As most of you know I have done a fair bit of jet-setting my young'ish age. And I can say that India by far is the most patience trying place in the world when it comes to trying to get around. Be it bus, taxi, rickshaw, train, plane or automobile (unless its your personal car). Traveling in India is test of endurance.
Granted the maxim "you get what you pay for" holds more truth in this country than in others, but the headaches are from a systemic level.
Case in point, I went to Kolkata this weekend to finish getting the rest of my things so I can finally finish settling into my new life here in Mumbai, and the airport was utter chaos. From the check-in (for having been colonized by the British for 200 hundred years you would think the concept of orderly queuing would have seeped in), to the stampede at the security check (I've seen brawlers be more civilized), to getting on the plane (apparently Indian believe that if you don't hurry on board the plane will leave without you), to getting off (along the same line of though as previously if you don't hurry off the plane it will take off with you still in it). And I still had to come back!
I love going new places or revisiting familiar ones, but I just really hate the getting there. Maybe as I age (and get more impatient) I realize that the journey IS NOT as important as the destination. The journey is the trial that makes you worthy of the destination.
4 comments:
yeah, I can imagine. It's a well-known fact that desis dont' know how to form lines.
Thats what happens when a population raised on train & bus travel get affordable air-travel.
I guess its not always about the destination, like they once said. After all its also about how one gets there and frankly "Travelling can be such a pain". When I travel [which is very rare], I want everything organized. Right from where I am going to sleep to how am I going to get there. I like the details so I can relax knowing that some things are taken care of.
As far as forming queues are concerned, Yes we are like that and its a fact. There is no concept like that you see, so you can't really blame us. We weren't taught manners. Hopeless us.
We are at war. We fight battles every morning and evening and in between. We fight our way on to the train; fight a silent and mostly motionless battle to stand in one place when in the train and then fight yet another to get off.
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