Bangalore, Corporate Fatigue & The First Dangerous Thought 🏙️
Moving to Bangalore wasn’t some movie scene.
It was just:
- Booking tickets.
- Buying groceries.
- Figuring out cooking.
- Doing laundry.
- Chasing deadlines.
- Fixing bugs.
Weekdays blurred into stand-ups and exhaustion.
The only real relief? My friends.
Somehow, I still had my college friends around me.
Same people. Same nonsense and comfort.
Most weekends, we met.
We didn’t meet to do anything “productive.” We met to:
Talk nonsense.
Dump thoughts.
Discuss business ideas.
Complain about life.
Debate random things.
Sit quietly and drink chai.
That was therapy.
That was balance.
Eventually, weekends turned into short road trips.
We started going on small road trips.
Not luxurious ones.
Not Instagram trips.
Just random drives.
But there was one problem. We didn’t own a car. So every time, we rented one. And almost 50% of the trip expense went just to rent the car.
But here’s the funny part.
The trips were rarely about the destination. It wasn’t about “seeing a new place.”
It was about:
- Sitting in one car together
- Conversations that only happen on highways
- Random chai shops we spotted
- New people we met on the way
- That one guy driving while others argue about music
The car wasn’t transport. It was the space where everything happened.
One evening, on a return drive, a thought entered my mind.
If I had my own car, I could go anywhere. Anytime.
No rental dependency.
No availability checks.
No killometer limits.
No restrictions.
Just freedom.
Somewhere between weekend road trips and late-night chai discussions, cars became part of our conversations.
We started sharing reels.
New launches.
Engine comparisons.
Sedan vs SUV debates.
And slowly, I wasn’t silent anymore.
I could contribute. I understood things. I had opinions.
That felt new.
At the same time, I was very clear about something: Buying a car now would probably be the dumbest financial decision.
I had watched enough YouTube videos on personal finance.
- “Don’t buy depreciating assets.”
- “Invest early.”
- “EMI is a trap.”
- “Buy only when you truly need it.”
Logically, I agreed.
Emotionally… I didn’t.
Because I kept thinking:
What about the days when work drains you?
What about driving at midnight to nowhere?
What about random short trips without planning?
What about doing slightly stupid things when you’re young?
Maybe this is the age to do dumb things. Maybe later in life, everything becomes calculated And I didn’t want this decision to be purely logical.