“I decided to return home this year after living abroad for 15 years.”

I am from Bengaluru and I am a journalist. I used to work with ESPN & FOX Sports in Singapore until I decided to return home this year after living abroad for 15 years.

I wanted to see all the places I had only read about in textbooks or on the Indian version of Monopoly. I wanted to reconnect with the country of my birth. I wanted to meet Punjabis, Gujjus, Marwaris, Ladakhis, Nepalis, Keralans, Kashmiris, Mumbaikers, Delhiites, Marathis etc. I wanted to see the Taj, the Himalayas, the sand dunes of Rajasthan, the Golden temple, the metros and I got to meet gundas, drug addicts, hippies, uncles, single mothers, government officials, charlatans and a wide spectrum of life on the sub-continent.

Every person can teach you something new — the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.

I got into one of the top engineering departments in the world in Singapore but I quit the course after a year to pursue my passion for writing. I’m currently working in Bengaluru a leading NGO that gets urban folks connected with the rural poor through affordable microfinance loans, handling their social media, corporate communication and content creation needs.

So far, the organisation has helped 26,000 borrowers over 7 years through affordable schemes (as opposed to predatory local lenders) and has achieved a 99% repayment rate!

— Suhas Bhat