During the time when I was growing up, getting a decent job (or any job, in the absence of decent opportunities), was one’s top priority. Landing a Government job was considered the ultimate, and only after all options had been exhausted would candidates start applying in private firms. They would subscribe to Employment News to learn about vacancies and to Competition Success Review for tips on how to prepare for an interview. Cursed was the man who remained unemployed in spite of his degrees, and taunts from family and neighbours would eventually drive him to either settle for whatever lowly job that came his way or open a small grocery shop.
The earth has not even completed 25 revolutions around the sun from the time I got my first salary, and we are already reading nicely-written articles that urge you to quit your job and follow your heart. And what does following your heart mostly stand for? Travelling.
I am sure each time such an article goes online, a few dozen salaried people actually hand in their resignations and pick up a copy of Lonely Planet on their way back home. The Internet is replete with inspirational stories about professionals quitting well-paying jobs in order to travel.It is not difficult to see why such articles resonate with salaried professionals, bringing them hope and assurance. Back when I was looking for employment, a job meant being in office from 10 to 5, and the remaining 17 hours were entirely yours. And since you didn’t have a phone at home (those days, the wait for a landline would last for years and not hours), your boss did not bother you outside office hours. Promotions were invariably time-bound, and terms like ‘performance’ and ‘appraisals’ (and even ‘stress’) were virtually unheard of.
Today, holding a job means living inside a pressure cooker. Your woes begin with the long ride to office, when your car moves inch by inch on a road peopled by equally anxious office-goers like you. And then you step into your cabin or cubicle without knowing when exactly you are going to leave: it could be 6 p.m. or, on days you are unlucky, even 6 a.m. When you go out with your family for dinner or a movie, you have one eye on the phone — you just cannot afford to miss mails or messages. And there comes a time when you ask yourself: is this all really worth it?
I can never forget that helpless look on the face of a recent fellow traveller — a Bengali man on the next seat — who received an angry call from his boss as soon as the plane began to taxi. It was heart-breaking to see him torn between the angry glares of the airhostess and the harsh words of his boss. He could have used the opportunity to set himself free by asking the boss to get lost and proceeding with the journey as a traveller instead of as a representative of his company, but I guess he had a family to feed.
But why should people leave their jobs to become travellers, and not teachers or gardeners or farmers? That’s because travel promises escape from reality — a physical break from the present — and releases the soul bottled up in a corporate setup.
Gone are the days when access to a foreign country merely meant getting hold of its postal stamps or coins. Today, the Internet has not only shrunk the globe, but also raised aspirations: no corner of the world is out of reach anymore.
But I don’t necessarily envy people who kick their jobs to travel around the globe. The person I really envy is a friend who works for a shipping company that gives him three days of leave every month. He clubs the leave with a weekend and takes off — solo — to a new destination within India every month. Visiting Paris or Prague is easy, but exploring every nook and corner of India cannot be contained in one lifetime.
