there was a beautiful building which was surrounded by greenery. It had an open layout and a large shed-like roof. The words “Vista food court” were etched on the top of the door. 

We took the few stairs in front of it and walked inside. The food court was large and spacious. We looked around –there were a few stalls but there weren’t any vendors. 

“Guess, it’s not operational”, Myra said.

We stayed there for a few minutes walking around out the spacious hall.

“Time to go, not much to explore”, I said and we all walked out of the food court.

It was a beautiful food court but wish some stalls were operational. 

“Okay, next location: Mythri food court”, Anusha said and we all started walking towards it…..

-- To be continued

This post is a part of the Blogchatter A2Z Challenge.