Like most people, I was under the assumption that if you had a valid visa and flight tickets, you could fly to any country. Unless, you happened to be on the Interpol red-corner list or related to Al-Qaeda or some such terrorist outfit.
Infact, there are lucky souls, who just due to their nationality (EU, US etc) need not even have a visa to fly to many countries. Ofcourse this logic does not work with all countries, as a manager in an organisation I used to work in some 10 years ago learnt to his discomfort.
The said manager had to come to our Chennai office for a short business trip from his home base of Belgium. He books a ticket to Chennai and lands at Brussels airport on the day of travel, only to be told that he needs a visa to be able to travel to India. The guy is shocked, but left with no other option than to get back home. If my memory serves me right, I think he just abandoned travel plans and got the work done via email/video-conferencing.
But even if you have a valid visa & tickets, there is no guarantee that you can fly out, as I learnt late-evening yesterday. It is 9PM and I am still at work. A close friend from my college days is flying in from the US on a business-cum-personal trip and I have to pick him up from the airport and drop him at Park Sheraton where he would be staying.
The scheduled arrival time of the Lufthansa flight is 23:45 and adding atleast 30mins for him to finish immigration, customs etc and get his bags, it would be past midnight. So, if I leave from my office to the airport around 11PM, it should be OK. I send him an email telling that I would be at the airport, which I expect him to read when he switches on his phone after landing at Chennai.
I am in the midst of some work, when I see a popup indicating an email from him, which is surprising because he is supposed to be flying at this time and you are not supposed to use phones on the flight. I read the email, which simply says, "I am going to travel only today at 3.30PM so please pick me up tomorrow." I think I made a mistake reading his itinerary, but no - it clearly states an arrival time of 11:45PM on 24-May-2010. So what happened ?
It seems he went to the airport and through security check etc and is at the gate waiting for the plane. And that is when he fails a new test by the US Aviation authority as per which the captain / pilot does an eyeball-check of all the passengers and if he points out someone (in this case my friend, due to the brown skin?) with whom he is not comfortable travelling, that person cannot travel. As simple as that.
Can you believe this ? You are there waiting to fly out on business/pleasure, when the captain comes over, looks at you, does not like the color of your skin or your goatee or your outfit and guess what, you are driving back home to travel another day. And the funny thing is, my friend is an American citizen (of Indian origin), a Business Class traveller & works for a premier bank.
Understandably he was pissed off and his comment was, "My American passport does not get me the respect that I used to get with my Indian passport."
Anyway, I tell him to email me from Frankfurt so that I can be sure that he actually did fly out of the States. :-) Else, I would be waiting like a fool outside the Chennai airport, paying exhorbitant parking fees & drinking more exhorbitantly priced coffee from Coffee Day, while he is back home after failing another eyeball test.
This incident sort of proves my pet theory right. That the US/UK/AU citizenship that you worked hard to get, does not mean a thing, until you can somehow change your skin color too. India does have its flaws, but no one is going to offload me of a plane for which I have paid the fare, just because the pilot does not like the color of my skin.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Giving does feel better. As long as the missus does not know about it.
Last Friday, I had stopped at a tea-shop on Cathedral Road, just opposite Stella Maris women's college for a cup of tea. Its one of the many tea-shops in Chennai, run by Mallus and apart from tea/milk/coffee, there is the standard range of eats - samosa, vadai, etc. As I wait for the tea, I pick up a vadai - yeah, I know that the taste is nothing much to write home about.
The guy brings my cup of tea & as I sip on it, I see an emaciated elderly woman (65 yrs or so) walk to the tea-shop with a kid in her arms. The kid also looks under-nourished. Its a boy who would be around 2 years old and I am instantly reminded of my son. Sort of like whenever I see old people on the streets, my mind instantly brings forward memories of my grandparents.
She fumbles around in the folds of her saree and brings out a couple of coins. She asks for a cup of milk and hands over a 5-rupee coin, which the tea-shop owner puts into his cash-box. She was expecting some change back, but the guy tells her that it costs 5 bucks.
She gets the milk and brings it to the lips of the kid, making me want to tell her that it might be too hot for the kid. But the kid just turns his face away. She tries a few more times to feed him, but he does not seem to want it and turns his face away everytime. She looks around and notices that I am watching - I move my gaze away. She moves a little away and somehow makes the kid drink half of it. She drinks the remaining milk and after returning the glass, she moves to the adjoining shop which stocks bakery products and junk food like chips.
She buys a packet of chips and hands it to the kid who takes it eagerly. She pays for it (Rs.6) & walks back in the direction from where she had come. I have this feeling that both of them are hungry & the milk or chips is not really going to help - they need solid food. I think of offering some money, but worried about her reaction because though it looks like she is short of money, I have no way of knowing for sure and could end up hurting her.
At the tea-shop itself, I had taken Rs.50 from my wallet & have it in my hand. But even as she is nearing where I am standing, I am unable to decide. Anyway I decide to take the risk and just as she passes by me, I handover the money to her and tell her to buy some food for her and the kid. She is surprised since this was unexpected, but takes the money and moves on.
I am also surprised, because till that precise moment, I was not sure of what I would do. Many a time I have thought on similar lines, but backed off at the last time (due to being unsure whether I would be hurting their sentiments) and was expecting this time also to be no different. I know that 50 bucks is no big deal & would maybe get her just a decent meal. But yeah...
Anyway, I am there feeling good that I finally managed to do what I could not over many previous instances. And giving is anyway much better than getting. Something I saw from
what William Gates and W. Buffet are doing. Both of them figure at the top of the richest men in the universe list, but are currently out to give out a significant portion of their earnings to those that need it. A good gesture, which makes me admire Bill, someone I always thought of as a capitalist American. But...
But what ? Though my wife is not the daily facebook-hotmail-gmail type, she does catch up with her email once in a few days and ofcourse she checks my blog too, since she knows that this is the only way to keep track of a loud-mouth like me. :-) And so she is bound to read this too. So what, you would think ?
Well, lots. Unlike men, women have elphantine memories. You slight them (knowingly or unknowingly) once and it just gets written into their Non Volatile Memory (NVM) - to be recalled at the slightest requirement and to come back to bite you. And so it is in my case. Well, it's a long story.
Some 10 years ago, when my wife was not employed, she used to be at Chennai, manning home as a homemaker. Which meant that not only did my flat look like a proper home, I also got a hearty breakfast and lunch to go everyday. She was just getting used to the Chennai way of life and was slowly picking up Tamil - she speaks pretty decent Tamil today.
Anyway, one day I return from work and she tells me about her day. Some woman had come with a sob story and she being the girl she is, melted immediately and gave the lady 20 bucks. I am mortified because I feel she was cheated for being the gullible girl she is and 20 bucks back then was a big deal. I immediately start a big lecture about how she does not know to differentiate fact from fiction and how she does not know the value of money. I could have stopped there and things would have been great.
But no, the loud mouth that I am, I went on about how she does not know the value of money, because she does not know how hard it is to earn money. That really hurt her. But since she is not the typical bite-back kind of wife, she just swallowed it, though she wrote it into her NVM. And since then, after she started earning, whenever a situation arose, she would take this weapon out at me.
So, I am sure that when she reads this post, she is surely going to remind me of how wrong I was to have reprimanded her about giving 20 bucks to a poor soul, when I have done precisely the same thing. Hmm.
The guy brings my cup of tea & as I sip on it, I see an emaciated elderly woman (65 yrs or so) walk to the tea-shop with a kid in her arms. The kid also looks under-nourished. Its a boy who would be around 2 years old and I am instantly reminded of my son. Sort of like whenever I see old people on the streets, my mind instantly brings forward memories of my grandparents.
She fumbles around in the folds of her saree and brings out a couple of coins. She asks for a cup of milk and hands over a 5-rupee coin, which the tea-shop owner puts into his cash-box. She was expecting some change back, but the guy tells her that it costs 5 bucks.
She gets the milk and brings it to the lips of the kid, making me want to tell her that it might be too hot for the kid. But the kid just turns his face away. She tries a few more times to feed him, but he does not seem to want it and turns his face away everytime. She looks around and notices that I am watching - I move my gaze away. She moves a little away and somehow makes the kid drink half of it. She drinks the remaining milk and after returning the glass, she moves to the adjoining shop which stocks bakery products and junk food like chips.
She buys a packet of chips and hands it to the kid who takes it eagerly. She pays for it (Rs.6) & walks back in the direction from where she had come. I have this feeling that both of them are hungry & the milk or chips is not really going to help - they need solid food. I think of offering some money, but worried about her reaction because though it looks like she is short of money, I have no way of knowing for sure and could end up hurting her.
At the tea-shop itself, I had taken Rs.50 from my wallet & have it in my hand. But even as she is nearing where I am standing, I am unable to decide. Anyway I decide to take the risk and just as she passes by me, I handover the money to her and tell her to buy some food for her and the kid. She is surprised since this was unexpected, but takes the money and moves on.
I am also surprised, because till that precise moment, I was not sure of what I would do. Many a time I have thought on similar lines, but backed off at the last time (due to being unsure whether I would be hurting their sentiments) and was expecting this time also to be no different. I know that 50 bucks is no big deal & would maybe get her just a decent meal. But yeah...
Anyway, I am there feeling good that I finally managed to do what I could not over many previous instances. And giving is anyway much better than getting. Something I saw from
what William Gates and W. Buffet are doing. Both of them figure at the top of the richest men in the universe list, but are currently out to give out a significant portion of their earnings to those that need it. A good gesture, which makes me admire Bill, someone I always thought of as a capitalist American. But...
But what ? Though my wife is not the daily facebook-hotmail-gmail type, she does catch up with her email once in a few days and ofcourse she checks my blog too, since she knows that this is the only way to keep track of a loud-mouth like me. :-) And so she is bound to read this too. So what, you would think ?
Well, lots. Unlike men, women have elphantine memories. You slight them (knowingly or unknowingly) once and it just gets written into their Non Volatile Memory (NVM) - to be recalled at the slightest requirement and to come back to bite you. And so it is in my case. Well, it's a long story.
Some 10 years ago, when my wife was not employed, she used to be at Chennai, manning home as a homemaker. Which meant that not only did my flat look like a proper home, I also got a hearty breakfast and lunch to go everyday. She was just getting used to the Chennai way of life and was slowly picking up Tamil - she speaks pretty decent Tamil today.
Anyway, one day I return from work and she tells me about her day. Some woman had come with a sob story and she being the girl she is, melted immediately and gave the lady 20 bucks. I am mortified because I feel she was cheated for being the gullible girl she is and 20 bucks back then was a big deal. I immediately start a big lecture about how she does not know to differentiate fact from fiction and how she does not know the value of money. I could have stopped there and things would have been great.
But no, the loud mouth that I am, I went on about how she does not know the value of money, because she does not know how hard it is to earn money. That really hurt her. But since she is not the typical bite-back kind of wife, she just swallowed it, though she wrote it into her NVM. And since then, after she started earning, whenever a situation arose, she would take this weapon out at me.
So, I am sure that when she reads this post, she is surely going to remind me of how wrong I was to have reprimanded her about giving 20 bucks to a poor soul, when I have done precisely the same thing. Hmm.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Travel clouds are forming again...
Another trip to Belgrade (Serbia) is in the offing, tentatively starting 2nd week of June and for a little over 2 weeks. One side of me is overjoyed at the chance to travel after a long time and to a city I like. Plus ofcourse, who would not want to get away from the insanely hot Chennai summer for a few weeks ?
But another side feels down about being away from my son for 3-odd weeks. When I went to Serbia last October, he was only about 2 years old and had just started learning to articulate himself. But in the 6-odd months that have passed since, not only has his vocabulary increased a lot, but he now knows a lot more about things around him. He even has a list of things ready for me to get for him from Serbia and topping the list is a "BIG gun" - not sure what this is with boys and guns. Must be like girls and Barbies. And ofcourse the customary chocolates, toy-cars etc.
I hope the tough-to-pronounce volcano in Iceland subsides completely in the coming weeks and does not cause any flight cancellations / delays etc. And I hope I get to make maximum use of the 2 weekends I have in Belgrade to get to know the place much better than I could do last time.
But another side feels down about being away from my son for 3-odd weeks. When I went to Serbia last October, he was only about 2 years old and had just started learning to articulate himself. But in the 6-odd months that have passed since, not only has his vocabulary increased a lot, but he now knows a lot more about things around him. He even has a list of things ready for me to get for him from Serbia and topping the list is a "BIG gun" - not sure what this is with boys and guns. Must be like girls and Barbies. And ofcourse the customary chocolates, toy-cars etc.
I hope the tough-to-pronounce volcano in Iceland subsides completely in the coming weeks and does not cause any flight cancellations / delays etc. And I hope I get to make maximum use of the 2 weekends I have in Belgrade to get to know the place much better than I could do last time.
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