Inside the mind and heart of Venkatesh Sridhar

Finally took the plunge and moved my blogs from rediff to here. Rediff used to take ages to update whatever changes I incorporated in my blogs. I tried to update the template and rediff is still showing me the same screen. Tried to make it easier for you people by trying to add a redirect script in my template worked for a day and after that rediff blocked it. So henceforth you will find my posts here only. I am sure you might have all got the mail I sent you informing you about the shifting of my blogs.

October 18 2004, Mumbai

Finally I am back in Mumbai… Had a wonderful trip from Delhi. In this blog I will give a blow by blow account of my journey..

The Departure:-
I am really thankfull to all the hostelites at IMT for helping me out pack all my stuff namely my pc and my mattress. To name a few, Sankalp,Rohit,Varun,Pankaj,Tanmay,Utkarsh and Raghav. I would like to thank my batchmates at IMT for being such great batchmates and I have learnt a lot from all of them. After hugging and wishing them all the best for the future me and my roomie Varun pushed off.I was dropped at New Delhi’s Railway Station by my roomie Varun Guliani at 3.30 pm in the afternoon on 16th October 2004. And we bargained with the coolie there over the rate he would charge for my luggage and we finally settled for 60 bucks. Then came the announcement that the train was late by an hour and 15 minutes.. So I had to wait for a long time for my train to arrive and then I loaded my luggage and I kept my computer monitor on the space between the two seats and then I was getting calls from my friends so I got down onto the platform so that the range would be better and when I got back on the train I found out that a family of four ( mom,dad and two small kids ) had move my monitor right in the middle of the space between two berths and when I tried to move it back in they protested saying they could not stretch and despite me asking to keep their legs over it they were unwilling. Then I lifted the monitor and kept it on my seat. thkfully an upper berth where I could keep my stuff.

People I met on the train
I met very interesting people on the train. What makes a 17 hour train journey bearable is the different kinds of people you meet on the train. Of course since I was travelling in the Rajdhani I did not get to see those people you usually find on Indian trains. The crowd of course is usually more sophisticated than the ones you find on the normal trains, but each has its own pros and cons. And I met some interesting people namely Mr. Firoz Amir and Mr. Sukumar. The former is a businessman dealing in fashion accessories and the later is the best combo of Indian talent… IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta he is presently working at CareerLauncher and he looks after the Mumbai region. We were having a very good discussion on what all things are wrong in India. And it was very surprising about what all goes in the closed corridors of power. Got a lot of interesting insight into how businesses in India manipulate the system according to their needs. Time just flew as we had very stimulating discussions and before we knew it, it was time to sleep and Mr.Amir was constantly keeping a watch on me as I had to sleep in a very awkard position as the computer monitor took about 25-30% of the berth so had to sleep with my legs bent. He was insistent that I keep my monitor down but I didnot want to disturb the family of four as I felt that if they had to get up at night to go to the loo then it would be a problem so I refused.I woke up in the morning around 8.15 am and the train was late by 2 and half hours so we talked a bit more and in the need only conclusion that we could think of was that we Indians have lost the sense of nationalism, the sense of being Indians, and how we live by the motto

I,Me and Myself

I think if at all we want to become a developed nation we need to change the attitude but would we change that is the question I am sure was on everyone’s mind as we departed on our own ways and I would like to take this oppurtunity to thank Mr. Amir once again for helping me unload my luggage, he is a gem of a person. I would surely be in touch with him.

Closing comments

I guess the blog has gotten big but I hope it was entertaining. And yeah i have moved my blogs to blogger.com and added a redirect since many of you know the rediff blog address. If at all you want to come here directly the address is http://insidevenky.blogspot.com Take care and have fun and do keep posting your comments. Cheers!!!