First steps into the yatra

I reached Mumbai early in the morning. It was quite a magnetic welcome. One good lady helped me reach the venue Ravindra Kalakshetra with ease. I had quite a lot of luggage to pull. Somehow managed to reach the venue and Bhumish, a nice guy who got the green signal to join yatra previous night. He had simply jumped into the ocean.That gave me some idea as to how much yatra would take me by a surprise.I was on a super money saver mode, dint go lodge, just used the facilities at the venue.
We all registered ourselves ,had our first breakfast and a small medical examination followed. By this time I had known 10 people and slowly people were tagging each other. Around 11A.M we started shifting the bags into the buses. All the bags were tagged well. Initially people were moving the bags one by one single handedly. In 15 minutes we switched to intelligent mode making long human chain and began passing the bags smartly. This was the first group task( some 20 people worked here, to shift around 2000 bags).
We were informed that there will be 20 groups. I was in J group. This was one the classic groups which had people who were engineers, theatre artists,an ad maker, a communication student, a potential businessman,a village guy who was trying to gain foothold in busy pune and some kids who wanted to explore the country in their own ways. The number of girls in the yatra signified the revolution happening in India.
They were confident young women who had dared to see the phenomenon called India.
Though everyone was speaking to one another, the real ice breaking moment was not seen on day one. To kill time people were writing names in each other's notebook. For a person like this was a torture. Because there is no sense in such exchanges.
Lunch was great and made people feel comfurtable. We all enjoyed the food and pep talk . The inaugural event was really cool. Some nice people who would be the commanders of ship introduced themselves to all of us. These were young and bright people who had gone through ups and downs of life , and are steering big organizations. Shashank,Revathi, sawpnil, ashutosh and many more people spoke. There were many interesting people on board as part of committee who never spoke on stage but were equally brilliant. Siddharth kak, the surabhi serial fame spoke about his quite hair raising pan India tour on bicycle. Shashank Mani set the mood of the event by speaking about the spirit of yatra. The jagriti geet written by Prasoon Joshi and beautifully choreographed by Gauri was sung in the hall. Initially we were singing and by the end of yatra we were feeling it and humming it. This song is now an anthem for many of us. It is simple, crisp. You can hear it here.