Why do we not show concern for farmers and biggers issues?

Just #ProvokingThought and #insight for drawing parallels and attention to #GraverConcerns plaguing the nation. Are we the World's #LargestDemocracy or #Hypocrisy?

I write this as I am amused with all the #ConcernForEntrepreneurs and #Speculations floating on #SocialMedia about #SiddharthSuicide and the post shared below with the #IronMaiden song triggered me to share this. Without taking away anything from #Siddharth (#VGS of #CafeCoffeeDay#CCD), i wonder how and why #all #us #entrepreneurs are feeling low , lonely and vulnerable suddenly? Why? Just because one entrepreneur has committed suicide because he could not cope with #life, #financial, #tax and #business #jugglery and things like that. And the whole social media is abuzz and everyone wants to have their two minutes of #OpinionSharing from the #Soapbox.

Where are the people when #several #farmers, who are #RealFoodEntrepreneurs and #BreadProviders, are fighting their battles for #RIGHT in #Loneliness throughout #TheirLife? They fight because they have no support to fight the #tyranny #politicians and #CronyCapitalists who #exploit and #marginalise them and #deny them their #BasicRights . These farmers who live in dark times, loneliness and anonymity, have no one to cry over them on social media and #NobodyCares. Alas!

Cafe Coffee Day, whether you love it or hate it, is an integral part of who we are as urban Indians in 2019. Our current obsession with specialty coffee culture is in some way sparked by the countless re-runs of Friends and our inability to create it in the semi-uncomfortable couches at CCD during our college years. And then, we all discovered diners and bars, and here we are. Today.

Frankly, this post isn’t about CCD at all. This is not even about the work Siddhartha did over the last 37 years or the legacy he built with Coffee Day Enterprises, and later, with #MindTree. This is not a critique of what #right or #wrong he did, or what laws he bent or who he stepped on in his race to reach where he did.

This is about the things entrepreneurs like Siddhartha go through everyday. Alone.

It is easy to look at the corporate, as it stands today, as a relic of some misguided business choices, and see the passing of the founder as not having the courage to face up to the errors he made. But having sat uncomfortably, and somewhat unintentionally, in the chair of an entrepreneur for a multitude of decades, we know how lonely it gets. We know that no matter how big a silver spoon you have been given and how much privilege you come from, running your own business is, at the very least, very isolating. You juggle knives with handles laced with rusted nails and blades on fire each day. And no one, however committed or well meaning, will ever understand what one goes through. Family & friends may help, education & networks may lubricate the journey, and one’s privileges surely offer much impetus, but eventually it is you behind the wheel, going a million miles an hour with no brakes referring to a map that’s being made-up as you go along.

So, goodbye Siddhartha. You leave behind your coffee-stained, hand-drawn map for the rest of us to follow. And with the hope that Coffee Day becomes the thing you were nurturing it to become, we remember the words of Steve Harris:

I’ve got to keep running the course,

I’ve got to keep running and win at all costs,

I’ve got to keep going, be strong,

Must be so determined and push myself on.

Run over stiles, across fields,

Turn to look at who’s on your heels,

Way ahead of the field,

The line is getting nearer but do

You want the glory that goes,

You reach the final stretch,

Ideals are just a trace,

You feel like throwing the race,

It’s all so futile.

Run, on and on,

Run, on and on,

The loneliness of the long distance runner.

(“The loneliness of the long distance runner” ~ Iron Maiden, Universal Music Publishing Group)