The solemn ritual

Delhi airport.  Boarding will be announced,for my flight,  in ten minutes. I am at a showroom, a 10-minute walk away from my boarding gate. I like one of the shirts there but I don’t have time to try it on. “Don’t worry, sir”, says the helpful, smiling  salesman. “Any problem, you can exchange it easily in any of our showrooms in India. No questions asked”. Reassured, I pay for the shirt and rush to the gate.

Delhi airport again after two weeks. Back at the same showroom.   I want to return the shirt and take one of a larger size.  Bespectacled salesman turns stern. “What’s the problem with the shirt?” he asks. “No problem, but I want to return it and take another one”, I reply. “But there must be a reason”, he says.  “There’s no reason. I just feel like exchanging”, I tell him.

Nodding his head disapprovingly, he pulls out a thick book. Turns the pages one by one.  Inserts carbon paper between the pages.  (I can’t recall when I’ve seen carbon paper last).  Places the book in front of me and says, “Please write full name, address, contact number, reason for return of material”.  “And why should I do it?” I ask.  “Because we have to follow this procedure whenever a customer wants to return some material” he explains. “That may be your procedure. Why should I follow it?  I can’t believe that you have such red-tapism?” I tick him off.  “The procedure is same in all our showrooms in the country”, he tells me, adjusting his spectacles to look sterner.

I give up. I fill up the form with imaginary name, address and phone number. Against reason for return I write, “Because I want to”.  Seeing a lot of blue ink on the page, salesman is satisfied.  Grudgingly allows me to pick up another shirt.

As a salesman myself, I can understand the intent behind the whole drama.

When a sale is about to be made,  the indecisive or cat-on-the-wall customer needs assurance that, if he later realises that he’s made a mistake in selection, he will be able to exchange the item for another one, without too much of a hassle.  A good salesman provides him this comfort and closes the deal.

However, when you come back to exchange the item, the shop doesn’t like it at all. But it can’t turn you away.  Nor does it want you to go away with an impression that it’s a simple exercise. Yes, they are doing you a big favour and should collect some brownie points from you. So, they introduce an elaborate procedure. Ask you to fill up forms in triplicate, with carbon paper between the pages. With a stern-looking salesman watching you perform the solemn ritual. 

The final solution to the problem of bawling kids on planes

Warning: This post may offend the sensibilities of mothers of children below 10 years of age. So, proceed cautiously.

I am writing this post during a sleepless night on a flight, the cause of said sleeplessness being a couple of bawling and badly-behaved kids.  Wide awake now, I feel that we must put our heads together to  come up with a final solution to deal with the menace.  

Some of the possibilities that run through my mind, especially when one of the kids is kicking the backside of my seat are: 

1) Airlines could run special planes for kids and their mothers and disallow them from travelling on regular flights. In case this is not found economically viable, special sound-proof enclosures may be provided on each flight and kids can be accommodated there along with their parents.

    2) Small sealed packs containing chloroform should be distributed to parents as they board the flight.  When the captain announces,   “All mobile phones must now be switched off as they interfere with functioning of navigation instruments.  All children must now be anesthetised and put to sleep as they interfere with the sleep of other passengers”, the parents must obey unquestioningly. They will cooperate once they realise they’ll also get a good night’s sleep.

   3) Can someone develop acoustic filters which will selectively suppress the noise of kids? They can continue to bawl and scream, but the sound will get muted. Of course, this solution will not be effective on kids who kick the backside of your seat- in which case, we need to fall back on the chloroform method described above. 

4) How about special containers- like they use for pets- to put the kids into and load them into the cargo section?

5) If none of above works, then the child – with or without the parent- must be parachuted out of the plane.  

    Dark thoughts, I agree. But I need my sleep.  
  
   Update 27/08/13 : Looks like an airline has been reading my blog. (source). Though I don't see why we should be asked to pay more to stay away from wailing babies. Parents of wailing babies must be asked to pay the extra fare. 

 "An airline is offering passengers the option to upgrade to seats in      a quiet zone - where children are banned. Scoot, the budget arm of Singapore Airlines, offers customers the option to fly 'in  peace and quiet', for the cost of £10 (S$18). 

  They promise that if they were to opt in for a ScootinSilence cabin, they would enjoy 'exclusivity and privacy... as under 12s will be someplace else'. 
The low-cost carrier, which flies to Sydney and the Gold Coast rom Singapore, has banned pre-teens from the first seven rows of its economy-class section, allowing passengers can upgrade to the 41-seat ScootinSilence area."

No wang-wang

While at Manila airport yesterday, I noticed a sign near the Immigration Counter that said, “Airport is a no wang-wang zone. Please fall in line to avoid embarrassment. CCTV-monitored area”.

I wondered what wang-wang meant.  Was it a Filipino slang for littering?  Or smoking? Or a codeword for ‘kissing’?  I was curious enough to check this out on the net later. This is what I found in a newspaper report of July 2012.:

Wang-wang mentality” and “wang-wang culture” were catch phrases often used by President Aquino in his speeches that reaffirm his commitment to root out abuse of power. Initially, he used the term to attack the powerful who made their way through the streets of the metropolis with sirens blaring. In another speech, he deplored the use of the wang-wang as a symbol of a mind-set of privilege. 

“The posters intend to convey a simple message. And that is to fall in line and follow routine and standard security practices at the airport,” MIAA General Manager Jose Angel Honrado said. 

“This should serve as a warning to passengers not to cut [the] lines and follow airport procedures,” he added. 

Honrado said the message capitalized on the popular street lingo for blaring sirens

So, the phrase “fall in line” in the sign is not a metaphor; it is literal. Thanks to these signs and strict monitoring, nobody is exempt from standing in the line –except for five top officials of the Govt and foreign ambassadors.. ‘The stricter airport measures were also meant to get rid of these enterprising airport personnel, including some police officers, security guards and even porters who offer illegal VIP escort services for a fee’.

I don’t know when or if India will have a “no wang-wang policy’ in our airports or elsewhere. Every politician is a VIP and insists on being treated so. In the rare instance of a celebrity choosing to fall in line like a normal citizen, we – the non-VIPs- don’t let him/her forget that he/she is a VIP. We fawn over them and act in an obsequious manner.

So, wang-wang it will continue to be for us. 

For your comfort and safety....

Airlines and hotels love to hype the smallest of comforts that they provide. The classic case is the announcement airline stewards make that “the outside temperature is minus 54 deg C, but for your comfort we are maintaining a temperature of plus 24 deg C inside” as if it is one hell of a favour.

More interesting is the way they try to justify a withdrawal of a basic facility or for charging you for it.

Many hotels have used the pretext of ‘protecting the environment” to avoid replacement of towels every day. You can find a notice in the bathroom which says something like this. “Washing a towel requires 20 litres of water. As this hotel is committed to an eco-friendly approach and to conservation of precious, natural resources like water, we solicit your cooperation. If you would like the towel to be washed, please leave it on the floor. Towels left on hangers will not be washed”. The sub-text is that if you have even a modicum of shame, you will use that towel for the rest of your stay in the hotel and not dare to put it for wash.

While staying in a hotel in Australia recently ( 300 AUD per night. Breakfast, wi-fi not included. Drinking water extra at AUD 8 per bottle), I saw a sign above the mini-bar. “We know that you have tastes that are special and unique. That’s why we have emptied the mini-bar. Please call us up and state your needs so that we can fill it up for you”. This is a good idea. Guests frequently dispute the mini-bar bills and claim the items were never there in the first place. By asking the guests to choose the items to be stocked, the hotels ensure that he/she signs off on the inventory.

On the bed, next to the pair of wafer-thin pillows was a sign which said, “We know that you like to use a pillow of your own choice. That’s why we offer you a menu of pillow options for you to choose from. “. They charge AUD 6 for the pillows.

Next to the bath tub was a notice, “We care for your safety. We have provided a rubber mat for your use. Please ensure that the suction grip is firmly in place before you step into the bathtub.” I checked if there was another sign which indicated the extra charge for the rubber mat. Not only was there no sign, there was no rubber mat to be found either. So much about their concern for my safety.

Later, as I was checking out, I was informed that payment by credit card would attract an additional 3% charge. Of course, if I felt uncomfortable about those charges, I could always pay by cash....

How I learnt to tackle 6'5" doormen.

After checking out of a 5-star hotel in Delhi last week, I casually wheeled my luggage and walked towards the exit where my taxi was waiting for me. The bellboy at the desk rushed towards me and pulled the luggage from my hands and insisted on wheeling it to the car. I let him do it. He placed it in the trunk of the car and gave me three smart salutes and a “happy journey’ greeting. And just stood there.  I said ‘thank you’ and didn’t tip him even a rupee. 

Following that, the doorman, opened the door of the car and gave me three smart salutes and a ‘happy journey’ greeting. Once I got in, he closed the door having made sure that the glass was down so that it wouldn’t be an hindrance when I passed on my lavish tips to him. I looked the 6’5” Sardar doorman squarely and unflinchingly in the eye and gave him a benevolent smile. No tips. 

The bellboy and the doorman in any hotel form a deadly combo. They’ve developed a body language that can prompt you to pull out your wallet. They can linger around for just those few seconds longer so as to make you uncomfortable and guilty. It took me many years of travelling to learn to handle this menace. 

I am all for rewarding people if they’ve provided some special service. Here all the bellboy had to so was pull a 10-kg piece of luggage for a distance of 15 metres on flat terrain or down a ramp and place it in the car- a task I was perfectly capable of undertaking myself, had he not dragged the piece out of me. Similarly, among the few things that I have learnt to do as a grown-up adult is to open the door of a car and I don’t need to be assisted in the process by 6’5” Sardars or 5’6” ones. 

You would think that people would frown at this shameful practice of the hotel staff. But, if you stood in the portico for a few minutes and observed, you would find that they have a very high rate of success. Foreigners, the suckers that they are, tip lavishly. Once I saw a Tamil film star pulling out a Rs 500 note and handing it over to the doorman for the latter’s extraordinarily awesome task of opening the door. I remember regretting that I had not rushed in to open the door for the star and earned that money.

The early-morning flight...

Here I am, at 5.15 in the morning, suited, booted and waiting in a line to get inside the airport. The grumpy security guard wants some proof of my identity. I pull out my driver’s licence. He stares at it intently, trying to figure out if the person in that photograph is really me. I don’t blame him. I’ve had the same doubt for a long time. Even when I had collected my licence at the RTO I had complained to the person at the counter that my photo looked terrible. He had given me a curt explanation that just as they register cars on an “as-is-where-is” basis, they photograph people on an “as-is-how-is” basis. 

In one of his essays, R.K.Narayan describes a portrait done of him by M.F.Husain: “When I saw the portrait” writes RKN, “I remarked that I didn’t look like myself. Husain had smiled at my lack of taste and replied that I wouldn’t know my real self. I left it at that." It is the same with me and my RTO photo. I don’t know my real self. 

At long last, the security guard convinces himself that I have no immediate plans of blowing up the airport and lets me in. 

I make my way to the check-in counter. I wait behind four other passengers. Just when it is my turn, I get a tap on my shoulder from a chap who wants to check in ahead of me as he’s late for his Delhi flight. What audacity! 

Consider my state of mind. For my flight at 6.40 a.m. I had started from my house at 4.45 a.m. making allowance for traffic snarls, flat tyres (one each in the front and at the rear), CM’s cavalcade passing by, cranes toppling over during Metro Rail construction, Adyar River overflowing due to unexpected overnight rains and an assortment of other contingencies. I had carefully set the alarm for 4.00 a.m. but was woken up even earlier by my call-taxi driver. He dialed me at 3.15 a.m. asking for directions from a place that was a good 20 km away from my house. In these days of GPS, mind-boggling Google Maps and dozens of geo-synchronous satellites orbiting the globe, it is ridiculous that we should be woken up at ungodly hours by people wanting to know how to reach Point B from A. 

You can see that I have sacrificed my sleep and subjected myself to much misery just to be at the airport in time. And I am confronted by this chap who insists on jumping the queue after spending an extra hour in bed, though his flight is scheduled to leave 30 minutes ahead of mine. I am simply outraged by this brazen display of aggression. I allow him to go ahead only because I don’t want to pick up an acrimonious fight so early in the day with a guy who possesses the biggest biceps and the most menacing looks I’ve seen.

Brooding over the unfairness of it all I collect my Boarding card and join the serpentine queue for Security clearance. After 20 minutes, I reach the scanning machine but somebody in a pilot’s uniform brushes me aside to place his luggage first. Why am I being pushed around by all and sundry this morning? Who do these pilots think they are? Why do they need to be given this special access? And why do they need such huge suitcases? Damn it, they don’t even fly the planes these days. I’ve heard that the cabin crew comprises a computer, a pilot and a dog. The computer flies the plane; the dog is there to make sure that the pilot doesn’t touch the controls; the only job of the pilot is to feed an occasional biscuit to the dog. That’s all there is to flying a plane. Perhaps the large suitcases are used to carry the dogs inside.

Clearing the security check after an eternity, I bump into my old friend Govindarajan. Good old Govind. The veteran traveller. Spends more time at airports than at home. Holds more frequent-flyer cards than his wallet can hold. Looks the same every time I see him. As we chat, it occurs to me that my last four meetings with him have all been in the security area of the same airport. The truth hits me now. He must be an airport ghost. Yes, that’s what he is. Govind, the Ghost. No wonder he looks the same always. Wife and family must be under impression that he’s on yet another of his long tours while his ghost keeps restlessly hovering around the security area where he had spent half his life waiting for some plane or other. I notice that Govind (or his ghost) is looking at me in a strange manner. Maybe he feels the same way about me. Perhaps most early-morning travelers are just ghosts trapped inside airport buildings. You never see them outside. Just the right theme for a Night Shyamalan movie. 

I settle down in a chair and try to sort out the ghosts from the real people. Some of them look quite spooky. One tormented soul has his laptop open and is staring unblinkingly at the screen. Yet another ghost has been pulling his strolley all over the lounge without any sense of purpose. A third one has been yelling into his mobile phone and I suspect that he’s not even on a call.

The blasted announcements keep interrupting my thoughts and observations.”LAST and FINAL CALL for so-and-so, repeat, LAST and FINAL CALL.” Don’t they know that ‘last and final call’ can be given only once? If there’s going to be one more call after this, they need to call this the ‘SECOND-FROM-LAST and PENULTIMATE call.” Besides, where was the need to turn on the decibel level to an ear-drum shattering 120 dBa? Have they set the audio level to suit the hearing frequency of ghosts?

I rise from my seat once I realise that the so-and-so being called out is actually my name. I saunter through the aero-bridge muttering to myself that no society which inflicts these early-morning flights on its members can call itself civilised.

Airlines vs passengers

As a disciplined air traveler who checks in his suitcase, and carries a small laptop bag always, I find it annoying when fellow passengers walk in with bulky cabin baggage and rush in to grab the overhead space. And, if returning home from international travel, people tend to pick up duty-free stuff at airports and carry 3-4 plastic bags filled with goodies. Some airlines are wise to this trick and weigh the cabin baggage (or check for bulkiness) at the point of boarding. They then force you to pay excess baggage or arrange to check it in. But this doesn’t happen always, and airlines leave passengers to fend for themselves. Economy class travel, therefore, turns out to be nightmarish.

The battle between airlines who want to milk the passengers for excess charges (citing load factor, safety, etc) and seasoned passengers who know how to work around the system rages on. If a passenger with excess baggage sights a co-passenger with lighter luggage, he immediately latches on to him with a request to check in together, and collude to fool the airline. Today, I guess, passengers are more wary and do not accommodate such requests from strangers, but there’s no harm in trying, is there?

An article in New York Times discusses this issue:

An entire cottage industry has emerged for products that help people evade the baggage-check fees, according to Kate Hanni, director of FlyersRights.org, a consumer group that represents airline passengers. Ms. Hanni uses vacuum-seal bags inside her carry-on bags, she said; the bags, which shrink down to a compact package when air is pulled out by a vacuum cleaner, allow her to fit considerably more items in a carry-on than would normally be possible.

“I can fit three times the amount of clothes in a carry-on than I used to be able to,” she said.

There is also the Scottevest line of travel clothing in which trench coats, vests and other garments are made with large built-in pockets that allow people to carry everything from folded shirts to an iPad.

“You can fit all of your folded shirts, iPad, cellphone, iPod, sunglasses, camera, passport, keys — you can put everything in the jacket that you would put in a carry-on,” Ms. Hanni said. “It’s sort of sweet justice.”

The fair way would be to fix a ‘total weight” and make each passenger stand on a weighing machine, with all his/her luggage, and to charge excess fee. This would mean that those who weigh more will either have to compensate by carrying less luggage or by paying excess fee. This will also act as an incentive for people to exercise and lose weight. The general health of the flying community will improve.

Writing in "The Age", columnist Tony Webber says:

To cut to the chase: people who weigh more should pay more to fly on planes - in the same way that people who exceed their baggage allowance must fork out extra.

The rationale is simple. The fuel burnt by planes depends on many things but the most important is the weight of the aircraft. The more a plane weighs, the more fuel it must burn.

If the passengers on the aircraft weigh more, the aircraft consumes more fuel and the airline's costs go up.

In turn, the airline will need to lift airfares to recover these additional costs. And when they do, the burden of these higher fees should not be lumbered on those who are shedding a few kilos or keeping their weight stable.

In fact, airline fuel costs have increased since 2000 not just because of higher oil and jet fuel prices - although these are by far the most important drivers of higher costs - but also because the average adult passenger is carrying a bit more heft.

Mr. Walker.

While in Kenya last week on an official trip, I drove down from Nairobi to a small town called Magati, past the Rift Valley. I was headed to a site that had been identified for a project, which involved participation of the local community. The site was a few kilometers away from a point ahead of Mogati on the highway.

A colleague from Nairobi who was accompanying me said that an ‘elder’ from the local community would like to meet us. Should we meet him at Mogati or should we request him to come straight to the site, he wanted to know. Meeting him at the site at 2 pm would be more convenient, I said, and would save us some time.

As we reached the point that would lead us to the site, we were informed that the approach road could not be accessed as a river was overflowing due to heavy rains the previous day. A local person said he could take us to the site on a different route and we decided to use his services.

We got off the highway into a muddy road, which after 500m led us to a thick forest. The guide expertly navigated us through the trees on narrow dirt tracks. How he knew the general direction or where to turn, I couldn’t figure out as all trees looked the same to me. I had assumed that this was going to be a short drive, but found the journey stretching interminably. At one point, the jeep got stuck in the slush, and was extricated with some difficulty and some clever maneuvers from the driver.

We reached the spot after covering 22 km in slightly more than 2 hours. It was 4 pm.

The village elder was there, all alone and waiting for us. He had reached the spot at 2 pm as scheduled.

How did he get there, I asked my local guide. He had walked. Was there a shorter route for walking? No, he said, the old man had to take the same route that we had taken. As soon as he was informed that he had to meet us at the site, he had started walking in that direction, armed with a stick. Aware of the swollen river, he set out on the longer route that we later took. He walked the entire 20 km and reached the place on time. How long did it take him to cover the distance? Oh, maybe 2.5 to 3 hours, replied my local guide, nonchalantly.

We asked the old man to get into the jeep and started our way back on the same route. I certainly wanted to get back to the highway before it was dark. After 5 km or so, our jeep got stuck in the mud again and simply refused to budge, either forward or in reverse. If we had to walk the remainder of the distance, there was no way we were going to make it out of that jungle before it got dark.

As I was worrying myself with thoughts of giant mosquitoes, tse tse flies and snakes, I saw the old man pulling down some branches from a tree. He plucked out the leaves and heaped them in a pile near the tyres on the rear wheel of the jeep. Using that as leverage, the driver managed to pull the jeep out a few metres behind, then picked up full power and drove it past the slush.

What a man!

Not far from the spot we visited is the hilly region surrounding the Rift Valley, which has produced so many marathon runners and Olympic medalists in long-distance events. What is special about the region, many have wondered. Some have attributed it to the lung-capacity of the runners developed due to exercising in the high-altitude region. Some explanations point to the ‘birdlike legs”. And some to the fact that, historically, the men of the Kalenjin tribe had to move fast and over long distances to round up cattle, as those with the most number of cows managed to garner more wives.

I wonder how many cows and how many wives the old man I met has.

Take that, you @#$%^& customer

Having started my career as a Salesperson, I was trained quite early to treat customers with courtesy and never to lose my cool whatever may be the provocation from the other side. In the course of my long stint in Sales, I have met many kinds of customers, starting from the most polite to the most annoying. When confronting the latter type, the training takes over and I usually keep my equanimity intact.

That doesn’t mean that I enjoy doing it. Every salesman’s fantasy is to deliver a resounding kick on the backside of an unreasonable or a needlessly demanding customer. And, if said customer complained about you to your boss, to use some choice expletives against the boss as well and storm out of the office. Tap any salesperson on the shoulder and ask if he dreams of this day, the answer will be a resounding ‘yes’. This is true not only for salespeople, but to all frontline staff in the hospitality sector.

That is why this story about the attendant on a Jetblue flight heaping choice expletives on a misbehaving passenger and then declaring on the spot, “ I have spent 27 years with this airline. This is it. I am quitting, ok?” resonated deeply with me.

Not many of us can see our fantasies some true, but here is this excellent fellow who managed to do it in style. Having hurled the abuses, he deployed the emergency slide and jumped out, remembering to grab some beer cans while exiting. What a man!

Judging from the comments to the news story, most people seem to empathise with the flight attendant. The passenger deserved it, seems to be the general verdict.

A shining star of the sales fraternity.

Heave ho

With my roots in Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu, I have heard several stories about the Brihadeeswara Temple and the grand effort put in by Raja Raja Chola to build it. A fascinating documentary produced by the Discovery Channel explains how the construction could have taken place in the 10th century, how large granite stones were mined in quarries 200 km away, how they were pulled the entire distance using logs and elephants and how the 80 ton stone for the ‘kalash’ was hauled up to the top of the tower on a slope which started at a point 6 km  from the base of the tower.

While on a trip to Beijing this week, I visited the Forbidden City and saw what is referred to as the Large Stone Carving. Made of a single stone and containing figures of dragons, this served as a ramp for carrying the Emperors in their sedans. Being 17m long, 3m wide and 1.7m thick, the stone weighs 200 tons. Compared to this, the stone on top of the BrihadeeswaraTemple will qualify only for the ‘lightweight’ category.

So, how did the Chinese bring the ‘heavyweight’ stone from the mine to the Forbidden City? An explanation provided on a board next to the Large Stone Carving is that the stone was quarried from the Fangshang mountains some distance from Beijing and heaved to the City in winter using logs and by pouring water on to the snow, till the resulting ‘ice’ made it easier to slide the huge block forward. This happened in the 15th century.

So, the same challenge of transporting a large stone was overcome with two different engineering solutions in two different places using different resources. We had the elephants, the Chinese had the snow.

Do you love dogs, children, cricket and travel?

I had an uncle who was a veterinary doctor. By all accounts, he was very good in his profession. As a child, I have tagged along with him a few times to his hospital and have seen him treat assorted animals with total commitment. But what I remember most about this veterinary uncle was that he hated animals. I have never seen him pat a dog caringly.

For years, I used to take my daughters to a pediatrician, who again was very professional and quite reliable. But he used to view children almost with disdain and would make no effort whatsoever to put them at ease. It could be concluded that he hated children.

These examples illustrate that being good at your job or in your profession does not mean that you should love what you are doing. Or love the object that your job is centred around or concerned with. I may be highly competent in my job as a power sector professional. I may even love my job, but I don’t need to love the boilers and turbines and the other objects that I need to deal in or the people that I need to deal with.

Prem Panicker, in a recent post, writes that he is repeatedly asked why he has given up writing on cricket and he cites ‘ennui’ as the reason. When the questioner protests and remarks that his is a job that others would kill for, he replies “You want to try doing it, day in and out, for a year, mate. Then let’s talk.’ Prem adds : “Doing this for a living’ is not all it is cracked out to be. How do you explain, for instance, the difference between kicking back and watching cricket as a fan and sitting in front of the TV or in the press box, laptop open, scrutinizing each moment minutely for technical points to make, for “turning points” to identify and use to season your report, for broader narratives to expound on? After a time, you see only the trees — the greater beauty of the forest is lost to you.

Prem links to an article by Tom Swick who expresses very similar sentiments about travel writing. “Travel writer” may be the one title everyone wants except the people who have it. The travel writer, when thought of at all, is regarded as a charmed figure, never stymied in front of a customs officer or a computer screen. The travel writer, when he reflects, sees himself as aimless, clueless but nevertheless underappreciated.” A travel writer is too busy picking up minute details for reporting later that he has no time or inclination to enjoy his travelling.

On a related note, Prem cites a mail from a friend, Siddharth Vaidyanathan of Cricinfo.

We all began as cricket fans before becoming professional cricket writers. Being in the profession, though, takes away a lot of the fizz….At some point, … you start watching the game through a different prism. It’s no more the innocent past-time that made you jump up and shriek or kick the floor in anger or sulk all day. It’s now the sport that you trying to be detached from (though you’re actually very close to the epicenter). It’s a sport you think you have figured out (though you actually have very little expertise on the subject matter).

Gradually you begin to view it as another job – I’ve actually felt really frustrated when a cricketer died on a Sunday, simply because it meant more work. Soon you ask yourself – just like Swick says of travel writers – what (the heck) am I doing here? And over time, you gradually forget why you got here in the first place.

That’s why, says Prem, he has given up writing about cricket. He loves the game too much.

Loving your solitary pet dog is fine. But, when you are a veterinary doctor who has to treat hundreds of diseased dogs day in and out, your perspective on dogs may undergo a change. Similarly, your children may be the apples of your eyes, but for a pediatrician, they are merely objects that need to be repaired and sent out of his garage. You can love’em or treat’em, but not both. You can be a cricket fan or a cricket writer, but it is difficult to be both.

Why do I travel?

I accept my frequent traveling as something that is part of my job and for which I get paid my salary. I travel because, if I don’t, my boss will kick my ass. So, I don’t need to ask myself metaphysical questions such as “Why do I travel?”

But Jonah Lehrer of Frontal Cortex, being a writer can afford to ask the question, “Why do we travel?” and then proceed to answer the question as well

Travel is a basic human desire. But, is this collective urge to travel - to put some distance between ourselves and everything we know--still a worthwhile compulsion?

The good news, at least for those of you reading this while stuck on a tarmac eating stale pretzels, is that pleasure is not the only consolation of travel. In fact, several new science papers suggest that getting away—and it doesn't even matter where you're going--is an essential habit of effective thinking. It's not about vacation, or relaxation, or sipping daiquiris on an unspoiled tropical beach: it's about the tedious act itself, putting some miles between home and wherever you happen to spend the night.

The reason such travels are mentally useful involves a quirk of cognition, in which problems that feel "close"--and the closeness can be physical, temporal, or even emotional--get contemplated in a more concrete manner. As a result, when we think about things that are nearby, our thoughts are constricted, bound by a more limited set of associations. While this habit can be helpful--it allows us to focus on the facts at hand--it also inhibits our imagination. Consider a field of corn. When you're standing in the middle of the field, surrounded by the tall cellulose stalks and fraying husks, the air smelling faintly of fertilizer and popcorn, your mind is automatically drawn to thoughts that revolve around the primary meaning of corn, which is that it's a plant, a cereal, a staple of Midwestern farming.

But now imagine that same field of corn from a different perspective. Instead of standing on a farm, you're now in the midst of a crowded city street, dense with taxis and pedestrians. (And yet, for some peculiar reason, you're still thinking about corn.) The plant will no longer just be a plant: instead, your vast neural network will pump out all sorts of associations. You'll think about high-fructose corn syrup, obesity, and Michael Pollan; you'll contemplate ethanol and the Iowa caucus, those corn mazes for kids at state fairs and the deliciousness of succotash, made with bacon and lima beans. The noun is now a web of tangents, a loom of remote connections.

…We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.

Now, I know why I travel. It removes the cobwebs from my mind. It makes me the creative genius that I am.

Near miss-2

I can’t resist the temptation to complete a trilogy of my ‘missing luggage’ stories. The first two are here and here.

I landed in Mumbai one day and waited patiently for that last piece of luggage to come out of the plane. And sure enough, it was a brown-coloured VIP suitcase. Except that it wasn’t mine.

I went across to the Jet Airlines counter and reported that my precious suitcase seemed to have dematerialised above the clouds, but one deceptively similar to mine was going teasingly around on the carousel with no claimants for it. The whole thing was quite surreal.

In a brilliant piece of detective work, the Jet person deduced that someone must have walked off with my suitcase, mistaking it for his. With the luggage tag, the ground staff managed to track down the passenger’s name and his mobile number. He was contacted immediately and asked to return to the airport to exchange his suitcase (or, rather, mine) for mine (or, rather, his).

He reached the airport after 30 minutes or so, apologised profusely for the mistake, and offered to drop me off at Nariman Point, which was where I was headed. I accepted the offer and ended up saving Rs 500 for my company.

So, even on the rare occasion when my luggage had not been the last to arrive, the God who presides over the destinies of travelling salesmen had made sure that I was the last to leave the airport, but in a compensating gesture had spared me the expense of a taxi ride.

Near miss

After publishing the previous post on missing baggage, I remembered another episode concerning a ‘near miss’.

My flight had taken off from Amsterdam for Mumbai. After we were airborne for a ‘few minutes’, we heard the captain announce that we needed to return to Amsterdam, as one of the passengers was seriously ill. But, he needed to jettison some fuel first as it was not advisable to land with an almost full tank. This jettisoning would take a ‘few minutes’.

We landed in Amsterdam; the sick passenger was wheeled off; we waited for the flight to take off in a ‘few minutes’.

Soon the captain informed us that he was awaiting further instructions from his “Operations’ wing in the US. He expected to have that in a ‘few minutes’.

After a ‘few minutes’ he again came on air and told us that the instructions had not come yet and he was hopeful that he would receive them in a ‘few minutes’. These announcements were repeated,with that exasperating American fetish for verbose communication, at a maddening frequency for a full two hours, after which, the captain was pleased to inform us that the “Operations’ dept had cleared the aircraft for take-off to Mumbai again, but US Air safety regulations required a change of crew, as the present crew, if it continued on, would log more than the statutory limit of 12 hours. The new crew, had been identified, and would be arriving at the airport in a ‘few minutes’.

All this while, security requirement did not permit the passengers to get off the plane or be served meals while on the ground.

The new crew eventually arrived in a few hours and the plane took off. The rest of the flight was rather uneventful and we landed in Mumbai more than 6 hours beyond the scheduled time.

Waiting for my luggage, I did not panic. Experience has taught me that mine is usually the last one to arrive, after it unselfishly ensures that every other piece of baggage has been safely evacuated from the aircraft. Suddenly, I heard someone announcing my name along with a few others. We were asked to contact the ground staff who broke the grim news, that due to some mistake, our luggage had been left behind in Amsterdam and would arrive the next day, and would we please fill out this form and come again the next night for clearing it past Customs?

Hell, I wanted to move on to Chennai the next day. I fretted and fumed and kicked and ranted, but it was useless, of course. I filled in the blasted form and walked towards the exit. It was at this point that I noticed my suitcase moving gracefully on the baggage carousel.

I picked it up, went back to the ground staff, let out steam for causing me needless tension and anxiety, warned them not to make this a habit and bade them goodbye. Not so fast, said they. They needed to check again with Amsterdam. My baggage tag was definitely on the list of luggage left behind there, and till they got the matter cleared, I could not leave. This process of checking would take a ‘few minutes’…….

Clothes

Every traveling salesman (for that matter, every regular air traveler) can narrate a story or two about how he/she landed in one continent, while his/her luggage mysteriously found its way into another. Unfortunately, in several years of travel, this experience had been denied to me. My baggage always followed me wherever I went. So, much to my regret, my repertoire of stories has been rather incomplete.

I am happy to report that this situation was remedied last week.

I landed in a small town in Finland and was told that my luggage had not kept pace with my hectic travel. Finnair was pleased to provide me with a survival kit packed with essentials to last me for 24 hours. The ‘essentials’ were a toothpaste, shaving cream, a disposable razor, moisturizing lotion, something to remove eye liners and a small packet containing detergents.

A seasoned traveler knows just how much to pack. It’s a fine trade-off between convenience and comfort. Pack too many things and you will have hell while lugging them around, but once inside the hotel, you could have the comfort of choosing from many, Pack too little, it will be a joy while at the airport, but you would not make it to the list of ‘the best dressed persons in town”. In this instance, my suitcase, that had been kidnapped, had been packed with all kinds of things for every possible contingency and to cope with a temperature range of minus 20 degrees to plus 40 degrees. There were shirts meant for casual wear, formal wear, factory visits, fashion parades and so on.

But it was lying in some other part of the world. I had to make do with what I had, or buy new clothes that are hideously expensive in these parts. I decided on the former option.

Wearing the same shirt for two days is not all that difficult, I found. Many people, especially in India, get by with one shirt for days at a stretch. Life takes on an entirely new meaning and provides an entirely new perspective when you look at a shirt and realise that it is not merely a shirt, but the shirt. At least I could wash the shirt in the night with the detergent that Finnair had thoughtfully provided me with. So many Indians don’t even have that luxury.

At work during the day, seeing me in my jeans and casual shirt, my colleagues gave me sympathetic looks and even offered to lend me a shirt or two. After work, Finnish tradition requires one to spend time at the sauna, where the dress code simply reads. “Grin and bare it”. So, evening wear was not much of a problem.

The life-changing lesson I learned from this episode was that we don’t really need all that we have. We can and ought to make do with far less.

The luggage eventually arrived. That evening I decided to window-shop a bit. And my eyes spotted some shirts that were ‘on sale’ at an incredible price of 5 Euros each. I bought 4 of them. Never know when you might need them.

The price is not too bad really...

“Wobbly cardboard boxes tied with neon yellow twine. Rusty grandfather trunks emblazoned with peeling paper stickers. Cheerfully bulging, shapeless chequered suitcases. Indians have the dubious distinction of carrying some of the world’s ugliest luggage” writes Shonali Muthalaly in The Hindu Metro Plus, while welcoming a new range of trendy travel accessories that had been unveiled by a large brand.

She then adds this glowing tribute : “The pieces displayed were sleek, highly polished and shone with that self-confident sheen that invariably accompanies unabashed luxury. Prices range from roughly Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 15,000. Which is not too bad, really, considering in the global luxury market, you will easily pay about a lakh for a Louis Vuitton."

Forget the expression, “you will easily pay about a lakh” for a moment. What I understand from the article is this. If I am a buyer with even a modicum of decency, I should not swoon on looking at the price tag of any luxury item. When I am at the duty-free shop at the airport and I spot a Tissot watch with a price of say $200. I shouldn’t be a cheapskate and compare it with a Titan watch back home that costs an equivalent of $50. I should remember Shonali’s reasoning and convince myself that it is a steal at that price, for I would easily pay $2500 or more for a Longines or a Cartier, or some such fancy brand.

It’s all a matter of perspective, as I noted in an earlier post. Don’t worry that you are coughing up Rs 15000 for a suitcase. This is not too bad really. Be thankful that you are not shelling out Rs 1,00,000.

The reluctant commuter.

A Belgian who is the owner of a company near Brussels, told me once, “When I interview someone for a position in my company, I ask him how far away from my office he lives. If I find that he has to commute more than 15 minutes, I tell him that it won’t work out. He should either spend time at the office, or with his family at home. No point in wasting time in between”.

While in Heslinki once, I attended a farewell party for a colleague who had resigned. In her parting speech, she explained that the reason she was quitting was that she had to commute 25 minutes one way and this was like wasting 8% of the time that she was awake. She had found a job in a smaller town where her office was just 5 minutes away.

I agree with them.All my life, I have managed to live fairly close to my school/college/work place. Commuting has never taken more than 30-45 minutes, whether by bus/cycle/scooter or car. Whenever I visit Mumbai or Delhi and find myself admiring the energy levels and vibrancy of these cities, I quickly think of the commuting that most of my colleagues out there have to put with. Then I thank my stars that I don’t have to endure such torture.

Jonah Lehrer quotes from his own column in Seed magazine and makes me feel even better:

"A few years ago, the Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer announced the discovery of a new human foible, which they called "the commuters paradox". They found that, when people are choosing where to live, they consistently underestimate the pain of a long commute. This leads people to mistakenly believe that the McMansion in the suburbs, with its extra bedroom and sprawling lawn, will make them happier, even though it might force them to drive an additional forty-five minutes to work. It turns out, however, that traffic is torture, and the big house isn't worth it. According to the calculations of Frey and Stutzer, a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40 percent more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. The reason long commutes make us so unhappy is that the flow of traffic is inherently unpredictable. As a result, we never adapt to the suffering of rush hour. (Ironically, if traffic was always bad, and not just usually bad, it would be easier to deal with.) As the Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert notes, "Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day."

Plus Ultra's efforts bear fruit.

Loyal readers of this blog know that Plus Ultra does not hesitate to take up and publicise humanitarian causes that require immediate intervention and solutions.

In this spirit, Plus Ultra had published a complaint received from a person named Raj that he was put to untold difficulty while seated in the aisle seat of a plane, due to the fact that an over-sized fellow-passenger on the next seat would not allow him to breathe.

Thanks to Plus Ultra’s efforts, some airlines have acted upon the complaint. United Airlines which earlier used to take a position that it ‘will not discriminate’ between normal-sized and XXXL passengers”, has come out with a pricing policy, based on which over-sized passengers will have to pay for two seats. The relevant clause reads as follows:

"UA will refuse to transport or will remove at any point, any passenger … in the following categories where refusal to board or removal from the aircraft may be necessary for the safety or comfort of themselves and other passengers: … persons who are unable to sit in the seat with the seat belt fastened and the armrest down. Note: A passenger will not be removed upon the purchase of an extra seat. If an extra seat is not available for sale on the same flight, UA will transport the passenger, without penalty, on the next flight having adjacent available seats and the passenger will be required to purchase the extra seat as a condition of carriage."

If any under-sized passenger wishes to be charged only for half a seat, please write in to Plus Ultra, giving full details.

The case of the XXXL passenger

For an early-morning flight to Mumbai last week, I had done a tele-check in and had managed to get my favourite seat - Aisle seat in the front row- 10C. I was looking forward to catching up on an hour of sleep, when a man of size XXXL, high BMI and high diameter-to-height ratio shoehorned himself into the middle seat- 10B. The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful, with me pressed against the armrest of the aisle seat, and barely managing to breathe.

Now, I am a fairly seasoned traveler, and know that the law of averages determines one’s fate. If you are a frequent traveler, you must put up with such minor inconveniences, every now and then. You must accept the situation philosophically and with equanimity. After all, you can’t choose your fellow travelers. And, as lightning does not strike the same place twice, the odds of getting an XXXL person next to you on the next flight are pretty slim. In fact, the odds of sitting next to a pretty, slim girl on a subsequent flight improve dramatically .

So, imagine my dismay, when I got into the evening flight to return to Chennai, and find the same ‘high BMI’, XXL individual firmly ensconced in same seat 10B. And I had thoughtfully telechecked into the same seat 10C.

What are the odds of getting as one’s co-passenger the same person on more than one flight? And, why does it have to happen to me?

Ok, I am being mean and inconsiderate. I am sure that many others have suffered the same fate. When I googled, I found quite a few complaints on the same subject. Here is a case of an irate passenger writing to Southwest Airlines. He managed to get a full refund.

Another blog which calls itself, “The view from the window seat”, asked its readers this question:

Just saw a piece from Aviation (via MSNBC.com) that lists the various airline policies for dealing with overweight passengers. Some, like Southwest, have clear policies in place while others, like United, have no policy at all. Most airlines fall somewhere in the middle with hard-to-enforce informal policies.

I am really curious to know what you all think about this topic and what YOU think the airlines should to accommodate overweight passengers (or not accommodate as the case may be). I am aware of the sensitive nature of this topic but think it is a valid one, especially considering that having an empty seat next to you seems to be, for the most part, a thing of the past.

One of the comments received was:

I have sent inquiries to both American and United asking what their policy is for dealing with passengers who buy only one coach seat but cannot fit into that seat. Both said that they will not discriminate against any passenger, and that an obese passenger would not be asked to deplane. I asked what my recourse was if I was seated next to them and could not fit into whatever remained of my seat. I was informed that I could purchase an upgrade, if available, or ask to be put on the next flight, although there was no guarantee of getting to my destination on the same day. So apparently you cannot discriminate against an obese passenger, but it’s OK to discriminate against a normal size passenger. For the life of me I cannot understand why it is OK to buy one seat and expect 1.5 seats, if you are fat, but if you are normal size and buy one seat, you cannot necessarily expect only 1 seat.

If only I had found a slim, pretty girl in the adjacent seat on the return flight, I needn’t have engaged in such painstaking research on the subject of overweight travellers and their overhanging flesh. Sigh.

The roots beckon again.

Talking about the ‘call of the roots’ in my previous post brought back memories of another incident that happened 15 years back.

While in Australia for a sales conference, I bumped into one of our dealers from the Fiji Islands. He was of Indian origin and was quite prosperous. In the course of a conversation he mentioned that he was planning a visit to India- his first- later that year. And, would I help him trace his ancestral village?

All he knew was that his grandmother, when a small girl, had been put on board a ship that had set sail for the Fiji Islands, where the British required some cheap labour. As they were Telugu speaking, he suspected that she must have started her journey from Vizag. She never went back to India. His parents had toiled hard, and when he grew up, he had invested a small sum in a hotel, and this eventually grew into a big business.

Like Alex Haley, he wanted to trace his roots now.

He came down to India as promised, and I put him on to my colleague who was located in Vizag. Ads were placed in all Telugu papers seeking information on the ship that had carried the workers off to an unknown destination, sometime around 1920. One tip led to another, and soon, my colleague was accompanying the dealer to the very village his grandmother had been born. More probing resulted in someone pointing out that there lived a 92-year old lady in the village who might remember, and they rushed over to her hut. The old lady, though quite senile, miraculously remembered the tragic event in which most of her kith and kin, were bundled together and shoved aboard. What’s more, the dealer’s grandmother turned out to be the old lady’s cousin. Hearing which, the dealer broke down uncontrollably, hugged the old lady, pulled out a wad of 500-rupee notes and handed it over to her.

Later, while walking away from the place, he pointed out the irony. This old lady who had escaped the deporting, actually thought that a great tragedy had befallen his grandmother’s family, while it was in fact a blessing. The deported lady’s descendant was now wealthy enough to fly down all the way and gift her cousin who had stayed behind, a fat bundle of 500-rupee notes, in her miserable hut. That’s life for you.