That was from a book I based my life's philosophy on. I am 31. My wife and I live by ourselves in our house in Lhasa. If you didn't know it's a town south of the India Nepal border. To me it's god's own paradise. I work for the marketing division of a company providing broadband switching solutions to internet service providers all over India. I passed out of IIM Calcutta in 1993. That was 7 years ago. The protagonist of the mountain climbing story Jack Duluoz was a Dharma Bum. The very word makes my nerves tingle and it feels good to say and hear it Dharma Bum Dharma Bum. I don't know why. The bum has no money. Travels around the country. Enjoys hedonism, alcohol, relationships, kindness and Dharma. However Duluoz and his peers were extremely intelligent and talented to boot. They pondered life's meaning, Buddhism, lust, pain, love, happiness and life. The Dharma bum was my idol when I was 20. I was just like Jack. I thought like him of the sadness and the complexity in my life and wondered why at all we met other people and went on to speak with them. I wondered on the importance and need of wealth, comfort, the necessity of kindness and sadness and the things that would make one happy. Duluoz traveled between cities hopping freighters. Simply put he jumped on a goods train avoiding the eyes of the guards and workmen at the station yard and stayed pu0t till it was time to jump off again unseen. On the train, Duluoz would sit looking at the stars while the train rolled and made comforting metallic beautiful noises under him. He would take out his bottle of wine and sip it while eating the meat sandwich packed in newspaper prior to the trip. Sipping wine under the stars with the train as his chariot all his own and filling his hungry stomach on the juicy sandwiches, he was a king. A king with the whole world as his kingdom. Nothing mattered, nobody was depending on him, nobody knew where he was, nobody cared what he was thinking. He was happy.

I always wanted to be a Dharma bum. I wanted to feel like Duluoz felt. I wanted to crave alcohol and experience and experience and madness. I finished my undergraduate studies in the Regional Engineering College Trichy. Those were very very quiet uneventful days. I never left the campus because there was nothing in Trichy town. The course was sufficiently easy and I had a lot of free time on my hands to read write and think. To be a bum or not to be. I value money highly. Perversely highly. I can quite simply imagine that I would one day consent to marry a girl because she was from a rich family. I loathe this thought but think of all the ease and all the comforts. I could finish college, and go travelling. There is a trip on the backwaters of Kerala. There is a Youth Hostel trek up the Himalayas. I could go see Shillong and get drunk in the hills at night and scream my lungs out with no one around for many many miles. I could travel from Madras to Calcutta stopping off all alone no bookings no lodgings all alone at Hyderabad, Banglore, Patna, Lucknow and anywhere I choose to step off the train. I had no money. I was an engineer with no practical skills. I didn't know a trade save being able to read, write and talk well. I was decently good looking. My parents maybe would give me money inspite of the great heartache I was causing them but I couldn't depend on them for long. I would work here and there and make money to live. Willy nilly. Even then in my Dharma state, the thought of being penniless and jobless jarred me. I loved to write so I could write for a newspaper. But imagine with no money and having to beg for work. How would I beg for work. I could attempt to be a travel show host. That would ensure a certain comfort while satisfying my search for happiness. The only question to which I bowed in ignorance and submission was this 'What will you be in 30 years time'. Imagine being a bum for 30 years and for everyday in those thirty years travelling and doing nothing. What if I tired off it. I would have no money, no carrier, nothing.

I wouldn't have a nice comfortable house to stay and no money to go to the nice hotels. What if I just wanted out after some years. I would have no material resource to show for my life. I guess the whole meaning of being a Dharma bum is to take things as they come or atleast know for sure that the pleasures of wealth do notinfluence one. Tke things as they come and if worst comes to worst I could get a job as a salesman somewhere or work in a store and I would get by. And anyway isn't 10 years of happiness better that forever of not happiness. But weighing this against the option of going to a B school earning 60000 rupees a month and going on consultancy work to Europe and America, would make my heart drop. After 30 years I would have so much money that I wouldn't have any needs unsatisfied due to lack of wealth and I would have travelled across the world and seen Spain and its red yellow dark cafes with dancing dark beautiful women. The power of leading a large company, the pride of being and knowing that one is brilliant because of the awe in other people's eyes at one's achievements. What was the way to be. To be a mad Dharma bum or a stiff collared executive. What was the way to be.

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