Getting there ....

After several hours of earning my pay (not a very pleasant exercise, at least in my day job), I took some time off today to browse. And by labyrinthine ways came I upon a blog I used to have, many years ago. In fact, the first blog I ever started (almost defunct, because I haven’t posted there since February or thereabouts). At the risk of boring the pants off the few readers I have left, I shall reproduce a post from 2004 (SIX years ago?!) which so matches my mood just now, as a perfunctory sun splashes its last tired rays on Park Street and starts its homeward slide into the haze behind Vidyasagar Setu, as I gird my loins for yet another meeting and a long drear November evening in office with piles of papers that make a mockery of the first nip in the air.

But the post also has content that brings contentment, for even though it’s taken six years, I can now put a couple of tick marks against my bucket list. Observe the parts emboldened –

* * *

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

And how shall I begin ... shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets. And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows … And one of them would have been me, standing at a window high above the Via Arriberti, looking out at the layered sky settling behind the chic hedgehog Duomo and the dome of a church in the next street.

The winter evening settles down With smells of steaks in passage-ways … except that in Calcutta, one would have to wait a long long time to smell a good steak. Perhaps in the CC&FC or Mocambo. Mem: Work on a good steak-house for the city. But as the weather slips towards December, it is nice to walk the darkling streets or perch (perchance) on a balcony and greet the chill of evening.

Life is very long … What does the week ahead hold for me? I need to change my job. Stay at home and tap away at this slightly speckled key-board until something emerges that I can parley for pelf.

Then take the money and run … to Peru to see the Nazca Lines and Macchu Picchu, push myself across a rope bridge in the Andes, stare down a llama … Or to Malawi, to walk the high veldt with a camera as the sun goes down behind the acacias and a stomach-jolting roar floats from the horizon … A wood-panelled pub in a narrow alley in Dublin, at a table scarred with burns and bitters, with the lilt of Irish talk around … Or on a road out of Istanbul with the Bosporus gleaming below, driving between two days and two continents as strange music pours from the radio … Perhaps a yurt on the steppes on the edge of the Gobi, lifting the flap to see the horizon distant as another day ...

Oh well. At least I have my coffee ... "black as sin, hot as the Pit and strong enough to float a horseshoe".

* * *

Observe, good my lords and gentles, that I have got around to fulfilling a couple of these wishes. In 2007 a couple of kind souls who liked my store window, to wit, this Philippic, actually started buying some of my efforts. No princely amounts, but the satisfaction of knowing that somebody thought my writing good enough to buy with real money. Post recession, the market has even picked up, to the point where my keyboard can subsidise not just my panatellas but even the occasional bottle of peaty delight. Score one for the dinosaur!

Peru … I know my limitations, so I did not venture the Inca trail with its precarious bridges, but in 2009 I did manage to visit Machu Picchu (Pick-choo, say Pick-choo, not Pitchu). I even saw the Nazca Lines from the plane, on the long flight back towards Sao Paulo. And while truth compels me to admit that I did not in fact stare down a llama, I did withstand the downhill rush of three of the uncouth creatures while climbing up to the threshing floor at Machu Picchu.

Istanbul was the year before that, 2008, an idyll of quayside coffee in Ortakay and leisurely walks down Istiklal (marred only by a series of meetings, how work does intrude most unfairly upon life!).

And of course, Mocambo and black coffee are two of the enduring pillars of my workaday existence. For once, this Old Bong has reason to go easy on the sadness! Sunrise in Malawi, the Gobi, even Dublin - I shall get there, no matter that it’s a long long way to Tipperary!

* * *

The sum of the parts - Pt 3

It takes more than a journey to comprehend this country. The British had this tradition at the turn of the last century, the Grand Tour. The closest Indian equivalent may be in the civil services, where officers in training are sent around the country on “Bharat Darshan”. In our year, possibly like every other year, everybody wanted to go to Goa. Our group went instead to Jammu and Gujarat, to Bombay and to Bangalore. We watched sunset over the Arabian Sea from the deck of a frigate, tiptoed down border trails in Akhnoor in the dark before the dawn, ate Vadilal ice-creams and thalis beside the highway near Ahmedabad. For thirty days the sights of India washed over us in waves. At the end of it all we listed all the places we hadn’t visited, the sights we hadn’t seen even in the States we passed through – the step wells of Gujarat, the mustard fields of Punjab, the brooding citadels of Mandu and Orchha, the ruins of Hampi. Thirty days was never enough to see a tenth of this bewildering variety.

We did, however, get a feel of the people. Because we rode the rails. Through long nights and longer days, lulled by the rattle of the wheels, we spoke to people. To Indians. A studious Sikh accountant from Ludhiana, so different from the stereotype of the bluff Sardar. A group of feisty old ladies from Surat, travelling down to Bombay to run a sale. The homesick young sailor going up from Vishakhapatnam to Kanpur, looking forward to his mother’s cooking. In hindsight, that young man personified two of the strands that bind together this crazy sprawl. First, the armed forces, where discipline and uniformity blur the differences between regions and races. Second, the railways, that uniquely Indian melting pot where the diverse ingredients are tossed together.

The iron horse had more than an economic impact on the process of “nation-building”. Besides opening up the Indian hinterlands to trade, the railways broke down the divisions in society and opened up their minds. An aphorism from 19^th century Bengal has survived – Jaat bhanglo teen Sen – Keshob Sen, Wil-sen aar ishtisen. Loosely translated, three Sens demolished the barriers of caste – Keshob Sen (the Brahmo reformer), Wilson’s Hotel in Calcutta where people of all castes ate together and the ishtisen or station, where people were thrown together in the adventure of travel. Travellers from Theroux to Iyer have vouched that a second-class railway carriage on a long journey is the best way to understand the soul of India. Also to share biographies and genealogies, prepare strategies for the sowing season and the stock market, plan a holiday with (recent) strangers who are suddenly good friends and find a suitable boy for the neighbours’ distressingly modern daughter.

****

A railway carriage would also be the best place to face the stereotyping that moulds regional identities. The burly Sikh, bearded and turbanned, ever-ready to break into an energetic bhangra after a meal of tnn-ddoori chik-ken, good-humoured and good-hearted but typecast as the simpleton - India’s version of the Irishman or the Polack. An image that needs re-thinking after the Khalistan movement in the ’80s, or in the light of the achievements of Hargobind Singh Khurana, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Paramjit Singh Dhaliwal. The fish-eating, emotional, argumentative Bengali, wordy and quick-tempered but a physical coward. The Gujarati money-bags who would sell his family for a profit. The “North-Eastern” student, a catch-all categorisation that ignores the distinctions between the Manipuri Bishnupriya (Vaishnavs) and the Baptist from Mizoram, let alone the differences between the 16 major tribes and 64 sub-tribes of Nagaland. Is this merely an attempt to fit people into categories, or is it symptomatic of the emphasis on sub-regional identities? Shall we see in India a replay of what is happening in Georgia and in Moldova, a continuous process of differentiation and division?

My generation was fed the line of “unity in diversity” long before “India shining” became a catch-phrase. I have problems with both. The diversity is self-evident, but the unity seems more tenuous with each passing year. Some years ago I was in Manipur on government work and became used to the term "you Indians". Even "going to India". It stirred déjà vu. Then I remembered Kashmir in 1990. These words, the attitude, were chilling echoes of a chilling fortnight in Srinagar all those years ago. That's some unity. Consider the Jarawa tribesman in the Andaman Islands. He may not even KNOW about India. His home is closer to Thailand than to the Indian mainland. In case I've failed to get the point across, the idea of "India united" seems to fall well short of a consensus.

Three major wars, a few dozen separatist movements, schisms along the lines of religion and of culture, huge differences between town and country. More importantly, separate Indias for the haves and the have-nots, a situation that has led to insurgencies that run from the Nepal border to the fringes of Tamil Nadu. Make no mistake, the Maoist movements are insurgencies, and the future of the Indian polity will depend upon whether these are addressed as a disease or as symptoms of a more fundamental illness. A secular federation where the greatest visible divide is between two of the world’s major religions. A union where the northern half of the country still lumps together four distinct cultures, languages, traditions as “South Indian (or as “Madrasi”, from the time of the Madras Presidency under the British). Where is the unity?

It’s some kind of miracle that this country still holds together after 60 years.

It’s time we realised that there is no such thing as an average Indian.

Because it’s time we stopped dealing in stereotypes.

Baggage

(I am now A Columnist. Published every Monday. Which would seem to give me time to write over the weekend, except that my deadline is Friday. Bggrrttt.

But yes, it does ensure that there will be at least one post a week on this blog. Recycling is so cool.
Unfortunately, while I can post my columns on the blog, I cannot send off old posts to be printed as columns. Bother.

Anyway, this one was written as the “sound of the deadline whooshing by” built up to a gale-force roar. Came out on Monday the 12th. Tomorrow’s column has been submitted. And I’ve already started on next Monday’s. Oh what a good boy am I!)

Travel is romantic. To arrive in a new country, draw a deep breath and go “Ah, I’m in Lantau!” (or Lima or Lagos, as the case may be).

Unfortunately, your luggage is in Sevastopol. Romance gives way to a feeling more like sand in your underwear. It’s the middle of the night, there are no stores open and the rest of your underclothes are in that suitcase in Sevastopol. How does one deal with the situation?
More relevant, how does the airline deal with a situation where baggage is in Europe while the passenger’s in Asia? Alitalia – as reported on the Internet last year - would immediately go on a wildcat strike. By the time the first irate passenger located the airline service desk, the staff would be downing grappa on the Via Cavour (presumably with much gesticulation and shrugging).

Some airlines, however, exhibit admirable resilience and efficiency.
Last Wednesday night the Lufthansa flight to Kolkata landed on time. The luggage did not. The large Lufthansa team – all 3 of them – swung into action to help the milling passengers. By hiding behind a convenient pillar. When rousted out, they demonstrated their customer-friendly attitude by distributing forms. To be filled in triplicate. Deposited. Receipted. Produced whenever the airline saw fit to produce the missing luggage. On the next flight. Saturday. Perhaps Sunday. Next week, next year, some time, never.

Sundry open-mouthed passengers hitched their jaws off the airport floor. And asked, what about NOW? What about clothes, toiletries, medicines? What about children and their milk, diapers, Gerber’s ready meals? How do we manage till Sunday? Will you give us money to buy what we need? Whereupon the airline reps mumbled vaguely, smiled sweetly and disappeared hurriedly. End of Act 1.

Two days of investigation produced some enlightenment and much pique. But no compensation. The city office phones are not answered because there IS no city office. A forlorn voice from the airport eventually said yes, we SHALL offer you compensation – 50% of your expenditure on clothes and 100% on toiletries. With no limit.

No limit? Good! We have a wedding to attend, can we buy fresh trousseaus from Sabyasachi, spend a couple of lakh? An audible gulp from the other end of the line, then a befuddling clarification: we pay 50% of what’s reasonable. As decided by our city team. Devastating obfuscation. In essence, Lufthansa delay your luggage, do not pay any compensation unless pushed, have no clear policy or limits in the matter and no transparency.

The first response is, only in India! This couldn’t happen in the West. Alas, a little research revealed that the air traveller really is beleaguered worldwide.
In May 2010 the EU Special Court of Justice ruled that the liability of a carrier in the case of destruction, loss, damage or delay of baggage is limited to approximately €1134.71 (an odd figure, yes, but the equivalent of 1000 Special Drawing Rights) per passenger. The Warsaw / Hague / Montreal protocols fix an upper limit for compensation of 17 SDR per kilo of luggage, about €18.5 or Rs. 1089. There is no stipulated minimum.

Basically, if the airline plays fast and loose with your luggage, you can scheme. Or argue. Or give up. But you cannot cite a general law.
You have been warned.

(Update: The luggage arrived last Sunday. Forms for compensation were filled in. Bills in triplicate were attached. Suddenly … nothing happened. It’s been a week.)

"Leave the rest to us"

There were a few (at first glance, about 3 busloads, but when I counted later there were only a half dozen) decorous Scandinavians at the front desk (in front of the front desk? Did that put them in the forefront?) when I came in. Some of them were quite tall. Say, about 17 feet each. It looked like Muir Woods had gone the Birnam way, only with a heavy dose of Janpath linen. I spent some time being polite to assorted kneecaps. Then a voice floated into my ear, and not from above either. A polite smile in a dark suit emerged from the forest of legs around me. “Checking in, sir? Are you alone”? And voila, I was wafted to a different counter where a pretty young lady was sternly commanded to wait upon me. I smiled happily and waited to be handed my room card.

Some time later, I was still waiting. The smile had left. Twitter is not just a social networking site. It is also the appropriate term for the string of inanities emitted by a certain kind of person in the hospitality sector. Look, child, I KNOW you won Ms. Bright Smile in your college beauty pageant (last month?) and I can guess somebody told you that you look cute when you helplessly tuck a curl behind your ear, but this isn’t “Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jayenge”, all I want to do is CHECK IN, not give you a massage on reality TV! I realized I was shouting inside my head. What was worse, I could hear it echoing. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall in resignation. Perhaps I should have taken my chances behind the Posse of Patellas. Eventually I was rescued by The Smile in the Suit. With apologies for the delay. “And, sir, we’ve upgraded your room.” Really? Some consolation, then.

If it seems too good to be true, it usually is.

What kind of place takes a geriatric business traveler and places him in … a HONEYMOON SUITE? The plaque on the corridor wall terrified me. As I peeked apprehensively round the door, however, it seemed quite tolerable. Nice large room with lots of windows, decorated in a quiet beige. Then I wandered in. And the bed hit me. At least, the sight of the bed. A four-poster. With a gilded headboard. Fringes and tassels in a hideous floral print out of a cheap drawing book. And ‘elpmeGawd, a ruched CANOPY, a nightmare out of stereotypical Krole Bagh, in a shade that looked like gilded SHIT that would glow in the dark! The only way I could avoid it was by turning a chair to face the window. Which I did.

The worst was yet to come. Back in my room after 8, tired to the point where the Nightmare Bed no longer registered on my conscious, I hauled myself to the door to answer the buzzer. A simpering personage with the mandatory plastic smile asked breathlessly, “Sir, do you want evening service?” I responded with a squawk of alarm and slammed the door in her face. Over-reaction, yes. She was only doing her job, yes. But the whole bizarre scenario fired the wrong synapses in my staggering brain. Great Cthulhu, “evening service” in the honeymoon suite? Let me out of here!

*** ***

It went downhill from there. Too tired to ask for an ironing board, I checked the laundry rates. A hundred and fifty to iron a shirt?!

The room service extension was perpetually engaged. When I got through, a lisping voice took 5 whole minutes to understand my order. “We don’t have filter coffee, sir, we have fresh-brewed coffee.” Several deep breaths. A sandwich, please – not grilled, that takes longer and I’m in a hurry. “Yes sir, coffee and a grilled sandwich.” More deep breaths. You know what, FORGET IT! Just send up an ice bucket and some lemon wedges. Of course they delivered. After an hour. 6 cubes of ice. No lemon wedges.

Eventually, my Large Young Friend who had dropped by rejected the room service menu and rang down to find out how long the buffet in the coffee shop (“lavish” “delicious” etc., if the write-up was to be believed) was open. General confusion at the other end of the line. “I think it closes at 10, sir.” Damn. Oh wait a minute, they may be clueless. So we wandered down. Of COURSE they were clueless! It was open till half eleven. Good! What have we here?

A pasta salad. Where the pasta looked like an industrial installation. An OLD industrial installation, right down to the blotches on the piping. Butter chicken?! On a BUFFET? A quick peek under the cover, and agh! Red and greasy, like someone had bled into an oil sump. We fled. Walked over to the Shangri-La next door, leched at the Rolls Royce showroom. The Silver Ladies now are not the beauties of yesteryear, they lack the flowing lines of running board and wheel casing. They look like tanks that went to charm school. Yet we leched awhile before we passed on to the hotel proper. Then stopped dead in our tracks. Because they had another Rolls parked in the portico. With the hotel logo on its passenger door. They use THIS for an airport transfer?! Maaaan, I am SO going to book their Presidential Suite when I grow up!

We had the buffet there. Superb. Just superb. Except for the little contretemps afterwards, when there was more blood. No, not into an oil sump, I just haemorrhaged from my wallet. But in the final analysis, well worth the pain, that meal was worth at least the loss of a couple of a couple of fingers if not a whole limb.

And so to bed. Another Delhi day tomorrow. (Update: The day started at 6, except that there was no daylight. What, I can’t blame the hotel for that? Says who?!)

Aftermath

So Democracy has Spoken.

I’m sorry, I missed some of her early lines because I was busy chivvying a supply chain. Of EVMs. May Cthulhu bless the Election Commission and their tech progress, 13 rounds of counting were completed between 8 a.m. and a quarter to 12. Unimaginable back in the day, I remember the counting in the Simultaneous Elections in May 1996 took THREE DAYS and most of us went into rehab afterwards. By the afternoon of the second day my voice was gone and I was giving orders in sign language; one of my major achievements was fitting an air circulator to the ass of just about every counting supervisor and assistant – not a luxury when the temperature was above 45 Celsius with over 90% humidity. Three of our counting staff ended up in hospital, in a neighbouring district one died.

And this time, although the first two rounds took nearly an hour in one Assembly segment, 10 more rounds and a bit were over in less than 3 hours after that. Yay for chivvying.

**** ****

Sometimes this gorment job is particklerly irritating because it would be against my service rules to discuss the election results on a public forum. Which leads to major restraint.

But I can discuss 'em with friends. Which I did in Delhi, from 3 in the morning on Sunday till it was time for my flight home. Other issues came up (along with coffee, cigarillos and a rather good toasted ham sandwich), and I place them here for comment.

1 – Tom Friedman is an ass. Not only because distances are actually greater in a flat world, but because every book of his goes beyond incoherent to inchoate.

2 – Women in the Punjab, or at least a specific part thereof, were observed to carry themselves very well. “Trod the ling like a buck in spring” and all that (or should that be “doe in spring”? Too many options). The men tend to slouch. (Subsidiary point – is there a real difference in ... ummm …tandrusti, or have ALL the women discovered the Wonderbra?)

3 – Every single country in the continent of Africa is FUBAR, governance as we know it is non-existent and only Alexander McCall Smith’s locale has a modicum of peace.

4 – Anthony McAuliffe totally rocked, and Panther Soup works well both as war memoir and travelogue. I’m reading it now and I agree. Sample quote – “To live a la Bourguignonne is to enjoy a life of red wine and cream, and to die at the age of 42 under somebody else’s wife.”

5 – When you have a possessive cat who hates it when you go away, and also pees on your luggage to show her disapproval, getting past sniffer dogs at airports is hellish. I mean, try out that explanation on any random copper

6 – Being arrested can be a surprisingly civilised interaction. This was a student demonstration in the aftermath of the Bhopal tragedy, the police had orders from on high to round up the demonstrators and hated it far more than the arrested people because they (the police) had to pull out records from the previous 30 years to charge these boys and girls (few of them over 25) with unsolved crimes. They kept apologizing to the detainees. The traumatic part was taking a dump while handcuffed to another person.

6a – “Well, if you count East and West Germany as different countries – which they were at that time – I’ve been arrested in 13 of them. Not counting India.”

7 - "I stand by what I said, that woman WAS naked when I walked in and he DID leave me to calm her down. Incidentally, she was Puerto Rican, not Cuban, and her name was Pagol. Just goes to show."

I do have interesting friends.

Travels with a voice recorder, Pt 1

Half past ten on a Friday night in Delhi. Just finished two helpings of soup – I was sick as a kitten in the afternoon – and crawled into bed atop a pile of pillows. I’ve been upgraded to a room in the corner, which means windows on two sides, and these two sides are like two different worlds. The front looks out on Sansad Marg, Parliament Street, and there’s a buzz and rumble of traffic on that side all through the day and most of the night. When I last parted the curtains the building opposite was lit up even at half past nine, floor after floor of neon-lit desks visible through the glass like those cut-away doll houses in museums. Must be either news or IT.

The other window … in the afternoon when I checked in, the sky was bronze turning to silver in the heat, the trees were washed-out skeletons in the glare and a group of kites wheeled in tight circles high high above the NDMC building, almost in a different dimension. When I woke from a healing sleep the fading sunlight struck through the branches of the jacaranda outside, creating an orange picture-frame on the wall above the bed. The lawns of the Jantar Mantar turned an unreal dark thirst-quenching green as the headlights came on in the traffic below. Now, late at night, the floodlit Samrat Yantra looks like a huge red shoe, the one where the old woman lived in the nursery rhyme.

A mile beyond the pool of light, a group of buildings stands against the night sky, transplanted from the Krypton landscape. All it needs is a hologram of Marlon Brando as Jor-El. The stairwells are lit up like fluorescent spines, but the huge neon sign on top of Le Meridien just reads “Le MeI”. Correction, if I tilt my head to the left I can see “Le Mer”. The sea? In THIS city? The building that blocks out the rest of the sign is also the darkest, so the illusion is (if not complete) pretty good. But the view palls after a while, especially when Al Pacino and Johnny Depp are waiting for me (you know which movie that was?). Good night.

* * *

I wake for a while around 3 a.m. and can’t see the lights any more, Le Meridien has switched off the neon sign, the buildings are a mass of Ice Giants against the night sky. A surreal moment when the blinking lights of an international flight glide down the sky and … vanish behind the dark mass. Sleep-fuddled, I count ONE thou-sand, TWO thou-sand, THREE thou, all the way up to seven before the lights appear again, closer to the tree-line, maybe only a minute from touch-down.

The dawn comes surprisingly early. Padding around in my bare feet (the hotel’s bathroom slippers are really slippery on the wooden floor), making coffee, popping things into the suitcase as I go to and fro, I haven’t really noticed when the sodium vapour lamps perched 60 feet high have faded. But morning has broken well before 6 and I can see a strong breeze bending the tree-tops. All except one tree that’s still bare like a candelabra, rooks’ nests in its armpits as it pushes out the first green shoots of the year. Stupid tree to wait till April when it’s pushing 40 Celsius, all your shoots of spring will soon turn from salad to crispy noodles. I can see more of the Jantar Mantar now, and a lanky man doing contortions on the grass.

Suddenly a flight of pigeons erupts like a puff of gunsmoke across my line of sight. Drawn to the window, I can see an avian promenade at eye-level. Even the kites from yesterday are stretching and doing warm-up flights below my window, making those ridiculous mewing sounds that no self-respecting bird of prey should admit to. Lazy bums, too. I saw a pair of seagulls in Barcelona make a light snack of a fat pigeon, and here these kites are like ineffectual traffic policemen elbowed aside by the bumbling streams of pigeons that all but crash into the mass of the NDMC building. I try for some shots of the fatties in flight, but of course they must choose this moment to sit on my window ledge and look smug. Well, I have news for you – I have a train to catch and you aren’t Aamir Khan, I can get shots of a zillion other pigeons. Time to call the front desk to have my bill ready.

Half a weekend

The sun is rather obtrusive. Definitely not the slow lapping flow of dawn across the Discworld, no gentle peeking over the edge of the world. The haze on the horizon stages a brief and ineffectual struggle and suddenly the sun has arrived, leaping and clawing its way up the sky. The first shimmering track across the sea becomes a pool, then a blaze of bronze that inverts shadows on the wall of my room. It’s morning in Vizag.

The view from my room is … well, not awesome, but spacious. The kind of vista that makes you straighten up and breathe deep. A submarine surface-crawls across my sight, moving south towards the breakwater and the Navy base. I count seven eleven ships at anchor between the shore and the edge of the sky. A Coast Guard cutter follows the submarine towards the Dolphin’s Nose, where the lighthouse beam has faded in the sun. Two little sailboats scud along behind it. One looks like a log under a sheet. Seven little dark blips upon it; the last one must be the outboard motor. Farther north, a line of white pyramids stretches out to sea. Buoys. Last night they were lit up like party decorations. Right below my window is a morning throng. One pair of earnest joggers ignores the promenade and runs right along the road. So much energy at a quarter past six? Not just tiring but wearisome. I turn away for my morning work-out - two cups of coffee and the papers.

Vizag is sea-washed, hill-cupped, new, eager and hot. The roads are wide and smooth, the town is clean. Most Indian towns are disfigured by skeins of wires – cable connections, phone lines, power lines - that cobweb across the line of sight. Not so Vizag. So very civilised. The road from the airport is tree-lined, double-laned. As we enter the town the intersections are wide but chaotic. Something seems odd. Then I realise that the skyline around most of the crossings still stops at the second storey. Vizag is a town on the cusp of the boom, a city waiting to happen. Except by the shore road, where already block after block of near-identical condos hold their washing out to dry in the sea breeze. Land values have skyrocketed recently. The Telengana movement wants Hyderabad as its capital, leaving Vishakhapattinam (a would-be capital city is beyond diminutives!) to be the capital of Andhra.

I spent the previous day in the basement of the hotel, struggling through a learned workshop on Total Quality Management. My "take-away" is that even the most learned experts can be poor communicators, especially when carried away by their own enthusiasm for the subject. The basement cannot be accessed from within the hotel – we have to go out and come in again from the seaward entrance. The Taj Residency also has a very considerate plan. The breakfast room is so located that getting to it is bound to work up an appetite. It does have a view of palm trees and the sea, but the dosai are indifferent. Sad. I sacrificed my diet for THIS?

No, I didn’t. I sacrificed it to check out a place called Pastry, Coffee & Conversation. Recommended by an old friend and confirmed by a blogger. The way they hyped it, I thought it was a large bistro. Turned out to be a tiny shop tucked away below a rising road. Serves the most ‘mazingly good chocolates and decent pastries. The hot chocolate could be improved, though. For anybody visiting Vizag, it’s 50 ms. up the hill, on the right as you pass Karachiwalla’s store. It's run by Rajan (a suave version of Mahesh Bhatt) who is Calcuttan by birth. N wonder the place is good!

No Rishikonda beach by moonlight for me. I staggered back to the room, showered and passed out at half eight. And slept till the sun came up like thunder ‘crost the bay. Too hot to go anywhere. In any case, the view from the Kailash hill the previous evening was quite comprehensive. The amusement park up there is too awfully tacky for words, but the view and the breeze make up for it. All the way to the lighthouse beam on the headland, lines of surf along the beaches, wooded hillsides. The lights coming up in the city, and out at sea on the ships at anchor. (Wonder what the turnaround time is at Vizag port?)

The problem with small airports in India is that they don’t invest in air-conditioning. Mem: do NOT visit Vizag in summer, I’d probably collapse before I got out of the terminal (my friend has seen the board at Vizag station record 50 Celsius. Birds drop out of the sky in that kind of heat. Stupid twits to try and fly.)

My first trip on Deccan. Or Simplifly or whatever it's called these days. The first row is the only way to avoid claustrophobia, but I’m too late for that. No tele-check-in. Damn. But there are only a couple of dozen people on board when the doors close, the entire rear half of the plane is empty. I wander off and get myself a row of seats with the arm-rests up so I can lie down.

Bizarre moment before take-off. The second stewardess comes amidships and starts demonstrating the safety drill. You know, that entire “pull down the mask and place it over your face” schpiel. For an audience of one. Viz., me. It must have showed on my face, for when she caught my eye her face crumpled into a grin. A joke is always improved by sharing.

More airports

The perils of travel. Ah, a Boots right next to check-in. Enter Boots, buy water. Exit Boots, burly guy at international departures says ‘No water allowed, sir’; throw away water. (You have to go buy some more inside. Water is fine, bringing it across the barrier is not. Restrictive trade practices?).

Next, take out all your toiletries. Lucky lucky me, all they can seize is a nearly empty spray can of Old Spice Whitewater. Sucks to yer, mate, Oi’ll get meself a Bulgari in Barcelona. But I do have to bag all the teeny bottles and put them in the tray. Should I be embarrassed at the number of little bottles from hotel loos? Garn, who cares. Then, lose the shoes. Put them in the tray. The jacket? Yes sir, that would be a good idea. WITH the phone. Both phones. Anything else? I stop myself from asking if they want to see my new undies. Could be termed sexual harassment. Even though the guy at the security barrier is about the size of the Chrysler Building (only not so pointy on top). The idea of ANYbody other than the Rock harassing him is utterly ridiculous. Oh, maybe Vin Diesel could do it. Or Chuck Norris.

I’m lucky, they let me keep my belt on.

Figure this out, then – how did they let me through with a box of matches in my jacket pocket and a lighter (a very serious lighter, this one shoots a flame two clear inches, it’s practising to be a flame-thrower when it grows up) in the fifth pocket of my jeans where it’s VISIBLE?

So I’m through security. Where do we go from here? A sign says “Assaults on staff”. Do we line up and take turns? Naw, it’s just another stoopid example of guvmint bumph, warning AGAINST such assaults. Next item, where can I find a hot-spot? All around, mate, but you have to pay. The hotel may have been a little cramped and pokey, but wi-fi was free (not that I had much time to use it). And of COURSE my credit card has to act up NOW, just because there’s no way I can pay cash.

What else can I do to while away an hour and a haff? Check the change in my pockets. Three pounds twenny-one. What can I get for three twenty-one? Dunno, but it’s mid-day and I didn’t have much breakfast. Nor for that matter, much dinner last night. Hang on, there’s a couple of bank-notes in my wallet. Hi ho, Silver, we’re off to explore. I can come back later and fret about the chances of BA losing my luggage. Time out, gentlemen (which term legally includes ladies … )

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