Day 1 of the TATA Jagriti Yatra

24.Dec.09

Itz been 3 days since I left Bangalore and I have already lost track of the day of the week/month..
After having met 50 very interesting people with varied backgrounds the day before the yatra as part of the facilitator's workshop, I dont know what to expect from the 300 others who have joined us today.

An interesting thing that came out during the workshop was that atleast 30 to 40 percent of the people had quit their jobs to either start something close to their heart or to just plain experiment.

The actual proceedings started in the evening with a session by the Mumbai dabbawalas. How they started - some Parsi loved his wife very much and missed lunch prepared by her - , what is their structure, how they have been running successfully at six sigma level for the past 119 years and how they suddenly shot to fame when Price Charles visited them at the Church Gate station - they call him their brand ambassador :)

Now, Mumbai Dabbawalas form case studies in big B schools - it was the case study for our group as well.

Gowri, Shashank's (Yatra founder) better half and part of the Jagriti Yatra team, gave a magical and artistic touch to the evening by teaching us a few and effective dance movements to the Jagriti geet (Yaaro chalo by Prasoon Joshi). The beauty of these movements is that they are so simple and can be done while seated. Interestingly, these movements were created by her for some senior citizens who cudn't get out of their wheel chairs.

The symbolic flag-off was very creative.
The excitement was mounting as we boarded the buses to Mumbai Central. The train was delayed. Some people started singing random songs and soon the foreigners were singing Christmas carols joined in by other enthusiastic folks. It was very sweet. We finally started at 3 am on 25th Dec, after a wait of 4 hrs.

We knew we could expect the unexpected on the rest of the trip.