Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Kanha: The journey

I have had a really overscheduled life since the past 6 months. Even worse was the fact that there were other people who were dictating my schedule. A client would call up at 6 and expect to deliver stuff by 9 in the morning. That would entail a very late night trying to get stuff done.
I am convinced that I am not made for clear cut well de-lineated schedule. I am made to live like a university professor, with downtime to meditate. With that though in mind I too a really slow train, in a second class compartment from the journey to Raipur, on route to Kanha. To go from Delhi to Raipur, I picked the Samta Kranti Express, which takes a leisurely 24 hours to reach Raipur. I am enjoying this time not shared by people who are squeezed for time; people around me are farmers, traders, people working in government who have taken LTA and are going back to their "native place". People, who do not have important “assignments”, hence are not afraid to “waste time”. People who in Marketing jargon would be SEC B.

Farmers seem to have moved ahead in life while I have been slaving away or stuck in traffic jams. The farmer in question had a Sony Handicam , a high end mobile phone and was coming from Delhi after dropping his son to study medicine in Moscow. The journey was quite uneventful, with the farmer telling me his impressions of Delhi( very nice roads, very rude people), sharing food with my fellow travelers and reading a Robert Jordan book trying to make sense of The Wheel of Time.

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