The Roadtrip..4days,1300km, Bangalore to Goa and back

When you plan a trip, especially the ones which are very long and to unknown destinations through unknown roads, you expect lots of surprises to happen to you. Neeraj and I planned to have a road trip to some place around Bangalore. Both of us were free last weekend and Neeraj also took a day and half off. So we had some four days in hand. Few places like Coorg, Ooty and even Pondicherry came into consideration. But the place where both of us wanted to go was GOA. Neeraj did the planning part. Maps of Karnataka and Goa were arranged, Net was searched for road maps and tourist destination en route. As Goa was 650 Kms away from Bangalore, we were a bit skeptical about going there but we had a beach called Gokarna in our minds, which was some 500Kms away from Bangalore and Jog falls was in that route itself. So the plan was pretty much set. Visit Jog Falls and Gokarna and come back. But life never runs as per your plans, so things went a bit different than we thought it to be. I will try to recollect all what happened to us and the trip during those four days of travel on day by day basis.

Day 1, 19 Jun 09, Friday:

Neeraj took a half day off from office and that was the best decision he made during this journey. We could manage to start our trip at 1430hrs from Old Airport Road. First destination was a small town called Nelamangla. This was a small town just outside Bangalore but is very important junction for traffic movement. Till this place you will get huge traffic. There is one road at the end of this town which goes towards Mangalore which pulls all the traffic towards itself. So post Nelamangla, traffic is descent. From here to Tumkur, the road was ok wild mild traffic. After driving few kms we realized that almost all small and big cities had one road that entered the city while there was one bypass road. These bypass roads saved a lot of time for us. So when you are entering a city, just ask local people as to which road is bypass and take that. Infact we skipped the Tumkur city and touched the highway again at 10 km away from town called Gubbi. As per our plan we had to reach Shimoga by eod. We had cities like Tiptur,Arsikere,Kadur and Bhadravati on NH 206 in the way to Shimoga. Bhadravati is a steel city have a SAIL steel plant there. Beautiful Township. We reached Shimoga district at 2030hrs. It took us one hour to reach hotel Jewel Crown where we had a booking for a night stay. Book the room in advance coz this hotel was real crowded even in the off season. The road till s
Shimoga was good. Mostly two lane roads with no partition, but the traffic was not much so driving was never an issue.

Day 2, 20 Jun 09, Saturday:

We woke up at 6 in the morning. The next destination was Jog Falls. Come out of the hotel, take a left turn and you are on your way to Sagar, the next town en route. Sagar is very important destination for this trip. Make sure that you take your breakfast here. Buy some snacks as well and most importantly, get you car tank full here. There were no petrol pumps in that 150 km ghat section that stretches from Sagar to Honnavar. There is a HP Pump in the sagar city on the right hand side of the road. We started off for Jog Falls at 0700hrs from Sagar. The road was till Jog was nice with few bad patches here and there. But yet again No traffic. The road is narrow and there are some sharp turns and hairpins also so make sure that you drive slowly, you are always on the left side of road and you keep honking your horn at turns. We reached Jog falls at 0900hrs. The view was awesome. We were at the first tourist destination of our journey, so the sense of achievement was making up prouder. As this was June, so there was a very thin line of water flowing down the falls. But then the view was amazing. We left for Honnavar at 1000hrs. This was a continuation of the ghat section. But the road was much narrower and curvaceous this time. Most of the times we were passing through a narrow, one lane road with jungle on the both side of us. There was deafening silence all across. That’s what we call nature at its best. The journey continued through Honnavar, Kumta and we reached Gokarna at 1230hrs. Gokarna is 10km off the highway. There are four beaches and a famous temple called Mahabaleshwar temple which can be visited. Enter the town and go straight, you will reach the temple and the Gokarna Beach. Temple and the prasadam offered there was awesome. The Gokarna beach is not that beautiful though. The most beautiful beach of the area is OM beach which is some 4 kms away from the town. Instead of going straight into the town, if you take a left and go straight, you will reach the Om Beach. There is a Namaste guest house on the beach. Book your hut in advance for 600 Bucks a day. This beach is named so because of its shape which resembles Om when written in hindi. That was a beautiful rocky beach. There was something very unique with the beach. The beach was divided into two sections by a huge rock. There was lots of wave formation in one part while it’s was exceptionally smooth of the other side. This place was silent and serene and we decided to stay back there for the night. We met two South African nationals there at the café. Dave and Rejanna were on a trip to India for one long year. We talked for some 2 hours and I was surprised with their knowledge of Indian politics. As there stay in India was long and without any plans we offered them a ride to Goa with us which they happily accepted. Don’t get surprised, we decided to go Goa the next morning coz we realized that we were very close and it would be fun. At 12 midnight we all went to bed with plans to hit g
Goa the next day.

Day 3, 21 Jun 09, Sunday:

We woke up at 6 again. We had a plan to leave Gokarna by 0700hrs. We hit the highway at 0715 and by 0745 we were at Ankola. We had our breakfast there with our new travel mates, Dave and Rejanna. The one difference between yesterday’s drive and today’s drive was that today we were talking a lot in the car. Lots of talks on culture, tradition, music, education and world of other things were going on between us, that is what happens when people from two different world meet. We resumed our journey on the same highway and reached Karwar. Karwar is a famous port town on the western coast on India. It took as some 20 more minutes on the road from there and we entered the state of Goa. There is a striking difference between the people and culture of the two states and it was clearly visible. As we did not have much time to visit all parts of Goa, we decided that we would touch only southern Goa. Our next destination was Margaon, the second most famous town of Goa after Panjim. Goa is a small state and the towns and cities are very close to each other. Roads at Margaon are very confusing, so make sure that you ask locals for path and confirm them also from others. Out next stop was Colva Beach. The biggest beach in South Goa and possibly the dirtiest. The stretch was very long. We had our lunch and a seaside dhaba. I don’t remember the name of that dhaba, but the food was good. They had lots of options for non-vegetarians. After having a great food there we started off for our final destination in goa, Banaulim beach. This was a beautiful secluded beach, one km south of Colva. Instead of going for hotels which are some 500m away from the beach we went for a shack which was on the beach itself. Go to the main beach, take a left turn and walk 300m, you will get a series of shacks. They charged us just 200 bugs per day which was cheap by Goan standards. The surrounding was clean, serene and full of foreigners. This was the first time that we went into the sea in Goa. The evening became special because of the stupendous view that a rising storm created. The evening was all dedicated to World Cup T20 Finals between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. As neither India nor SA were in the finals, we along with our travel mates enjoyed the whole match without any fight .

Day 4, 22 Jun 09, Monday:

Yet again, we woke up at 6. It was then that we realized that we were some 670Kms away from our homes and we had to drive all the way back home in one day. The Road that we took for the up journey was good and had less traffic also but it was slow. Slow because of the long stretch of ghat section and just two lanes of main highway. We decided to take an alternate path back home. The plan was to drive back till Ankola and then take a left turn to reach Sirsi. Sirsi was on the other side of ghat but this path had only 50 kms of ghat section. We said our goodbyes to out travel mates and started our journey. After reaching Sirsi the roads went a bit confusing. We took all the countryside roads which were not mentioned in the map. Because of that we had to ask a lot of people. But then after lots of confusion and even a fear that we are lost, we reached Haveri, the place where we touched NH4. This was Mumbai-Pune-bangalore highway, a part of the Golden Quadrangle project. It was 0130 when we reached Haveri. Had our lunch at a road side dhaba and we resumed the journey. There were no tourist destinations in this path and the only thing that we were supposed to do was to drive. The road was amazing. 6 lanes at most of the places and 4 lanes at times. We hit the max speed of our journey, which was 140kmph, in this stretch itself. Parts of this highway are under construction, so there are a lot of diversions and crossings on the road. From Haveri to Devangere, there was a bad patch of road also. But the post Devangere till Tumkur through Chitradurga, it was pleasure driving there. The road was as smooth as butter and traffic was as fast as F1. We reached Tumkur at 1830hrs. We took a break at Tumkur as we were sure that the coming 3 hours from Tumkur to Bangalore through Nelamangala was not going to be fun. And it happened as per expectation; I will define that 3 hour as the worst part of our journey. We reached home by 2200hrs. Ordered a Pizza, could eat just half of it and had a great sound sleep.

Trip Stats:
1. 1300 Kms Roundtrip.
2. 4 days in total of travel and stay.
3. 31 hours of driving (approx)
4. 17 kmpl of mileage.
5. 140 kmph as the max speed hit.
6. Unlimited fun

Life....the banjara way

The last post of mine was related to my trip to bokhhalli with a focus on the treacherous journey to the Jumbo Island. For sure i am never going to sail in sea again. Even not in my wildest dreams. Since the last post, i was very busy. lots of things happened in the month of may and beginning of june. These happenings made me believe that however confident you might be, however strong you might be, however willful you might be, your life and its path is not always decided by you. Its the circumstances that drives you. When things go good, you are praised for making the right decision and there is a flip side to it also.
For me, the last one month or so was very unique. Full of traveling, fun, masti, trauma, pain and labor. I will dedicate the next few posts to wrap up all what happened to me in the last one month. but as of now, i am too tired to write anything. so take a chill pill....keep rocking!!!

A trip worth mentioning

It was a long weekend after a very long interval of time. Plans to do something special, probably do a road trip to somewhere close to kolkata, were on for long back. Few places that came into consideration were North Bengal, Sikkim, Shillong, Bhutan and even Nagaland. The last three never got a second consideration because of their unknown journey routes. We kept on discussing North Bengal and Sikkim for long but thanks to the elections and separatist movement in Darjeeling (Gunjan came up with these points) we dropped the plans to these two places. Even I was partly responsible for us not going there. My own travel plans to home was pretty undecided. Finally, one day before the Labor day, we decided that we should atleast go to some nearby tourist spot, and the first thing that came to our mind was Bokhhalli. That was going to be an outing after a long interval of time. Last time we visited Digha and Shankarpur (Gunjan was committed then, now he is committed to getting committed). Cab was booked, bags were packed, sunglasses were on and we started off for Bokhhalli. The journey was pretty descent barring a few nearly missed accident chances. We got a opportunity to have a look at the gates of the temple that we always aimed for IIM,Joka. A small ferry ride to cross the river and 40 more kilometers, we were at Bokhhalli Beach now.
We suddenly realized that we all were very tired ( I badly needed a place to release my pressure off) and we need a place to freshen ourselves. Hotel Babylon was selected for the purpose. We got the room at dirt cheap price. A nice breakfast followed the much needed freshening up process. The next destination was Henry Island. That was one good beach. You need to walk approximately one kilometer amidst bushes to reach the beach and I believe the walk was worth. White sand beach, full of Red crabs and four of us were the only living human species there on the beach. The view was simply awesome and the experience enriching. The next stop was Jumbu Dweep, the most interesting and happening part of the journey. This place was important for me because I knew this name since my childhood (My family Panditji referred to this name in the beginning of almost all the Pujas to represent India).
We hired a private boat (Jetty as they call it) and four of us started our journey towards JD (Jumbu Dweep). Intitally for some 15 minutes, we were in Ganga sailing smoothly. Clouds were on and cool wind was flowing making the journey even smoother. Little did I realize then that the later 40 minutes of journey was going to be hell. As soon as we crossed the river Ganga and entered the Bay of Bengal, the fun quotient started dipping. Initial 10 minutes were scary. The jetty was swinging in a simple harmonic motion and the swing was extreme. Two of the four were not at all enjoying the ride, which was me and gunjan. For the other two, rhea and anu, the ride was complete fun. I remember, me and gunjan were trying our best to keep our hold intact on the sole pole in the center of the jetty. I don’t know how to swim, but that was not the real problem. Even if I had known swimming I would not have been able to anything to save myself or others in case of accident (which looked pretty evident to me then). With every passing moment I was thanking god for keeping me alive for one more second. By then even the jetty driver started to enjoy my terror stricken face and most probably started to shake the jetty even more. That was for sure intentional. Even Sajal Sir appeared in my mind once for his most famous words “water water everywhere, not a drop to drink”. Drinking water there was never an intention. But the shear presence of millions of liters of water around us which looked more like some semisolid paste of water and sand ready to swallow whatever falls in it, made me remember all the good and bad deeds of mine of my lifetime. For the first time I started to believe that there might be “Darr ke aage Jeet” but “Galla sabka sukhta hai” is not the only thing that happens. Your pulse rate starts surging. You tend to sweat even in the windiest conditions. Pictures of your family photograph starts flashing in your head. You start remembering all the amazing things that has happened to you in your life. Finally somehow we managed to reach the island. Once again, we were the only people on the island (barring one stray dog, I wonder how he reached there). The thirty minute stay there was fun. For the first time I experienced water surrounding me from three sides. Mainland India was far away, not in sight. I enjoyed the return journey from JD a lot. The fifty minutes of return was calm, silent and non scary. I slept all through the journey leaving it all to god. In total, that was one awesome day of fun, the perfect kind to say alvida to kolkata which was my home for almost three years.

Alvida to people i love

And finally my last day at this project, GE Oil&Gas , at TCS. This was the only project that I was associated with during my almost 3 year long tenure at TCS. The association was long and beautiful, full of exciting days and end less fun. The journey started on 20th November 2006 and today of 30th April 2009, it is going to halt. In this story, I will write names because I want this one to be a transcript of my amazing memories that are attached to this place. I will never forget few things, things like:

20th November: for that being the first day of mine in the project.
Jan 2007- May 2007: for that being the time when I learnt most of the things. Infact that was tougher than my engineering studies at college, but then it was worth it.
New Building, 4E 43: for it being my first working cubicle.
May 2007: for Saikat being released from RTS and Niraj becoming the next module Lead.
June 2007- October 2007: for that being the 2nd most difficult times for me in project. Infinite number of issues, No Saikat, Suyash on Battle with management, Niraj was a functional resource, Anwesha and Abhishek were babies in project. For that being the time when I worked like hell. For that being an amazing learning experience in terms of Client management. For that being the time when I got introduced to Federico and Antonio.
New Building, 4W 59: My 2nd cubicle. Same chair.
November 2007: for that being the time when I absconded from office for the first time for CAT preparations.
December 2007: for that being the time when I was made module leader on federico’s request.
Jan 2008- April 2008: for that being the toughest, toughest to its maximum level, time in my career. Infinite to the power n issues. 14 hours was the average time that I spent in office. Won most number of appreciations. Fede started trusting me. And all this was because I did not crack any b-school exam so I had nothing else to do.
May 2008- October 2008: for that being the transition time when I started transferring work to Anwesha and Abhishek to fulfill my onsite dreams. Twice we didn’t get the OTM project, so 2 missed onsite opportunities.
November 2008: Absconding again from office for CAT. This time they all knew it.
Dec 2008 – Mar 2009: for that being the time when most of time in office was dedicated to studies GK studies and GD/PI preparations. And off course for being the first time when I was all set to go onsite for GECARS project.
April 2009: for that being the last month at work when I felt most liberated. This time around onsite news was not affecting much. I liked everyone around.
Fun@work: for being another team that I led with amazing people in the team. Organized numerous fun sessions at canteen and 2 huge parties at Nicco Super Bowl. I will miss writing those invitation mails.

And now some people:

Ramesh Kumar Kollana: for taking me in this project and trusting me. Helping me all these days. And being a leader to be looked upon.
Sayarnil Banerjee: for being my first guide, for teaching me SSP5, for letting me use his computer when I needed.
Saikat Kumar Das: for him being my first module leader and teaching me the things corporate way, in fact teaching me things in a tougher way. I respect him for all that he has done to me, but I never want a boss like him for myself in future 
Madhumita Ray: for teaching me what not to do at work. For teaching me how to say no to your boss and much more.
Niraj Kumar: for being my second module leader. For him being a functional resource.
Suyash Srivastava: for lots of reasons and to be simply said for just being awesome.
Ankit Sharma: for being the best support all through these days. Even now. For his motivational talks and caring attitude. For being my party buddy. For lots of other things that can not be mentioned here.
Arunava Das Choudhury: for being an ideal senior in project. No attitude. Always a helping hand. Amazing individual.
Debasis Mohanty: for him being the first person whom I know who visited china for a TCS project. For him being a quite person still rocking in parties. For him being a person who was always with us whenever we went out for weekday parties.
Anwesha Bhattacharya: for he being my cubicle mate all through these days. Sweet, caring, no attitude. She was one who always made me feel that I was worth. She is one amazing friend.
Rohit Tirkey: for being my college mate as well as my project mate. Once again a raely party guy.
Harry Zhang: for being the person whom I trusted for ant technical thing and for taking care of things which even I could not understand at times. For him being a china team mate who created trust in the whole china team.
Abhishek Guha: for being my technical support when I needed him the most. Cool headed and soft spoken.
Wasim Alam: for him being the youngest member of sourcing team. Always charged up and kicking. Will go places.
Tushar Pandey: for saving my ass for all those SSP5 issues. At times he came up with things I did not understand but I still trusted him.
Niky: for being a smart talkative girl with whom I share a good range of bandwidth. For being complex to understand at times but a perfect to make fun of at suyash’s cubicle. Will miss her drawer which remains full of chocolates.
Indranil datta: for him being one of those senior members of the project with whom I shared a great relationship. Great speaker and motivation leader. Always supported me during my CAT journey.
Durlabh Mukherjee: for being my college senior and my PL. a true party guy. He initiated most of the fun initiatives and rocked at parties also.
Makrand Tipre: for teaching me how to remain cool in tough times. For teaching me a bit of AP and for being my cubicle neighbor for sometime. His thoughts remain as amazing as he was.
Bikram Dasgupta: for him being my finance counterpart of mine and my competition. Always criticized sourcing and its people when I did the same for finance. Good at heart. Charming personality. I want him to get married, lets see.
Arindam Basu: for him being one of those people who always had a joke to crack, mostly about clients. His sensible talks were real sensible.
Navin Kayan: for him being a person who always had the latest news about TCS and who always interfered my privacy in cubicle by peeking into my computer at all the odd times.
Dipankar Sen: for him being Dipankar Sen. a replica of BB Paul from BIT.
Pallab Dasgupta, Subrata Kundu and Sourav Bose: for being the most closely nit group of the project. For even going to the toilet together.
Subrata Kundu: for being my GB project partner and making sure that it got completed. For always asking for SIPs and Proactive steps for last month when he knew that nothing like that happens in real.
Manish Saurav: for him being the PL of the project in which I was supposed to visit onsite. For hi being the most tortured TCS employee at onsite. For him being a college senior of mine and for him being a chill party.
Pushan Bagchi: for his Satyam stories, “What I believe” statements in meetings (which were like 5 minutes long, without a pause) and ever lasting commitment to JJ and PII users, John is the name I guess.
Debashree, Arun: for being exceptionally supportive during F@W activities and for being good friends. And ya Debashree is the BPO girl, phone always on.
Subhajit Bhattacharjee: for him being the most creative creature on earth making all the official websites in red, orange, yellow and other charismatic colors.
Nishad: for him being the person who maintained the Night Cab Drop excel for 2 years and finally getting released and torturing people around.
Amruta Rao: for her being the one of those RTS people from Mumbai whom I like. She is a more of a friend now than a team mate.
Federico Andres Marini: for being an awesome client IM. Supporting me always and trusting me for whatever I did. At times even moving my code to production without testing them. For being a source of inspiration and for always keeping me on my toes. Great leader and great individual.
Antonio Piseci: for him being that person who loved me and always appreciated my efforts, however small they were. At times he was irritating also but he is just Perfect!!!. And yes I will miss hi “Any News”.
Deborah Tombini: Never worked with her but even then I will remember her for being the nightmare for all the finance guys especially Manish.
Roberta Incerpi: She just loves Suyash.

I must have missed few names and few occasions but then it’s just too much of writing for today. One this is for sure, this project and its people were great, all of them. I had great time working with then. Memories will last for long…..

I hate friend's friend

This was not the first time that I was traveling to Ranchi in an early morning Shatabdi, but like any other time, I was excited. With every bought ticket and every boarding on train or flight, the only thing that I think is that who would be my co-passenger. In long journeys, this thought becomes very important for me because I am not one of those who like reading novels and not also one of those who can remain in mute mode for more than 48 hours. As any other single ready to mingle guy, I always wished that I may end up getting a smart, intelligent and beautiful young lady (Boy!!! don’t laugh, I know few of them who are pretty and intelligent) as my co-passenger and on this day also the wish was same. I booked a chauffer driven Civic to drop me at Howrah station in time. The train was standing at platform 10. My legs were pretty excited to reach the seat and I started walking towards my coach. Ok so there I was. My name was correctly printed against seat no. 52. Being a chair car, 52 was the middle seat in the 3 seater side so this time the probability of having a dream co-passenger was higher, 100% more than same figure had I got the window seat. And then the search began as to who was sitting at seat 51 and 53. Wuff!! What day is today. On 51, Ms ABC, F 22 and on 53, Ms XYZ, F 23 and of course on 52, me, Mr Demanding, M 24. So it was kind of my day. I was more than happy. In fact elated. I went directly to the washroom, prepared myself for the occasion and started walking towards my seat. Man, that was more than what I expected. Untill I was at my seat, there were two young ladies sitting besides me, one at each side. But when I was there on my seat, I had two young, beautiful and smart ladies sitting on either side of mine (intelligence was yet to be checked, but with the looks they had, you would be mad if you are still asking for intelligence). The train took off and so did our chit chat. Both of them were very friendly. One of them was working in an IT Co. while the other one was a student at one of the most famous fashion designing institutes of India. Leaving these credentials apart also, both of them were intelligent. Those were 6 hours of complete fun. We talked on a lot of things. We even shared our numbers with a promise to meet again in kolkata when they are back in a week. In fact one of them almost proposed me. You know the day was real special. We all parted at Ranchi station with a sweet train journey memory in our heads.

Now this was some story. You know these kinds of stories never ever ever happen to me. They never ever happen to you. They at times or never happen to your close. But this always happens to your friend’s friend whom you don’t know. Just ponder over and you will get several instances when your friend had cited such stories saying that you know, one of my friend’s friend, I don’t know him, had this kind of an adventure when he was going to Goa or my friend’s friend met Mukesh Ambani at a Delhi Metro station or my friend’s friend almost killed a lion (hehe, I am sorry for this one, but people cite stories of similar heroic caliber). The point is that all this dream things never happen to you in real but certainly happen, almost everytime, to your friend’s friend (you can extend this pointer to any number counts).

By the way, before I close I must say what happened in my story. I reached Howrah in an Ambassador (Non AC, It was not a taxi, even then it was expensive). Mine was a window seat. And the seat besides me was vacant. The coach was quite noisy but even then I slept all through the journey. And I kept on cursing all my friend’s friend for having such great experiences in their lives.

Shubho Nobo Borsho

A new year, once again. One more of those days which we just celebrate because all the others around us are doing the same. I am neither a Bengali nor do I understand the Bengali culture very much. Robindro Sangeet still remains alien to me. I am yet to understand as to why they pronounce Laxhman as Lakhhan in Bengali. The concept of reading all ‘a’ as ‘o’ is still a mystery. And above all, why do they write my name as Sourav even when I clearly tell them that it is Saurabh and not Sourav as in Sourav Ganguly. But still, I know that today is Bengali New Year. So “Shobho Nobo Borsho” (I hope I maintained the accent well). And all the credit for making me aware of this special day goes to my closest office neighbour who is my cubicle mate and who is one complete Bengali Girl. When I first met her, her Hindi was pathetic. Two years and she has improved a lot. But she still processes Hindi in the same way as she used to do in past. Listen a Hindi word, translate it to Bengali, Prepare the answer in Bengali, Translate it to Hindi and then speak. Generally this process works well. But at the times of crisis when she is under pressure, she mixes it all up. It’s ok. Not a big deal. She is the one who suggested that the Project’s Mid Summer Party should be called “Nobo Borsho Party”. Nothing bad with that name, but come on, we were thinking the names on the lines of “The Bacardi Blast”, “The Summer Splash” etc and she had this to give us. She is one sweet Bengali girl. Anyways the point here is not sketch the picture of a complete Bengali girl but to understand the importance of this new year.
I don’t want this day to pass as just one more new year day. I don’t want this day to be one more resolution day where I promise something to myself and forget it the same day. I don’t want this day to be one more day when I sleep all morning and go out in the evening for a dinner. I want this day to be a day of change. I want this day to be a day of construction and reconstruction. I want this day to be a day of hope. I know that writing a few fancy lines is not a big deal and words like hope, justice etc always fall in place. But my ‘Hope’ is different from the ‘Hope’ that appears in Neta’s speech. My hope is a hope that every common Indian holds that one day I will make my family proud, my friends proud and my country proud. Hope that one day I will be in a position to look beyond my own needs and will fulfil the needs of my family, my society and my people. This hope in itself requires me to develop a lot of courage and strength, and I promise to myself today that I will do it all, whatever it takes, to build myself so that one day all my current hopes turn into reality and I start building newer and bigger hopes.

The ROI factor

Why the youth is not attracted towards politics? Why we always talk about young leaders and end up getting the same old parliament with an average age of 65+? Why the youth participate in the internet protests against terrorist attacks but don’t even come out to vote? Why do we always tend to complain but never care to participate? The simple answer to all these questions is the famous economic jargon called ROI – Return on Investment.
Life of a young aspiring person is mostly driven by this three letter abbreviation called ROI. Almost every action that he performs is first evaluated for its potential ROI. Let us start the analysis with career choices. When we were given an option to choose between science, commerce and arts while going in standard 11th, most of us went for science as the prospects and career opportunities looked better. Yes the ROI at science was better. When we passed 12th and we were asked to choose from engineering, medical or science graduation. Here again we all went to for engineering because medical was hell lot of study and science graduation rarely offered an amazing job. Yes the ROI at engineering was better. I passed my engineering and became IT professional; some of my friends passed medical and became doctors; few others completed graduation in science, arts and commerce and went for jobs. Few years down the line, having worked in corporate India, I am again making a choice, to upgrade myself by doing MBA. I will take loan rather huge loan to sponsor my education. But I am hopeful that the economic situation will improve and I will get a good job. I hope the ROI at MBA remains good. So it total 18 years of formal education and I land up in a situation where I can afford to support my family and lead a happy life. The ROI is education is descent.

Let us now take it other way round. I am person who likes politics very much. I follow what is going on in the country. And thus always tend to think as to what is the ROI of Politics. Education till graduation is a must so I could not plan to participate in politics till then. Taking a hypothetical situation here that I join politics now. ‘Joining’ itself is very vague term here if you are not from a political dynasty. So by joining, I mean that I sign for the primary membership of a party. I will start my work in a small village in Uttar Pradesh. UP because it’s the only place where you can learn politics. I will work for some 5 to six years and then I would be in a position to fight the gram panchayat elections. If things go well, I will be elected. Then 5 more years there and after a huge lobbying I may end up getting an MLA ticket. I may also win. I’ll then start building my image in the party politics and state arena. I may end up getting a MP ticket and win the elections. So finally at the age of some 40+, I will be in parliament. But this situation is as hypothetical as my joining the politics. And having said all that, we also need to keep in mind that before you win any election, its hell lot of investment with no assurance of returns. It’s a situation where you invest some 15-20 years of your life, a lot of money and you might end up becoming just a follower. Take the numbers into consideration and the situation is more horrifying. Just 572 seats in LS (forget RS), the nut seems to be very tough to crack. The ROI figure looks bad, pretty bad.

PS: I am apologetic to you all who intend to join politics for being so pessimistic, but then that is what I feel.