“What? No! Are you crazy?” By the second half of December 2013, I was always shouted at with this. It’s when I was letting people know that I am embarking on this entirely unnecessary task of leaving everything behind and head to an uncertain future. I was letting go of Mumbai, my city of 30 years and heading to New Zealand with nothing more than my savings.
Ram Sriramis test drives a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder in Italy. Photo: Supplied
You don’t leave a settled career and a life to go to another country only to look for one. I had worked hard and established myself in a career that’s been my dream since I was a teenager – to drive every car and write about it. I haven’t literally driven every car. But with time in Ferraris, Maseratis, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royces and even a Koenigsegg, I can’t complain.
As deputy editor of BBC TopGear India, the experience was too good to be true. A working day involved heading to Khandala near Mumbai – the hill-station that Khandallah of Wellington gets its name from -- to test cars on hairpin bends. Or a working day would involve breakfast in Munich, lunch in Innsbruck and a drive across the Alps for dinner inside Italy. Then there was the business-class travel, the first-class lounges and the ignominy of having more miles in my frequent flyer account than money in my bank account and a lifetime’s supply of airline dental kits.
So it’s foolish to leave this and head to a situation where the only certainty is uncertainty. But then, you know the problem with comfort zones. If you are in one for too long, you become just that. Comfortable. I didn’t want that.
Why New Zealand? To be honest, it was because traffic here drives on the correct side of the road, the visa rules were fathomable and I wanted a change from the chaos and diversity of India to the peace, clean air and homogeneity of New Zealand. A couple of months in Wellington, I see anything but homogeneity.
If I had not taken this risk, I may have continued with my dream job till I became a dinosaur who can do nothing more than travel to fancy places and drive fancy cars
Sure, I don’t need sign language and a translator to read boards and communicate. But beneath the homogenous surface is an anxiety to not bracket itself within communal, religious or racial lines. Like all great civilisations – the USA, even Mumbai – New Zealand’s built by migrants and has its share of migrant politics. It’s heartening to see the same human anxieties in another hemisphere.
Which brings me to the risk factor. In a year, I might be back to my TopGear job. I will be laughed at for wasting money and achieving nothing. Or I might be able to stay on in New Zealand with the communications department of some corporate if I don’t land up in a Z Station; making this an entirely needless risk. I like gadgets. I like watches. I like cars. I could have easily got myself the all new Retina MacBook pro, or a world-time, light-powered watch or a brand new car in India.
Instead, I am jobless in a new country, writing this on a used laptop and trying to not default on the weekly rent for my studio apartment. But if I had not taken this risk, I may have continued with my dream job till I became a dinosaur who can do nothing more than travel to fancy places and drive fancy cars. By which time I would be 45, have a fatter bank balance, and be poorer as a human being.
If it wasn’t for our penchant to take risks, we’d still be swinging around trees, using wooden clubs for getting food. In the 21st century, there seems to be fewer places to unearth, fewer facts to unveil, and even fewer things to be invented. Our risks now entail going on a blind date or buying the last piece of cheap sushi. Schools and colleges seem to have given up the ability to think in the pursuit of straight ‘A’s. Streams are now chosen not on the basis of what you love doing, but on probable starting salaries.
In my job hunt in New Zealand I have come across places looking for ‘A graduate who will be a superstar in office and a rockstar in parties, who can hit the ground running, gather news, write reports, edit stories, design pages, photograph, make videos, update social media, be a team-player, and have past work experience.’ Coming to work in a cape and underwear over your pants and being from another planet were not in the list of requirements, though.
And the few risk-takers you see are taking them not because they believe in their ideas, but only because they want to earn as much money as a Mark Zuckerberg or as Steve Jobs did. I hate Wellington for the ridiculous weekly rents and the early closing hours. But I love the beer, the steaks, the lack of sparkling water in restaurants and the superb and warm serving staff that give their best without expecting a tip. I used to be utterly perplexed at what craft beer-on-tap I should get. But the bar man or woman could immediately sense the puzzle in my face and would make me feel at home by offering some samples to help me decide.
Life for Sriram Narayana in Wellington means being jobless, but says he'd rather richer life experience than a bigger bank account. Photo: Sriram Narayana
I love the straight-forwardness. I was dreading the prospect of applying for an Inland Revenue Department number. I come from a country where bureaucracy and paperwork is seen as an art to be revelled at rather than as a means to an end. In India you fill a form to get the form that allows you to have the form, which will lead you to the form you need. It didn’t take me five minutes at the Manner Street post shop. And to think I had packed a carrot and a sandwich so I don’t have to vacate my spot in the queue if I felt hungry.
Sure, I took a risk. When I realise I have no hopes of finding a job I like, I would have lost some money and left a gap in my career on my CV. But the benefits I reap would be a knowledge-bank of varied experiences, people and a brain that might sharpen a bit more rather than being subjected to the comforts and securities of home.
My risk seems to have coincided at a time in a New Zealand that’s at the cusp of a change. A change in ideas and beliefs of language, ethnicity and race. A change in striking the balance between the economy, employment, enterprise and the environment. An acceptance of moving beyond the boundaries of traditions, professions, the agrarian economy, or even the definition of being a New Zealander.
I don’t know where and if I will fit into all this. But whether I become a New Zealander or just go back to where I came from, I’d be richer only because of this risk I took. The risk of letting go of what I had built. Someone said that about love. If you let it go and it comes back, it was always meant to be. This risk I took is only for the love to find out what this life and this world has in store.
After all, if someone hadn’t taken the effort and the risk several centuries ago, we would have continued believing that our world is just a flat, immovable piece of land.