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Sunday, June 24, 2007

EXPERIMENTING AND ADAPTING

“Keep experimenting and adapting” should be the motto if one wants to stay in this city….

It so happened that I discovered a bus that took 45 minutes from the bus stop (close to my apartment) to my office in the morning. It was a great sense of satisfaction, and I congratulated myself for discovering this bus…so problem of commuting solved… In the evening I took the same bus….but my return journey back home took me three hours…

Next evening I decided not to take the bus back home. I decided to walk till the nearest station …boarded one train, then another and by the time I reached home, it had taken two hours…so I managed to save an extra hour…great.

Third evening on my way back I realized that there exists a concept of share taxi. So my journey started within a share taxi. Share taxi…train 1…train 2….and finally home….and this time I managed to reach home in just one hour and fifteen minutes.

That’s pretty reasonable by the standards of Mumbai. But just as things were beginning to fall in place, heavy rains have been lashing Mumbai for the last couple of days. The trains are delayed; buses are not at their usual best and situation does not look good for the next few days at least…

This city is a tough city….but at the end of the day it teaches a person to keep on adapting and experimenting…and the resilience of the people who stay here is just awesome…

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

bus!!...train!! and share taxi!!! omg..i thought ppl who graduate from top bskools (and that too with an IIT degree to boast of) wud be much better of.I was expecting something on the lines of a chauffeur driven car.It puts a question mark on my plans of doing an mba.So wat shud i conclude from yr post..is ISB's avg domestic salary of 14.5lac per annum wrong or is it just the miserliness of the writer??

Sabyasachi said...

chauffer driven car...dear...this makes sense in any other city of India....not in Mumbai...

you can afford a chauffer driven car...but not the time...local trains are still the fastest means of transport....

Looks like you are not familiar with Mumbai life....

btw...domestic average salary of ISB last year was above 15 L.

now on your MBA plans...u should know better...

Anonymous said...

senior executives going to their offices by local trains...food for thought...maybe u'll set a new trend or something for budding executives like me
n yes i do know of quite a few execs in mumbai who travel in their chauffeur driven cars... prolly they give more importance to their prestige than their money

sorry for the typo about the avg salary..ok so u earn more than 15lpa...all the more reason for u to travel by a car...more so since ive heard all sorts of stories about how risky and tiring it is to travel in local trains

Sabyasachi said...

well... senior executive and me....not yet..it will take some time for me to reach that level (especially if one works for a large firm with lot of hierarchy levels)

I am just a mid management level manager....(though in a huge firm)

Well...as for commuting...it depends on the individual on how one is comfortable in the Mumbai traffic....if one stays in the suburbs/Navi Mumbai and office is in city downdown....then trains are the best....u save a lot of time (and ofcourse money)

well....about local trains...i had the same view as yours, when i tried them first...i was indeed quite sceptical...but after getting used to it...they are not that bad....and the best thing is that they are magically efficient and fast...

And about the crowd in the trains...i find people quite senior to me taking the trains...for the same reason

BTW...why dont you let me know something more about you...I hate addressing anyone as Anon...