The Eternal Optimist!

What? Were you expecting a proper structure? You won’t find that here, because the current order makes the journey more sensible. The third day of the grand tour begins at Bangaluru’s International Airport where I’m sitting at 7:00 in the morning, cursing the airline company that rescheduled our 4:30 pm flight to 8:30 am. While waiting for the flight, I spot two gentlemen who look like they are from Southeast Asian countries and head over there to eavesdrop on their conversation.  They are having a conversation about major companies. The first guy, let’s call him Lee, was making a comment about Google. The company, he said is facing high attrition among its employees as they leave to start their own ventures. Employees are sort of using major firms to get good money, knowledge and exposure before they start their own businesses. The second man looked Indian but his accent gave the impression that he was an NRI. Replying to Lee’s comment, he said that the way people see compan...

Bangaluru. The most dynamic city in the world.  If you speak to a traveller who has visited the city, he will tell you of futuristic buildings, beautiful gardens, and vibrant culture of the city. Bangaluru has all that, and more, I agree, but the story of my first day in the city begins with a garrulous, pesky auto driver. We met this autowallah outside Blossom bookstore (more about that in this Twitter thread ) and rather than drop us to the location we wanted, he insisted we go check out a jewelry store so he may earn his commission. Ultimately, since he quoted a fare far less than the metered rate, we agreed to visit the shop. When the time came to do this however, we went in through the front door, walked out of the back door, and waited for some time before making our way back to the auto driver. To our chagrin, he now insisted that he would show us significant sights around the city for a fixed amount of money. Although we surrendered before his pestering then, I am now e...

Picture courtesy: Adv. Soumitra Kundaikar The first day of a multi-city trip has ended in Bangaluru.  Despite doing a lot of things and having some weird writing ideas, I am stuck at the beginning of the blog post. I don’t want a typical travelogue describing places, or a plain chronicle of activities. Instead, I will tell you the story of my intrepid travel-buddy whose emotional quotient is close to zero (a fact that he is proud of) and who often gives yours truly a run for his money in coming up with radical and ridiculous ideas. “I have been thinking a lot about the concept of time and space lately” said the travel buddy as our plane took off. (He made very little sense to me and I am struggling to put his thoughts in words, so please bear with me.) “Time and space are related. Time is a measure of how fast ‘space’ moves a certain distance- space-as in a particular point of reference to which the mass moves. So, if you travel faster, and approach closer to the speed of li...