Platform7

Bangalore perhaps has the highest population of Malayalees outside the state of Kerala - very often, the Garden city is nicknamed as a mini-Kerala. A good number of Malayalees work in the IT industry, and like every IT professional, these Malayalees head home every weekend. The most used mode of transportation is by road - either by bus or drive down a car. If you've noticed my earlier statement, the train does not feature as a preferred mode of transport. A small analysis of the trains running to Kerala would perhaps underpin my statement. Following are the trains that operate to various parts of Kerala (the days in parenthesis indicate the days of run from Bangalore): To South Kerala: 1. 16526 Kanniyakumari Island express (the only daily overnight train to South Kerala at the moment) 2. 16315 Kochuveli Express (currently on Wed, Fri and Sun) 3. 12257 Kochuveli Garib Rath express (Tue, Thu and Sun) 4. 16321 Trivandrum weekly express (Thu) 5. 12684 Ernakulam Super Fast (

After almost four months of sitting at home, I finally joined a job. However, I landed up at the job purely by chance. I was completely unprepared for the job, and this meant that I had to head home to pick up some stuff. Since I had just joined my job, I wasn’t sure of getting leave, hence I could not book tickets in advance. For some reason, my leave got approved quickly. I was now busy looking tickets – just the day before my journey. A point to note here – I was looking for a ticket for a Saturday during summer vacation! Most buses were full – the ones have tickets had them only in the last row. I checked Via.com, and was surprised to see two tickets available for Shama Transports. The ticket was sold under the name “Sree Krishna Travels”, but the timings and pick-up point was a clear give-away that the bus was indeed run by Shama. The ticket price was Rs. 1100 (compared to Rs. 1000 when purchased directly from Shama). May 26, 2012: I decided to head directly to the Shama

Another chapter opens in my book. After completing Masters in Pharmacy, I had applied to a wide variety of jobs. I was not able to concentrate on one particular role, and the unharnessed horse that mind was kept wandering from place to place. I traveled quite a lot during the summer months, attending interviews, and finally almost landed up at one job. That job was totally unrelated to my qualification, but I landed there out of passion. The monetary compensation was on the lower side, but I somehow decided to give it a try. Perhaps, my destiny was not to leave my field this time (both my previous jobs were totally unrelated to my area of specialisation). Hours before I was to join my new job, my profession called me back. I quickly shifted location from Chennai to Bangalore, and took a job that not much in my age bracket to prefer to take up - Teaching! After about three years of being unemployed (I took a break from work to pursue post-graduation), I was back to a job, and back to