Rocking in the Free World

Most of my friends who undertook a two year MBA program had a summer internship in between the end of their first year and the start of their second year. I know of people who’ve been to London, Singapore. Goa, Bombay, coastal Kerala (as if there is any other) and so on for their ‘summers’ as they’re called in the two-year MBA world.

My MBA is a one year program only, though I wish it were for longer. But alas, such is life sometimes. However, the curriculum has been structured such that students wanting to take up a project can do so while being on campus at the same time. It does tend to fry you out, but then again, there’s enough things and more to do anyway and one more straw on an already broken camel’s back doesn’t really make much of a difference.

I have an opportunity to work on one such project for an NGO named The Kishkinda Trust, which involves rural tourism development as well as small scale industry process improvement related work at Anegundi, a small village close to Hampi. Most of my contemporaties have work which requires them to jet-set across metros in the country and have meetings in board rooms and dress formally and work on presentations and spread sheets.

Contrastingly, I carried a back-pack filled with a change of clothes, a couple of books and spent my term break at Anegundi, working on my project. My first meeting with my client was with me carrying a sheet of paper and a pen, clad in shorts and chappals and with her and I sitting on a stone bench in a village house.

I had an opportunity to eat some tasty village food, sleep for ten hours at a stretch in a peaceful place and walk around aimlessly in a place with clean non-polluted air, as the Tungabhadra passed the village by, ambling lazily despite the heavy rains having caused its levels to rise beyond permissible limits for conducive coracle crossing.

Thanks to the rise in water levels, the boatmen were reluctant to ferry people from Hampi to Anegundi, and what is normally a journey of at most 30 minutes ended up being one that took more than two hours as I had to take the land route from Hampi to another village named Huligi before I finally got to Anegundi.

This journey, as I found out, was not without its perils as I spent almost 12 kilometers hanging precariously onto the ladder of a matador van. (The other parts of the journey did involve me sitting comfortably in a bus and watching the Tungabhadra river in full flow.) I’ve travelled formerly on the footboards of trains as well as buses, but clinging onto a ladder on the back of a van was not something I’d done so far, though I’d recommend it strongly for supreme cheap thrills.

The driver of this van was a maniac and I did fear for my life on more than one occasion as he swerved off the road in order to keep his speed and overtake some hapless bullock cart at the same time, but all in all, I’m alright since I lived to tell the tale.

The one other instance that I can think of which came somewhat close to clinging onto the back of a van was when I was sitting at the back of a big auto which was transporting all my earthly possessions, accumulated over a span of four years from my house in Bangalore to Mysore when I moved out of the former on the 30th of March this year. I remember listening to songs from Swades on my ipod and watching the sun set on the horizon as the auto chugged along on the outer ring road in Mysore.

All in all, the trip to Anegundi proved to be a much needed rest cure, and as solo trips go, was an incredible experience overall. I would strongly urge you all to visit the place and get in touch with me should you need more information about it.

One memory that I will always cherish all my life henceforth is that of me walking along in paddy fields, accompanied by two labrador dogs and a mudhol hound, as I was listening to Sigur Ros and watching the sun set on the horizon. There’s little else that I could’ve asked for to make this picture perfect.