For the last ten months of my life I have not received any salary. It's not like I was employed throughout my adult life. I have been that normal person who doesn't know what he wants in life. I have been that untalented common man, when I say untalented, what I mean is I have never been that smart next door kid.
Thirty years of my life I have spent in Madras(currently known as Chennai) just running around working as assistant in small films , a motor vehicle insurance agent who ran behind customers and my last job was working as an analyst with Amazon India. I have let down a lot of people including my parents and the very few who actually cared about me. When I realized that I have been that prick who has hurt everyone around me and put myself in a corner building a big fat wall around myself and ultimately becoming an alcoholic.
But there was a point when I just enjoyed being that prick hurting and being depressed. I needed an escape and before that moment I never thought about travelling in my life. I always wanted to be a film maker and have this big happy family.
When I looked back I hardly had ten thousand in my bank account, a room full of empty bottles and I was almost thirty years old. I wanted to run away but didn't know how or where. So I got my passport and for the first time in my life did this foreign backpacking trip. I went to Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
When I was alone travelling meeting new people, listening to different stories and way of life I felt different. I liked this experience. I wanted more of this, so I decided that I visit many more countries and was making plans accordingly but being a typical lower middle class adult this was something very different and odd from regular, normal people. The money needed to keep travelling around the world especially for an Indian is always very high.
Most of my conversations with foreigners had always been about India and how Indian culture is very unique when compared to anywhere in the world. So this idea got struck in my head, there are 28 states an 9 union territories in our country why not I go explore these places before I start exploring other countries.
The obvious questions in my head were:
What about money for travel?
What about my job?
What about my life?
How am I going to do this?
Without having answers for any of the above questions I submitted my resignation papers and started riding. My journey so far can be followed on my Youtube channel ontheroadz for interested people. I had my PF money with which I started riding and as I went on, the first major expense was my bike. Bikers know how expensive it is to maintain a bike and for such a long journey like the one I have undertaken it is going to take away a large chunk of cash.
So I got myself a basic spanner, tool kit and started fixing small problems on my bike. Like I had mentioned I am a person of no special talents. But after few months of doing small mechanical fixes on my bike I became more interested and wanted to explore more about bikes. I started opening up my bike starting from small things like clutch cable, acceleration cable battery, spark plug and went on to silencers, crank case and oil leakage fixes.
In my journey so far I have helped few bikers with their Royal Enfield bikes and scooters. I have got so much into bikes that someday and that day might never come and if that day comes I want to have my own bike garage.
PS: I am still learning and there is a long way to go.
