A Century of Posts: 2

In Praise of the Stenographer

If you look back over the last 15 years or so, the stenographer as a species has totally vanished from the office scene. You do not see him anymore. The advent of the PC and the laptop, word-processing programmes with spell check features and the unblinking focus companies have brought to bear on headcount-related costs have all played their part in vanishing what was once the constant in any organisation chart..

The Biscuit tin Rider

One hot summer day in May, I find myself stranded in Mangalore without a ticket to Bombay. Lugging my suitcase, with sweat trickling down my spine, I visit the tiny offices of all the major bus operators for a seat on a bus leaving that night, only to be turned away every time. No seats are available. All buses are totally booked out...

Landing in Mangalore

The problem was that the mere prospect of landing in Mangalore airport in the ageing Boeing 737s of Indian Airlines filled me with such abject terror; I could not sleep for days prior to the flight...

Strong Medicine

It is one of those early morning departures and predictably enough it is going to be an Airbus A320 that will fly us to Bangalore. At 6.30 am, we are securely strapped in our seats and about to start taxiing for take-off when Mike surreptitiously palms something onto me.

It is a miniature bottle of whisky...

An Unforgettable Dinner

I indicated to BS that there could be a small problem: while I knew for a fact that Iyer liked beer, I was equally certain that he was a strict vegetarian. He was, after all, a Tamil Brahmin from traditional, conservative, orthodox Chennai and maybe he would have eggs at the most, but fish and meat were definitely a no-no...

Subbudu

The drinks menu is passed around and Subbudu first orders orange juice. Seeing the others order scotch and soda, he changes his mind and asks the waiter to bring Chivas Regal because “he has heard so much about it.” By the time the others have barely finished the first round, our man is onto his third drink and showing alarming signs of inebriation...

Sivakasi Revisited

The Bell Hotel in Sivakasi, when it opened its doors to the public more than fifteen years ago, was not a hotel at all. It was just a restaurant. Set in the middle of a huge grove of fruit trees, it was a long rectangular dining hall kept cool by noisy air-conditioners, where the itinerant business traveller could find safe haven during those languorous hours from 1 pm to 3 pm, when the heat was its worst and the whole town hunkered down in an uneasy siesta. The menu was madly eclectic, mixing and matching the South Indian-Tandoori-Chinese cuisines with reckless abandon. But the food was decent and that was all that we cared.

When I visited the restaurant the second time, there were already changes in the air. Mr RS, the enterprising businessman who owned the restaurant, had purchased two 40-feet containers, mounted them on iron girders at a height of two feet from the ground, cut out windows on the sides and had converted them into hotel rooms with air-conditioning, TV, attached bathrooms and room service from the restaurant.

As innovations go, this one was simply marvellous and became a big hit with the small traders and businessmen who came to Sivakasi from all over the country and who, hitherto, had to make do with dingy lodges with smelly toilets near the bus stand.

Within a year or so, the number of “hotel rooms” multiplied–one part of the grove began to look like a well-maintained container park, with fresh water and sewage lines discreetly laid underneath the sturdy, metal trellis. I stayed in one of those rooms once; it was a refreshing experience to wake up to sound of birdsong and sit on the narrow veranda outside (it was actually a narrow platform running on all four sides of the room) and have my cup of morning tea.

But all this was just the beginning. The tip of the iceberg, if you will.

The visionary Mr RS had a few more aces up his sleeve.

Photo Courtesy: http:// fusions.files.wordpress.com

Sivakasi

Twenty years ago, when I first visited the industrial town of Sivakasi near Madurai, it was a smelly, fly-infested place known for fireworks, match boxes, and low-quality offset printing. The industries that dominate the town and give its folks their livelihood remain the same, but the town itself has undergone a subtle transformation now. True, it continues to be a hot, dusty place with mounds of garbage piled up on the roadsides, but now, at least, you have proper hotels to stay in and decent restaurants where you can have a meal without risking a massive stomach infection.

Reaching Sivakasi itself was an effort: you had to make an uncomfortable overnight train journey from Chennai by a metre gauge line to Madurai first, from where it was another two-and-a-half hours of bone-shattering ride along a national highway up to Virudhunagar, where you turned left and drove along a small, ill-maintained country road, all the way to Sivakasi. Air-conditioned taxis were unheard of those days, so invariably you got down from the taxi, caked in dust and with aches and pains all over your body.

I will never forget my first visit to Sivakasi.

The hotel itself looks well-maintained from the outside in the early morning light. But I step into a dark, unlit lobby that smell of decay and disrepair; a surly clerk pushes a thick register towards me and gestures that I fill in the details. The ritual completed, he presses a bell when an old man appears from the darkness and tries to take hold of my overnighter. The clerk hands over to the old man the key to the room, a cake of soap, a pillow cover, and a bed sheet. The old man trudges up the staircase and shows me to my room.

I look around the room and my spirits sink to my feet. It is a fairly large room but has not seen a broom or a mop for a long time. There is dust everywhere and while I cover my nose with the handkerchief and try to open the windows, the old man proceeds to put on the cover on the pillow and sheath the dirty and stained mattress with the none too clean bed sheet.

But it is the toilet that destroys me. I take one look at the “Indian” type commode, streaked liberally with shades of brown, yellow, and green and encrusted at the edges with dark matter of indistinguishable origin and I am out of there, screaming. But there are meetings to be held and appointments to be kept. I brush my teeth and take a shower with my eyes shut tight and am out of the place in less than half an hour.

The whole day I survive on a bottle of water (purchased from the station in Chennai), a packet of biscuits and several cups of sweet, milky tea and coffee offered by customers.

But I have chalked out a two-day programme in Sivakasi. What is to be done? Staying in that hell-hole of a hotel is definitely out of the question. A colleague, who has accompanied me on this trip, suggest we take a bus to the town of Tirunelveli, 140 kilometres away, where, he assures me, there are better hotels to spend the night.

And thus we board the evening bus to Tirunelveli, where another adventure awaits us.

A Barman in Galle

It was not much of a bar. But then, it was not much of a hotel either.

We had arrived that afternoon in Galle, taken a narrow winding road that climbed up steeply and offered spectacular views of the Dutch fort and the sea to reach this old colonial mansion masquerading as a hotel, perched upon a desolate cliff-top. It was cloudy and overcast; a fine drizzle accompanied by sudden gusts of wind from the sea, added to the misery. The hotel seemed to bristle with menace, a feeling its forbidding exterior with its pitiless geometry did nothing to dispel. If we shivered, it was not only from the cold. The hotel somehow brought back memories of Wuthering Heights and the windswept, wild expanses of the Yorkshire moors.

An old lady and her manservant check us in. The room is huge with a high, vaulted ceiling and wooden floorboards that have not seen a coat of wax or polish for a long time. An old ceiling fan, the kind of which I had last seen as a small boy in the waiting rooms of Indian railway stations, starts rotating very slowly, creaking and groaning with the effort.

We feel depressed. It has been quite a long journey from Kandy through narrow, winding roads and we can feel the tiredness in our bones. It is an effort to unpack, but when we finally do, find that there are already somebody else’s clothes in the ancient chest of drawers.

The old lady is apologetic: Apparently, the clothes belong to a long-stay guest from Europe who has gone off somewhere for the weekend. Would we please leave the clothes undisturbed and she will give us another cabinet to keep our stuff? We nod dumbly.

An hour later, unpacking done, we get out of the room and walk along the corridor to reach a balcony that overlooks a verdant valley. It is almost dark now, but the rain has stopped and the wind has also subsided. But the atmosphere is heavy with humidity and very uncomfortable. Too early for dinner, I decide to pay a visit to the bar. The wife and the daughter decide to accompany me because they do not want to be left alone in the room.

The bar turns out to be a makeshift arrangement on the terrace of the hotel, with a temporary roof and netting all around to keep off the nocturnal insects. Sofas with lumpy upholstery are arranged haphazardly for the benefit of the patrons of whom we can find nary a trace. In the dim, dirge-inducing light of the incandescent lamps, we spot the barman, sitting and gazing at the sea in perfect solitude.

The barman turns out to be a young lad--a student earning some extra money by doubling up as a bartender--and a cricketer to boot. He seems happy to have our company and we spend an almost an hour talking to him. We discuss Sachin Tendulkar (but, of course!), the state of Sri Lankan cricket, and the cricketers Galle has contributed to the national team—players such as Romesh Kaluwitharana and Upul Chandana.

I remembered that surreal hotel in Galle and its solitary barman recently when I was watching the T20 World Cup finals between Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

I am sure he would have been very unhappy with the final result.

Photo Courtesy: www.asiaexplorers.com

Strong Medicine

On 14th February, 1990, an Indian Airlines (IA) Airbus A320 crashed on its final approach to Bangalore airport killing 92 out of the 146 people on board. The incident at that time created a furore, because Indian Airlines had inducted this new-generation aircraft into its fleet hardly three months before. Hyped in the business press as the first civilian airliner equipped with a fully computerised flight control mechanism--the so called fly-by-wire system--the aircraft was supposed to offer a safer, electronically-controlled flight. For weeks after the crash, debates raged whether the A320 was indeed a safe aircraft, whether the training provided to the IA pilots by the manufacturer was inadequate, and whether the aircraft needed air-conditioned hangars to protect its sophisticated electronics from malfunctioning in the hot and humid ground conditions of Indian airports.

My friend Mike James jets in from London, amidst all this brouhaha. We are supposed to work together in Bombay for couple of days and then go on to places like Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi from where Mike will take his return flight to London after a week.

On the eve of our departure to Bangalore, Mike is circumspect. “Which aircraft do you think we’ll be flying in, to Bangalore?” he asks me, a tad too casually.

“Must be one of the new Airbus A320s,” I say unthinkingly and almost immediately regret it, for I can see that Mike is worried, though he says nothing further.

It is one of those early morning departures and predictably enough it is going to be an Airbus A320 that will fly us to Bangalore. At 6.30 am, we are securely strapped in our seats and about to start taxiing for take-off when Mike surreptitiously palms something onto me.

It is a miniature bottle of whisky, the kind that you find on international flights. Obviously, Mike has done his homework and knows no alcohol is served on IA flights.

“No, thanks,” I refuse politely. “A bit too early in the day for me, Mike.”

“Good stress-buster,” says Mike good-naturedly. “I was planning to have just one before take-off; I suppose a second one will do no harm.”

Mike is in great spirits during the entire flight, if you will forgive my unintended play on words, and by the time we are descending into Bangalore, he is chirping like a bird. Suddenly a thought strikes me: “Mike, we have another four or five flights to take before we finish your tour. How are you going to handle those?”

Mike smiles broadly and glances at his feet and that is when I see the white plastic bag pushed into the area beneath the seat in front of him. He allows me a peek. It is full of miniature whisky bottles.

“The stewardess on the BA flight to Bombay was most understanding,” says Mike with a wink. “There must be at least twenty in the bag. Enough to last me for the whole trip.”

I am jolted out of my stupefaction by the heavy thud as the wheels of the aircraft touch down on the Bangalore tarmac.

Image Courtesy: http://clipartguide.com

Hotel Ships on the Rhine

Like all great rivers of this world, the Rhine has an awesome majesty and a certain timeless quality to it that leaves an indelible impression when you first see it. The Rhine has always fascinated people and inspired artists and poets like no other river perhaps. Today, during its majestic 1320-kilometre journey through the heart of Western Europe, this river links people and cultures, unlike in the previous centuries when it chose to separate them.

Originating in the Swiss Alps, the Rhine becomes a major transport route by the time it reaches the Swiss industrial town of Basel. Flowing through the Alsace region of France, the river enters German territory, going past the cathedral cities of Speyer and Mainz, followed by the famous wine-growing regions and finally by the romantic Middle Rhine with its wonderful castles some of which have been converted to exclusive hotels now. After leaving the Slate Mountains, the river passes through such important German cities as Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Duisburg before it enters the Netherlands and joins the North Sea somewhere near Rotterdam.

Dusseldorf is a city known for its many trade fairs. Although the city has hundreds of hotels, ranging from luxury properties to relatively basic accommodation, availability of rooms can be a real problem during important trade-fairs. This is when hotel ships—ships which are normally used for Rhine cruises so popular with the tourists—are brought in to cope with the influx of business travellers.

Staying in such a hotel ship can be a very unique experience. The cabins are painfully small; while it can be cosy and romantic for a honeymooning couple, a twin-sharing arrangement with another office colleague can be testing within such cramped quarters. And if the cabins are small, the attached bathroom cum toilet can only be termed as tiny, something you squeezed yourself into, every morning.

But it was fun. The ships were always berthed close to the Altstadt, the nerve centre for the pulsating night-life of Dusseldorf and you were always close to all the nice bars and eating places. On those evenings when you did not want to go out, you could have a quiet beer at the ship’s spacious bar, have an early dinner, and go up to the top deck where you could spend hours, enjoying the cool evening breeze and watching the slow-moving river traffic.

And finally when you went down to your cabin and stretched yourself on the narrow but comfortable bed, the river gently rocked you to sleep.

Photo Courtesy: www.simplygroups.co.uk

A Wedding in Jaipur

These days if you have to travel by train from Mumbai to Jaipur, you have convenient direct trains connecting the two cities. For example, if you board the Jaipur Superfast Express from Mumbai’s Bandra terminus at 3.45 pm, you are in Jaipur the next day by 10.40 am.

Such was not the case 25 years ago, when my friend Tata Kumar got married.

During those days, to reach Jaipur from Bombay, you had to travel in one of the main line trains plying the Delhi route up to Sawai Madhopur, where you got down and changed over to another train to Jaipur.

Tata Kumar, no stranger to the regular readers of this blog, is from Kerala and his wife-to-be, also his colleague, is from Rajasthan. The course of true love, steadfastly adhering to a familiar script, has not run smoothly in this case also--the girl’s family has vehemently opposed the match. After many episodes fraught with emotion and drama, during the course of which our hero has unwaveringly withstood with admirable dignity all threats and inducements to break off the relationship, finally good sense has prevailed and the girl’s family has relented and agreed to the marriage, which is to be held in Jaipur and as per Rajasthani traditions.

Thus we find ourselves on a cold morning in Sawai Madhopur railway station, boarding the first class compartment of a metre gauge train which will take us to Jaipur in seven hours. What we did not know at that time, of course, was that the bride’s uncle was a high-ranking official with the Western Railway and instructions had been wired beforehand to the local railway authorities to “take care” of the baaraat.

The “baaraat” is a motley crew consisting of a few members of Tata Kumar’s family, a few of his friends, couple of colleagues, and my uncle MK and his family.

It was to be an unforgettable journey. The entire first class compartment, washed clean, dusted, and beautifully bedecked with flowers, had been exclusively reserved for us. As the train pulled out of Sawai Madhopur, we were handed over toiletries and fresh towels to spruce ourselves up after the grimy, overnight journey from Bombay. By the time we were back in our seats, a refreshing cup of steaming tea awaited us, followed by a fruit platter and an elaborate breakfast served by attendants who were intent on fulfilling their guests’ slightest whim and fancy. It was as if we had moved backward in time and were in the India of the British Raj.

Finally, we arrive in Jaipur to be welcomed, to our acute embarrassment, with rose garlands and much fanfare.

And that night, the members of the baaraat, most of whom are equipped with two left feet when it comes to shaking a leg, bravely try dancing on the streets of Jaipur, in front of the decorated, open-decked car in which Tata Kumar sits in his sherwani and turban, a picture of silent and heroic stoicism.

Picture Courtesy: www.planetware.com

Landing in Mangalore

In some of my recent blog posts, I have written about the difficulty of and the time taken to travel from Bombay to Mangalore during the days before the opening of the Konkan Railway. You could travel by train or by bus, but both were tedious and time-consuming. There was a third alternative of course, and that was to take a flight. The flight time was less than an hour and one could travel in relative comfort and style. What then was the problem?

The problem was that the mere prospect of landing in Mangalore airport in the ageing Boeing 737s of Indian Airlines filled me with such abject terror; I could not sleep for days prior to the flight.

Now, before the corners of your mouth curl down in barely-disguised contempt and you start rummaging in your vocabulary for the perfect adjective for such weak-kneed quavering, I beseech you to close your eyes and visualise this:

Imagine a hillock, the top of which has been flattened to build a short—and it is really short at 5200 feet—runway. Imagine also that at both extremities of the runway, the edges of the hill drop away precipitously into a blue haze. And, if you have not already switched off mentally by now, imagine that the runway is not level, but slopes down from east to west, almost by 30 feet.

All these factors combine to ensure that landing in Mangalore airport, especially if you are occupying a window seat, is not an experience for the weak-hearted. The pilot has to touch down precisely at one extremity of the runway, apply the brakes immediately, and bring the aircraft to a complete stop at the other end. Any small error would mean either a crash during the final approach or the aircraft overshooting the runway and plunging into the arecanut trees 300 feet below.

On one such flight, Heinz Lehmann is my co-passenger, to whom I solicitously offer the window-seat. As we start our descent into Mangalore, the aircraft is buffeted by heavy turbulence. It is a heaving, tumultuous descent and we go down, down, down. Heinz is looking out of the window anticipating level ground to rise up and meet us and all he can see is hills and valleys all around. His is the aspect of a man, whose heart seems to be in a hurry to convene with his tonsils and probably go further on. I can see his knuckles tightening on the armrests and for a moment when he turns around to look at me, there is sheer panic in his eyes.

Suddenly at the very last moment when you see the runway, you are already on it and the brakes come on. The whole aircraft seems to shudder and scream at the effort. As we turn around and taxi back to the terminal, Heinz looks at me and smiles wanly.

I can see his face is bathed in perspiration.

The Biscuit tin Rider

During the summer vacation months of April and May, the buses which plied the route from Bombay to Mangalore ran full. Without booking at least a month in advance, it was impossible to get a seat on any of them.

One hot summer day in May, I find myself stranded in Mangalore without a ticket to Bombay. Lugging my suitcase, with sweat trickling down my spine, I visit the tiny offices of all the major bus operators for a seat on a bus leaving that night, only to be turned away every time. No seats are available. All buses are totally booked out.

Finally, the booking clerk in one of the offices offers me a biscuit tin.

“Sorry?” I don’t understand what the man is talking about.

The booking clerk patiently explains to me since the bus is completely full, he cannot offer me a seat of course, but he can place a tall biscuit tin in the aisle, provided I was willing to undertake the 24 hours travel sitting on top of that biscuit tin. Normal charges would apply, he adds for good measure.

Such was my desperation that I agreed and forked out the money.

Only when I boarded the bus did I realise that I was not the only “biscuit tin rider” on the bus. The intrepid bus operator had ensnared three other unfortunate souls besides me and there was not one, but four biscuit tins in the aisle, placed at strategic intervals.

Although years have passed, even today I can think of that journey only as a metaphor for sheer physical agony. By the time the bus stopped in a roadside restaurant in Kundapur for a short break a few hours later, my back was on fire. Somewhere along that long night, I guess I became inured to the pain but the pangs of regret and jealousy I had felt seeing the other passengers leaned back in their seats in quiet slumber, were enough to keep me awake the whole night.

Talk about the kindness of strangers, relief came the next day morning when a passenger offered to exchange his seat with me for the biscuit tin for an hour. I was touched by this gesture and told him I couldn’t possibly accept his generous offer. Fortunately he insisted and very soon my protestations sounded too feeble even to myself.

Ah! The sheer pleasure of sinking into a proper seat and allowing your inflamed back some much-needed succour!

Believe me, it is in moments such as these one starts contemplating the possibility of God and such other weighty philosophical issues.

Photo Courtesy: www.columbuspolarity.com

Video Nights in Belgaum

The other attraction in taking a “luxury coach” from Bombay to Mangalore was that most of these buses had a video player and colour television and showed at least three movies during the journey. This was during the early ’80s, when most middle-class Indian households had not even a colour TV to boast of, let alone a video player. So there was something incredibly satisfying and romantic at the prospect of leaning back in your seat and watching a movie as the bus negotiated the dangerous hairpin curves of Bor Ghat or as it sped swiftly through the deepening night along the Konkan coast.

The videotapes were invariably pirated camera prints of the latest Hindi film releases. Since the whole process of making a camera print involves someone sitting with a clandestine video camera in a projection room, most likely with the connivance of the projectionist, or even in some undetected corner of the movie hall, and videotaping a movie when it is actually being screened in a theatre, one could hear applause and catcalls in the background and see the back of some of the viewers’ heads as they got up from their seats and made their way across the aisle for a smoke or a toilet break.

The prints were grainy and the colours were awful. The soundtrack, often stepped up for maximum volume for the benefit of the viewers at the back of the bus, screeched painfully and reverberated within the confines of the bus, making sleep nearly impossible.

The passengers took these minor inconveniences in their stride and grumbled good-naturedly and without malice and sat stoically through the movies.

Not that there was no respite, of course. The movie timings were more or less fixed and rest of the time you could sleep or daydream or look out of the window. The first movie started once the bus had left the choked suburbs of Sion and Chembur behind and got onto the Eastern Express Highway to Pune and beyond. The second movie was put on around 3 pm which got over nicely in time for Belgaum and Hotel Ramdev. The third and final movie, which I seldom got around to watching for obvious reasons, was screened around 9 pm and finished close to midnight.

Sometimes you were lucky enough to catch a really good movie from an original print instead of a pirated one. One such movie which I saw on such a bus journey was Mere Apne, which also marked the directorial debut of a man called Gulzar.

Photo Courtesy: bp1.blogger.com

A Bus to Mangalore

Not exactly the right time for a light-hearted post, but God knows, all of us deserve a break from the sustained grief and melancholy of the past few days. Forgive me, if you find the levity of this post inappropriate.

There was a time when I used to travel quite frequently between Bombay and Mangalore. This was before the Konkan Railway had opened, when trains from western India had to make their way down south close to Madras, go transverse, and then loop back up along the Kerala coastline, to reach Mangalore. It was a journey that took close to 48 hours and was guaranteed to test your patience and physical endurance.

A quicker alternative was to take one of the so-called “luxury coaches” from Bombay to Mangalore. It was less comfortable than the train, confined as you were to your cramped seat for a whole day and night, but had the advantage that it cut the journey time by almost half.

There were many operators plying this commercially-lucrative route and, I suspect, they continue to flourish even today. Most services from Bombay were either early in the evening or late at night. But I preferred the morning buses for a particular reason and it was called Hotel Ramdev.

The morning buses reached the half-way point of Belgaum around seven in the evening and halted at that excellent hotel for a whole hour. Now Ramdev, catering as they did to the weary traveller, had a well-stocked bar; the quality of food served was also quite good. So the more experienced and enterprising travellers, knowing that time-management was of utmost essence here, jumped out of the bus even before it entered the parking lot, quickly freshened themselves up and headed straight to the bar to tip back a couple. Once blood circulation returned to the tired limbs and aching backs, they tipped back a couple more and trooped to the restaurant to feast on the food they had pre-ordered at the bar itself.

When the bus pulled out of the parking lot, these gentlemen came out of the restaurant a bit unsteady on the legs, but none the worse for wear, and clambered onto the moving vehicle with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts.

Never once did they miss the bus.

Photo Courtesy: http://travelbyvolvo.blogspot.com

Aisle Seat Pitfalls

One of my colleagues met with an accident recently. He had stopped his car on a residential street and had come around to open the boot of the car and take out his laptop when a van reversed into him, flinging him onto his own car. He hit his head against the sharp corner of the boot lid, resulting in a deep gash. A lot of bleeding ensued and he had to be taken to the hospital and have the wound stitched up. He is all right now and should be back in action after couple of days.

Something similar happened to me a few years ago.

On flights, I normally prefer aisle seats. You feel less crammed, getting in and out is easier, and you can be assured of at least one armrest all for yourself, without the guy next to you elbowing you out. Once ensconced thus, I ask for a pillow and a blanket and happily go to sleep most of the time.

Once, I am on a late evening flight from Chennai to Mumbai. It is a fairly uneventful journey, most of which I spent dozing. The problem happens when the flight has touched down and is taxiing to its final parking position. Before the aircraft comes to a complete stop, some impatient worthy behind me leans over and opens the overhead bin right above me. A heavy suitcase tumbles out and the corner hits me on the forehead, just above the hairline.

For a moment I am dazed and too shocked to react. By the time I gather my senses and turn around to face the perpetrator of the outrage, I am bleeding profusely and my shirtfront is soaked in blood. While the other passengers cluck sympathetically and move up the aisle to disembark, the stewardesses gather around me trying to stem the bleeding. An ice pack is pressed firmly against the wound and the crew call for the airport doctor.

The airport doctor turns out to be an elderly sari-clad matron. She examines the wound and declares the position of the wound as inappropriate for suturing. Fortunately, by this time the bleeding has stopped. She dresses the wound and ties a gauze bandage around my head. The girls giggle in relief. They say I look like an invader from outer space. The doctor advises me to take some paracetamol tablets in case I feel any pain at night; the airlines drop me in their car to the hotel.

Just before going to bed, the realisation struck me: in the confusion, I never found out who was the guy whose rash act had landed me in this mess. He had quietly slunk out in the mêlée with his suitcase, having not even the courtesy to offer an apology.

Such is life, I suppose.

Hotel Management in Switzerland

I land up at the entrance of Hotel Garni in Zofingen on a Sunday morning. It is winter and bitterly cold. The streets are eerily quiet and not a soul is in sight. There must have been heavy snowfall the previous night, for the few cars parked on the street are blanketed in white.

I lug my suitcase in and look around. The Reception is empty. I press the small buzzer affixed to the Reception desk and wait.

Zofingen is a small town, about 60 kilometres from Zurich. For the next three weeks, this hotel is going to be my home. I am cold, hungry, tired after a nine-hour flight from Bombay, and want nothing more than to get into the relative warmth of a room, have a shower, have some breakfast and sleep for as long as I can.

After what seems like a very long time, an old lady appears who introduces herself as Mrs. Schmitt. She seems bright, chirpy and in excellent spirits the reason for which was to dawn on me within the next thirty minutes. She checks me in and we take the slow, ancient lift to the third floor. She opens the door of room number 31 and ushers me in.

It is a small room with just enough space for a single bed, a table and two chairs. There is an equally small TV, placed on a bracket fixed on the wall. There is no English transmission though, she informs me sadly. Only German and French.

Acceding to Mrs. Schmitt’s suggestion, I have a quick shower and go down to the breakfast room adjacent to the Reception. To my surprise, I find her dressed in outdoor gear, car keys in one hand and an overcoat in the other. She quickly shows me the kitchen, the pantry, and the fridge and asks me to help myself to whatever I need: there are eggs, sausages, butter, cheese, marmalade, milk. There is a grill, cooking range, the works. Before I can get over my bewilderment, she informs me cheerfully that she is about to go on a short holiday and will be back only next week, but don’t worry, her replacement shall be at the counter sharp at 6 am on the morrow.

But what about the other inmates? I ask.

You are the only guest we have this Sunday, she says. Then, thrusting a bunch of keys in my hand which includes that of the main door, with a wave and a bye, Mrs. Schmitt walks out of the door.

And thus it came to pass that I managed a Swiss hotel all by myself for almost 24 hours, without causing any mishaps to life or property.

The Conspiracy Theory

I would like to put forward my “conspiracy theory” involving Indian airport management companies and luggage manufacturers. It is so subtle—the conspiracy, not my theory—that I need your full attention for the next few minutes.

Don’t get me wrong: If you are a seasoned air traveller, you sort of get used to your favourite suitcase acquiring a variety of dents, bumps, cuts, scratches and cracks during the course of your travels. You resign yourself to the fact that your luggage will be thrown around, dropped from heights, crushed under heavier brethren, scanned, wrongly-labelled, misdirected, lost, found, and generally subjected to such extreme punishment and humiliation, that it will break the most iron-willed of men, if applied to human beings.

No. These things you learn to take it in your stride. You learn to accept them as the price you have to pay for acquiring all those frequent flyer miles, fancy lounge cards, and the occasional upgrade to Business Class while your boss sweats it out in Economy.

No. We are talking glue here.

Yes. Glue.

When Airport Security scan your check-in luggage, they slap on a tiny, pre-gummed label or “sticker” on your suitcase.

Initially, when your suitcase is all shiny and brand new, you hasten to take off this offending object off your case at the earliest opportunity, with as much care and consideration as possible. But soon, if you are an indolent chap like me, the stickers accumulate and start completely obliterating the front part of your suitcase: the snap-out openers, the number lock, the keyhole – everything. That is when, on a Sunday morning, you decide to clean up your suitcase, by peeling away the stickers.

Disaster! The stickers will refuse to peel away with any modicum of amiability. The glue used is so bad that part of the sticker will stick to your fingers and part to the suitcase. You try moistening the stickers with water and suddenly the problem becomes worse; everything has turned into a gooey mess. Wherever the stickers have come off, there are black, sticky blotches and all your ten fingers have little pieces of stickers attached to them. In desperation, you get hold of a knife or a screwdriver and start scraping the blasted things off the surface, but it is a losing battle. Your suitcase looks as if it has been in a car crash and now you have knife scratches on the fascia to contend with.

With half your Sunday gone, you are left with no choice but to go out and buy a new suitcase before your next trip.

And here is where my conspiracy theory comes in.

Dusseldorf

Once every four years, a certain trade fair takes me to the city of Dusseldorf in Germany. Although lagging behind other German cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt in terms of population (actually, it ranks ninth with a population of over 600,000 inhabitants), Dusseldorf is a bustling metropolis and is the centre for the German fashion, advertising, and telecommunications industries. It is a nice, sprawling city, dotted with huge public parks, wooded areas, and wonderful old buildings which include some of the most beautiful and imposing churches you can see anywhere in Europe.

What never ceases to amaze me as I walk along the streets of Dusseldorf is the fact that this city was virtually reduced to rubble during World War II and whatever I am seeing now, has been rebuilt from the ground up afterwards.

It was geography that did Dusseldorf in during the war. During World War II, the Rhine-Ruhr valley was one of the primary targets for aerial bombing by the Allied forces, especially the RAF. After all, most of the steel and armament industries of Hitler’s Germany, which fed the awesome German war machine, were situated within the valley and throughout the war, the Allies targeted the area relentlessly. Dusseldorf, being a city bordering the Rhine-Ruhr valley in the north, bore the brunt almost by default.

History records the city going up in flames on September 10, 1942, after a particularly punishing RAF attack. Again, towards the end of the war, in the spring of 1945, with Germany’s anti-aircraft defences all but destroyed, Dusseldorf faced another massive aerial onslaught. Round-the-clock air attacks for seven long weeks brought the city to its knees with thousands dead and half the city’s residential and industrial areas completely destroyed.

There were of course other German cities in the Ruhr valley which faced even greater damage: Essen, Cologne, Dortmund, Wuppertal...the list is long. I have travelled through or have been in many of these cities; if you didn’t know your history, you will be hard-pressed to believe that they suffered so much damage sixty years ago, such has been the precision and care with which they have been reconstructed.

I sit this evening on the terrace of my hotel by the Rhine, enjoying a glass of beer, watching the families enjoying the weekend getting ready to push their little rowing boats into the river. The children’s excited screams hang in the clear summer air for a moment and vanish.

Hopefully, these children will never grow up to experience the horrors of war, at least, not in their corner of Europe.

Photo Courtesy: Kreuzherreneck's Public Gallery. Picasa Web Albums

Bhusawal Blues: 3

I have a cloth bag. I have a beard. I am thin and look emaciated. The Bhusawal cops are convinced I am a naxalite from the forests of Chandrapur.

There follows a long, arduous conversation with the cops questioning me in Marathi and I trying to reply in my faulty, constipated Hindi. I am terrified the cops will haul me off into custody and that will be the last anyone would hear of me. I fish around in my wallet and find a crumpled business card of mine which I proffer, with much humility, to the custodians of the law. I can see they are not impressed.

The senior one switches to Hindi and addresses me in patient, measured tones one normally reserves for the mentally challenged: “You have come by the morning train. You say you have come here to visit your friend. But there is no friend. You don’t have your friend’s address or phone number. Now we find you sleeping here in the station. Does it make any sense to you?”

“No,” I say helpfully, “I am waiting for a train back to Bombay.”

“Where is your ticket?”

“Err...” I stammer, “I was planning to get it, once I woke up.”

Somehow, my interrogator finds this answer unacceptable and utterly irresponsible.

“Which train?” he thunders.

“Varanasi Express,” I say quickly, having already looked it up on the timetable painted on the wall of the railway restaurant.

The cops frog march me to the ticket counter and make sure I purchase a ticket back to Mumbai. Then, with a stern warning of dire consequences if I am ever found in the vicinity once the Varanasi Express has left the station, they slouch off, in search of more interesting victims.

So I return to Mumbai and immediately start planning the murder of Bisque.

Only after a week do I come to know of the real story behind Bisque’s absence in Bhusawal station that morning. Apparently, the previous night, he had been diagnosed as having acute appendicitis and had been admitted to the hospital in great pain. When I was having my little misadventure in the station, Bisque was undergoing emergency surgery for removal of the infected appendix.

I felt like a worm the next few days.

But then, as you might have guessed, Bisque’s surgery was successful and, after a period of convalescence, he recovered completely to become the famous Bisque the Collector, two decades later.

Bhusawal Blues: 2

At Bhusawal station the next morning, I am not in a good mood.

The whole of the previous night I have sat wedged underneath the washbasin of a stinking toilet with five other people. It has been a hot, humid journey in an overcrowded compartment, the predominant impressions of which have been the smell of sweat and urine and a sort of in-your-face intimacy such large number of people in such confined spaces inevitably brings about.

There is no Bisque on the platform.

I splash some water on my face from a public tap, brush my teeth, and go have a cup of tea. Even though it is hardly seven in the morning, one can already feel it is going to be another hot, sultry day. Hours go by and by ten, I conclude something seriously has gone wrong and Bisque is not coming anymore.

I curse the man. I also curse my stupidity. I have no phone number, no address, no way to contact him.

I get out of the station and walk up to the bus stand, with a vague hope of finding a bus that will take me to the Bhusawal power station. The bus stand is milling with people and every bus that turns into the stand releases clouds of fine, red dust that have me running for cover. The heat has by now become unbearable and I beat a hasty retreat back to the cooler confines of the station, ruefully accepting the fact that I am not made of stuff that make for great adventurers!

The silver lining in the cloud comes in the form of golden brown toast done to perfection and a fluffy omelette, with liberal sprinklings of onions, tomatoes and green-chillies, from the station restaurant. Hunger satiated, I walk along the platform and find a comfortable bench under a strategically-hung ceiling fan. It is close to noon and the station is deserted except for stray dogs playing between the tracks and groups of weary porters slumped against the pillars.

I fall asleep only to be rudely awakened an hour later by two belligerent policemen.
Photo Courtesy: Indian Railways

Bhusawal Blues: 1

The Calcutta Mail is one of the oldest and most prestigious trains of Indian Railways. Every day, she leaves from Bombay’s Victoria Terminus (now renamed Mumbai CST) at 21.25 hours, embarking on a journey that will cover over 2100 kilometres and take close to 38 hours. She will stop at 48 stations in between, before arriving at her final destination in the eastern coast of India. It is a long, dusty haul along the states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal and now, after the formation of new states, I suspect even Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Sorry for the Paul Theroux impersonation, but I had to give you this information so that you have an idea about the large geographical region that is serviced by this train. As you can imagine, this train is a lifeline for the large migrant population of North and East Indians and even Bangladeshi immigrants living and working in Bombay. Being less expensive than the super fast trains such as the Gitanjali Express which ply the same route, the Calcutta Mail is preferred by the poorer sections of the society and pulls out, every night from Bombay, with every seat and every berth taken and the unreserved compartments literally bursting at the seams or at the welds, if you please.

So I decide one day to take the Calcutta Mail on an overnight journey to Bhusawal in North Maharashtra. Bisque has been working there in a power station for a year now and has invited me to spend a weekend with him. The train reaches Bhusawal early morning the following day and Bisque has promised to pick me up from the station and take me to his quarters, 15 kilometres from the main town.

Three factors combine to make this journey one of the most unforgettable in my life:

I undertake this trip in May, at the height of summer when the mercury in interior Maharashtra can touch a searing 45 degrees Celsius.

Fully confident of Bisque’s ability to carry out a simple task such as picking up a friend from a railway station, I carry neither his address nor his phone number.

In a spirit of reckless adventure, I decide not to book a sleeping berth and travel in the unreserved compartment.

The retribution comes swiftly enough.

Photo Courtesy: Anir's Public Gallery, Picasa web Albums

The Maiden Flight

The company is very strict about travel rules. Juniors are not entitled for air travel, and are allowed to travel only by train. So, from Mumbai (then Bombay), I take the Madras Mail, which takes two full days and a night to reach its destination.

I am supposed to be in Madras (it had not yet been renamed Chennai) for three days. But on the second day, I get an SOS from Bombay asking me to return immediately, by air! Something urgent has come up.

My knees turn to water.

This was the time when Indian Airlines flights used to crash with alarming regularity. In fact, the 1970s had been a decade of horror for the carrier with fatal crashes reported in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1976 and 1979. A whole generation had grown up seeing pictures of burnt fuselages and charred bodies displayed prominently in the morning newspapers and become passionate converts to the viewpoint that air travel was strictly for those who had a taste for reckless adventure.

I go through check-in and security like a convict approaching the gallows. I am allotted a seat at the very back, close to the toilets and the pantry. With an impending sense of doom, I fasten my seatbelt and try to control my rising panic.

The flight takes off and hardly ten minutes later, we are facing heavy turbulence. The aircraft shudders and seems to plunge down; I am a quaking jelly, looking wildly at all the other passengers who seem to be pretty casual about the terrible fate I am sure is going to befall all of us.

The moment passes, but I refuse to relax and am keenly monitoring the engine sound for any abnormalities that will signal another crisis. Dinner is served, but I can hardly eat anything.

Suddenly from the back, there is a shrill, high-pitched hiss! For the umpteenth time that evening, I jump out of my skin, convinced another great calamity has befallen us, only to find that the noise is caused by hot water being drawn from a faucet by the air-hostess to make coffee!

After what seems like an eternity, the plane lands in Mumbai and I totter out, mentally and physically drained.

It takes me weeks to get over the trauma! :-)