'Brown Study' Room - My travel

A lot of my thought process is formed of my experiences in my travel. So, I decided to write a brief background of my travel. I spent my early days in Kerala. My roots are in Kerala and its Malayali culture. During my days, Malayalam language published more books than those from the rest of India. I grew up immersed in the kerala literary festival of the 80s. I was fortunate to spend four years of my college in Tamilnadu. Those 4 years and my wonderful friends made me relate to the thought process of Tamilians at various levels. My autodidactism with Tamil opened me to the world of Tamilians.


My second job was in Bangalore(before Bengaluru) for a brief period, that introduced me to the Kannadiga culture a bit. I was working for famous Japanese company, who in the peak/dusk of Japanese economic boom, started the concept of BP outsourcing. I never heard the word 'outsourcing' in those days, the term was excessively used in business publications much later. I got Japanese language training and was fortunate to work in Japan later life. That was the time I received an employment offer from the mammoth ( was a rare fortune 500 company in India those days) oil company. I underwent management training in Delhi for 6 months. It was an incredible opportunity. The job allowed me to travel and work all over India, after my baptism in the world of Energy. I have been to every nook and cranny(bit exagerated!) of India. You name a small town in India, I might have been there. I travelled incessantly for a year. It is inherent in my nature to explore the local food and customs of my destinations. I do not know, how I managed those days without any medication for gastrointestinal disorders. I had lot of interesting experiences in my travel. It is my wish to jot them down, one of these days!. I would like to emphasis that it is a different experience to travel for work in different places. You get in touch with real people and their world when you work in a place. You may not get those experiences as a tourist. I must add, that India did not have the infrastrure to support comfortable(tolerable sounds better) travel in those days. I hope, some of that changed. After I got sick(really) of the travel, I wanted to work and sleep in one place. Bombay( before Mumbai) was the choice for me and my well wishers in the organization. I became a Bombay-wala for a year. Bumbai days were the time that I did not feel like a 'indian foreigner' in an Indian city. Bombay was not a regional city by heart, it was close to a cosmopolitan Indian city. The work culture in our office in Bombay was close to the international standards. I thouroughly enjoyed my days, which evanescenesced when my opportunity came knocking for my destination, US(Land-Beyond-Seven-Seas).


I landed in heartland USA and met my friend(bless his soul) of a lifetime. This is a friend, who became my business partner later. This incredible, intelligent guy, who I could share any of my ideas and thoughts, gave me the footing in the new world. You dont get very many friends like that in your life. I will introduce his memories later. We started a consulting company and travelled all over America(US/Canada). I found myself in the land of déjà vu in travel. I have lived and worked breifly in most major cities and some small towns in US. Compared to Indian travel, travel was pleasant in US(before the days of ASA). I was young enough to spend 18 hours a day doing work and enjoying life. I got married with my girlfriend in India and she became my partner in life and travels. We managed to develop a product from our domain knowledge. The product was applicable all across the world. So we expanded our travel horizon. Europe and Asia dominated our travel destinations. We used to get around-the-world fares from airlines and circled the globe sevaral times over for work. The numerous incredible locals I met and their stories destroyed the stereotypes in my mind(and created new ones ?)


I suspended most of my travel for a while now. I mostly travel between a soccer fields, swimming pools and basketball gyms across town these days. Parents in US can very well relate to that. My retirement planning accommodates future travel, if the portfolio gods show mercy.