An exercise in dis-organisation

A touch of concern : cases of swine flu have crossed borders and are showing up in India too. The papers this morning reported 2 cases but by evening now there seem to be 5 cases detected in India.
Scary? You bet! But you know what, if my experiences were anything to go by, I wouldn't be surprised if more cases show up with the virus being literally forced on the patients at our airports.

A couple of weeks ago, I crossed the Singapore border to go to Malaysia by train. When the initial documentation checks were done at the Singapore railway station, we were handed a health form to fill in along with our immigration form. This was the usual ' have you been to Africa / South America in the last 10 days' kind of form but we had plenty of time to fill it in while travelling to the Malaysian border.
This was back when CNN and BBC were getting all worked up about the illness but there were no cases reported in the Asian continent yet so I suppose the Malaysian authorities were quite relaxed about physical health checks. It was something which seemed to affect only the Americas and Europe.

By the time we were finished with lazing around the beaches of Tioman and heading back to Singapore a week later, matters had definitely become more serious and even in the miniscule airport of Tioman, the tension was palpable. We were all handed small forms to fill in while we were waiting to take off and asked to add our address and connecting flight details too. We were warned to make sure we filled it in before reaching Singapore or we would have to stand in long queues later (any holiday-maker's nightmare!).

We did end up standing in a very slow queue for our immigration but with a scanner/ camera / watchamacallit placed innocuously next to the winding but very small line of passengers, getting our temperatures read or symptoms checked without us even realising it, I suppose. One Caucasian couple did get a very polite request to step out of the line and a digital thermometer was very efficiently put to work. But that's it.

Yesterday we checked in at Changi airport to fly back to India. We were handed the mandatory immigration declaration form with one standard question on whether we had travelled to Africa or South America. No health form here.

When we landed in Mumbai, weary and ready to catch up on all the sleep we had missed, we rushed to the immigration counter happy to be back in India (its amazing! a short 2 week holiday away from home can still make me feel like shouting "Jai Hind!" when we were finally flying over the Indian landmass).

Well, welcome back ... the immigration hall had these rows demarcated for international passengers and others for domestic passengers. Just as we were rushing to the counter for domestic passengers, we were suddenly told by a very harassed looking official that everyone had to first get a form from another counter, fill it in and submit it at a desk for approval!

Hey! If you had just thought of that 5 hours ago before the flight took off and handed us some forms at Changi airport, everyone would've had their forms filled in and ready, wouldn't they?
As it was, it was like the biggest stampede you ever saw!
About 200 very confused people were determined to get their forms but had no idea where they were. After a treasure-hunt of sorts with tired and disgruntled passengers refusing to give way to anyone who even thought of cutting their line to cross to the other side, my daughter was nearly in tears.

What was supposed to be a single-line queue soon morphed into a rugby huddle . Now there were about 200 (it seemed like a thousand ! ) sweaty, impatient people of all races and sizes crammed cheek-to-cheek and nose-to-shoulder trying to juggle paper and pen and fill in the forms while struggling to keep their place in 5 (or was it 10?) imaginary lines which seemed to blend and merge at haphazard points.
I swear if this scene had appeared in one of our hindi movies, it would have been censored for obscenely close proximity.

Total chaos!
Tempers were fraying. Voices were rising. The officials were struggling to keep up with the onslaught. Finally it came down to a shouted "where are you from?" to a man who rushed in from behind me with a filled form .
"London", he said.
"You have no fever, no?"
A shake of the head, and the form was stamped!

My 12-year old daughter who finished her turn before me was lost, not knowing where to go because there was no place to stand beside me till I had finished and there seemed to be no place to which she could retreat where she could still see me or I her. She was forced to move on and by the time I could find her again after a lot of frantic searching, I was ready to punch someone.
Maybe I'm over-protective but I totally resent that the airport authorities forced that situation on me.
The health declaration form was not something which sprang up in the 5 hours during our flight so why couldn't they have given us the form to fill in earlier before we landed?
Why were there no demarcated lines with dividing ropes or whatever, already in place at the health check desk before the flight landed ?
Who was keeping a check on the checkers? If they were not actually checking for symptoms along with collecting the forms, what was the need for this new form of torture?

I'm 100% sure that if I contract swine flu or any other contagious disease, I got it at that horrendous immigration hall at Mumbai international airport!

On Holiday

I finally did it! I'm in Singapore right now and drooling over the absolutely fantastic orchids blooming their heads off in every nook and corner . And I'm so envious of the very trim figures I see everywhere.
I'm busy having fun but had to pop in here to let all of you know that I'll posting again in a little while but right now I'm on holiday. Okay?
Talk to you soon!

Educating Junior

Whoever drew this brilliant cartoon (do click on it) has my full sympathy ... and absolute understanding. Actually I'm not too sure it is a cartoon. It looks more like a page from my son's notebook. Or that of any of the thousands of 16-year olds in India.

I've been stewing all of this past year, not because of anything I have to do, but because my son was preparing for his Board exams this year. Now, if you're not from India, chances are that you won't know the sheer hell of this phase!

Last June, I checked out the papers and magazines to research what percentage was likely to guarantee an easy admission into the best colleges. Then I had to double-back and check which were considered the good colleges. It didn't help that he had no clue what he wanted to do with his life except play football and cricket ! Okay, so he's good at those, but a career built on them ... ?

After collecting paper cuttings, scraping every website on the subject, and compiling reams of statistics on colleges, courses and percentages, I realised that some of the good colleges were quoting a cut-off mark of 90% for Arts !
Whaaat?!
That meant if you get 89% (which is fantastic in my personal opinion) you don't need to even bother putting in an application?
Help!
And that was for the Arts stream which has always been considered the soft one... the one you could apply for if you're not particularly strong in academics. What would my son with his dreams of Science do?

Then started the marathon! Every day of the week had an allotted special tutorial class, sometimes in school, sometimes elsewhere.
He struggled, I cringed with guilt. This was not what I wanted for my child. I wanted him to enjoy his childhood.
But then I also want him to enjoy his adulthood too. I don't want him to feel held back at any point because a lack of a few measly marks prevent him from doing what he wants to do. What a cruel world we have built for our children!

Then it came to the portions allotted. If I could get my hands on the brainiac who sets the syllabus, I'm going to make them make a list of the times when a person is ever likely to use half the stuff they make the children learn.
How many times have you used logarithms after you left school? Or trignometry, for that matter ?
How many times have you used a topographical map of a place to find out what the main occupation of that place is likely to be?

I'll stand up and clap if they'll teach our children to survive the mean streets of Mumbai. Or teach them to really use their imagination and creative skills constructively.
But if they're trying to stuff the kids with a zillion never-to-be-used facts just to plump up the syllabus, I feel like throwing rotten tomatoes.

Now the major part of this Herculean labour is over; the books were learnt and the exams were written. Who knows what lies ahead?
But one thing I'm very sure of : if there was a task that could've made Hercules stumble, surely it would have been the attempt at modern education.

Kexy isn't Sexy !

If you like words... just twisting them around, tasting them and licking your lips with them, then this one's for you.

A whole bunch of words are going to go off the board . You won't find them in any dictionary anymore and only you can save them . Dont laugh, but some of them are absolutely delicious. Throw them at Mr. Know-it-all at the desk down the corridor and watch his face stumble! Or toss them at hubby / wifey / kiddo in the middle of the spat of the century and walk away with the last word. Every time !

Okay, here's the deal. First go to Save the Word and try out some lovely, scrumptious words for yourself. You're sure to find some beauties !I loved these :

fallaciloquence : deceitful speech
As in, dont give me any of your fallaciloquence !

And you're going to love this one...
snollygoster : a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician
(not my words, I swear! but I couldn't have said it better myself)
As in, we should know better than to invite those snollygosters to loot us every five years !

And
kexy : brittle, withered
As in, kexy just isn't sexy !


I wish I had known this one about 2 months ago when I was egging my son to study...
pigritude : laziness
As in, I can't believe your absolute pigritude when you know your exams are just 1 month away!

Go ahead, go to the site and pick out some luscious words for yourself... and use them! They're too good to throw away.

Vocitate!
(I learnt that one over there... go find out what it means)

Who took the fun out of travelling?

A week or two, max. And then it's vacation time in Mumbai.

The burdensome Board exams wind up and so do the other less-dreaded end-of-year ones in each school and college. Time for kids to throw their books away. My son is planning a bonfire.
"Wait," I screech," let's see your results first! "
Who cares! that's another month or two away. In the meantime, it's time to wipe off the worry lines and ... holiday!

"Why don't you go to foreign?" suggests the travel agent. "Best time. Recession, hai na ? Everything's going empty. Very cheap!"
Hmmm... that is very tempting. The kids are grown up enough not to need their hands held every minute. And we're not so old that we need to pack walking sticks too. Yeah, maybe it is the perfect time.

So the process starts. Where do we go?
"Europe," booms hubby. "Let the kids see another culture." Er... that's what they do see every other day in the movies they watch and the Archie comics they devour. Not to mention the fast-food they reach for every time we go out.
"Can we go somewhere cold," pleads my daughter, wilting in the summer heat.
"Ha!" smirks my son, "who nearly passed out on Rohtang Pass? " snigger, snigger, snigger
But I'm fine with Europe too. We developed a soft corner for the European countryside ever since we holidayed there on our honeymoon eons ago (no, we didnt sing on the slopes of Switzerland) . Heck, I'm fine with anything, just so long as we're going somewhere !

Okay, visa time and back to the travel guy.
"Hmmm... problem hai, sir. Do you have relatives in the countries you're going to? Or friends?"
Say what???
"See, you have to give letters from someone living there. Or you have to have a confirmed hotel booking. If you want, I can book. We have peoples in all countries. No problem."

Yes, problem. Yes, very big problem! Britain is the only place where we have relatives who can vouch for us just passing through with no intentions of hanging on.
What about Bavaria or that beautiful little b&b cottage in the Swiss Alps where I had set my heart on staying?
And the Romantic Road! I've been dying to travel down that road ever since I heard its name.
And Salzburg and Munich and Paris !

"Mey-dom, see, I told you. No problem, just book hotel now. I will do it for you. Or go on group tour ..."
Noooo ! I don't want to stick to any schedules and routes and dates. I'm on holiday!
I want to travel as the fancy takes me. Pick up my bags and set off when my traveller's legs start to itch. Put them down and vegetate when my mood says so...
If I book rooms and tickets, then where is the fun of travelling?
I want to travel down intriguing roads, stop when I see a beautiful landscape, wait to talk to the locals... not rush to the next dot on the map just because I've a confirmed booking there.

So, it looks like Europe is out. And my worry lines are back in.
As an afterthought, though, I just realised that at least the cancelled plans have saved us another worry ... how we're going to pay for this grand holiday!

But ... does this mean there's no place "foreign" which is okay with our kind of travel? Where you don't need to know where you're going to be the next day?
How sad! I wonder what Marco Polo would've thought of that !


(The image of the poster is from the collection of David Levine . He's got a fantastic collection of travel posters. Go check it out! )

The Carrot Eyewash

How does it feel when one of the great near-gospel truths of your childhood is ripped apart?
'Devastated' doesn't even begin to cover it, right? Imagine how I felt when the papers published the secret behind one of the most strongly held beliefs of our childhood ... carrots are great for the eyes. Well, you can stop feeding Junior the orange stuff.

Apparently it was all a big eye-wash carefully crafted during the World War. The British had set up a chain of radar stations along the coast and didn't want the Germans to find out how they were detecting so many of the enemy planes. So they concocted this great myth of how they were feeding their men carrots to improve their sight! All the better to see you with ...

Now how much of this is truth and how much is just the stuff of urban legend, I don't even want to begin to guess. But it led to generations of mothers forcing the kiddies to "eat up! it's good for your eyes ".
In short, carrots are only good for dangling before a donkey, according to this new version of an old story. If true, we really have been the donkeys, haven't we?

I just hope that at least the part about spinach and iron is true. I'd hate to think I shovelled in tons of the green gunk for nothing !

Fuel conservation, Indian-style

I was driving by Inorbit mall the other day when I saw this very funny sight. What on earth are they up to? Did the guy in front run out of fuel and his friend was giving him a helping hand... er, foot?

Then I looked around and saw more autorickshaw guys driving like this. I think they're actually trying to save fuel. They didnt look in any particular hurry to reach anywhere, so one of them possibly switches off the engine and gets his friend to push him around ! I wonder whether they switch places after sometime.

Friendship really can take you places... sometimes with a kick in the rear!