OK, sorry, that's a terrible pun. But as you may know me and Sonam are getting married in Goa in February next year, and as excited as we are about getting married, we really aren't good at this wedding planning lark. As romantic as the whole thing is, it's amazing to me how crazily big these things can get. I mean, ours is a relatively simple affair as Indian weddings go, but we are both simple people, so we arent used to so much focus on us! And its true of anything I guess, you can spend a bucket load on birthdays if you like and make it elaborate as hell, but its the only event I've come across so far where there is an expectation to go crazy, even if that element of it doesn't matter so much to you. But I guess part of it is social norms, and partly as its not just about you or even each other, but your families, especially your parents. They have probably been waiting for this sort of celebration longer than we have ever waited for anything. So yeah, crazy, but kind of understandable why it goes overboard more so than other events. Anyway, personally, the more we plan, the more I get excited by what I'm sure will be an awesome and unforgettable couple of days.
So, now that I've taken the romance out of the story (sorry!), what I was really writing about was my latest trip to Goa, the beginning of wedding planning. Now, as I booked this trip while I was still employed, it was a ridiculously short trip, with a million things to plan, and overall it was a successful trip. Anyone who has ever conducted any sort of transaction in India will agree; its exhausting! Nothing is priced at face value, nothing is included in the negotiated price unless made extremely explicit, no fair outcome is ever really likely unless you're a local, and if you get close, it probably wasn't worth the effort! But, amongst all that, we did what we had to, got a few things sorted, and on the whole, survived the inevitable shakedowns for extra cash! However, there were a few things I noted about travelling/life in India:
1) No one really knows what a queue is in India. This is a queue in most places in the world.
This is a queue in India
It's more like an American Football playbook.
And most annoyingly, its the passive aggressiveness of it. No one will cut ahead of you and look at you, they'll just brush up against you, occasionally bumping into you and invading your personal space, and then slowly wear you down till you become one of them, inching forward to try and plug any new amount of space available, or just till you give in and let them sneak shamelessly ahead of you as you mutter quiet insults to yourself and shake your head as if someone around you actually cares, when in reality that shaking of head just meant you've given up some more room to another one of those sneaky space invaders trying to be the next one to overtake your amateur ass.
2) There are too many people working at airports
If it wasn't enough that queueing in India is torture, there are so SO many opportunities to queue. As you enter an Indian airport, someone checks your passport, and confirms you have a ticket. Just to check you werent some terrorist who couldnt be bothered to wait for the flight to try something maybe. Then you show someone the same at the check in counter, so far so easy. Then someone checks your boarding pass before you go up the escalator to go to the security check. Then someone checks it at the top of the escalators (who has ever failed at that stage?), and then again at the front of the security queue. You drop your bag in the scanner, and get searched. Again someone checks your boarding pass, stamps it, and then you get your bag stamped to say its been through security. About a metre further, someone checks your boarding pass has been stamped by security, and then checks your bag too. Then as you finally get to board your plane (and everyone ignores the seat rows just called up), someone checks and scans your boarding card as per normal. As you put it away thinking that's the end of it, someone, ON THE WALKWAY to the plane, asks to see that bloody boarding pass, the thing that's been scanned, stamped and checked a million times, and then checks it against your passport again as if he is the first to ask to see it. Then just before you board the plane, another charmless soul asks to see your bag tag to check its stamped, and just for good measure checks your boarding pass. Then there is the standard air hostess scene as you board the plane. She has one job; point left for poor, point right for rich. But of course she needs to read that overused boarding card one last time. If that was exhausting to read, imagine doubling that experience when you have a connecting flight, because in India, connecting flight staff don't give a shit about any security checks you may have had to get here, as much as its likely that you are a regular tourist catching a connecting flight, it is equally likely you are a ninja terrorist who has conquered the feat of teleporting past previous security, but then decides to use this technology to board a plane instead of just reaching his or her preferred destination.
3) Indians love a bit of excess.
No, I'm not talking about food, although a brief survey in the hotel we were at did confirm that the majority of wealthy Indians eat way too much, but hey, I'm not going to criticise people for that.. What I mean is luggage. No one seems to travel light. Well, actually, no one seems to have baggage within the allowances. People seem to be travelling with suitcases, boxes, one really heavy wheely bag to take on board, and a rucksack that is so big it may as well be a suitcase. The check in process is always so much longer, as people argue and negotiate with the check in assistant, remove boxes of washing detergent, industrial sized packets of chocolate, or random toys and electrical (genuine items I've seen reshuffled), until they manage to get on the plane. I just found it funny watching people do this in an airport which had a massive poster of Amazon.in hanging on the wall. Whyyyy would you do this to yourself in this day and age?!!
4) Getting off a plane is so chaotic with Indians, I dread to think how bad it'd be with a real emergency.
For some reason, anytime the plane lands, no matter how much the air hostess begs the crowd to stay seated till the seatbelt sign goes off, or at least wait till the plane stops moving, there seems to be a massive number of people that can not wait to get up to get their bags out the overhead compartment, as if there is a winning lottery ticket in there or something. So after forcing people to sit down, there is an almost nervous wait for the sign to go off, followed by an almighty panic as people scramble to get their bags down, and get off the plane as if it was on fire. I don't really get it, but what's hilarious is that its hard not to get caught up in it all, and if enough people start to rush, everyone seems to feel the need to follow, and even as you stand at your seat waiting to be let into a stream of rushing people in the aisle, you soon realise the only two ways you are getting off are either a) last or b) by irrationally charging into the traffic muttering under your breath again like an irritated foreigner. I opted for a) or b) depending on the mood of the music coming through my headphones.
Anyway, I think I could go on and on; from the traffic, to the noise, to the crazy driving that is just accepted as the norm (very similar to their rules on 'queueing' unsurprisingly), but India is like one of those magical places that really makes you work for it, but I'm starting to feel that you learn to love it. There really is no place like it; where multiple layers of chaos combine so seamlessly to form an impressively beautiful and vibrant backdrop, exhaustingly unique, with a drive and ambition so universally present that amongst the shock to the system it always provides, you can't help but be impressed by the tapestry it ends up weaving.
But still:
So, now that I've taken the romance out of the story (sorry!), what I was really writing about was my latest trip to Goa, the beginning of wedding planning. Now, as I booked this trip while I was still employed, it was a ridiculously short trip, with a million things to plan, and overall it was a successful trip. Anyone who has ever conducted any sort of transaction in India will agree; its exhausting! Nothing is priced at face value, nothing is included in the negotiated price unless made extremely explicit, no fair outcome is ever really likely unless you're a local, and if you get close, it probably wasn't worth the effort! But, amongst all that, we did what we had to, got a few things sorted, and on the whole, survived the inevitable shakedowns for extra cash! However, there were a few things I noted about travelling/life in India:
1) No one really knows what a queue is in India. This is a queue in most places in the world.
This is a queue in India
And most annoyingly, its the passive aggressiveness of it. No one will cut ahead of you and look at you, they'll just brush up against you, occasionally bumping into you and invading your personal space, and then slowly wear you down till you become one of them, inching forward to try and plug any new amount of space available, or just till you give in and let them sneak shamelessly ahead of you as you mutter quiet insults to yourself and shake your head as if someone around you actually cares, when in reality that shaking of head just meant you've given up some more room to another one of those sneaky space invaders trying to be the next one to overtake your amateur ass.
2) There are too many people working at airports
If it wasn't enough that queueing in India is torture, there are so SO many opportunities to queue. As you enter an Indian airport, someone checks your passport, and confirms you have a ticket. Just to check you werent some terrorist who couldnt be bothered to wait for the flight to try something maybe. Then you show someone the same at the check in counter, so far so easy. Then someone checks your boarding pass before you go up the escalator to go to the security check. Then someone checks it at the top of the escalators (who has ever failed at that stage?), and then again at the front of the security queue. You drop your bag in the scanner, and get searched. Again someone checks your boarding pass, stamps it, and then you get your bag stamped to say its been through security. About a metre further, someone checks your boarding pass has been stamped by security, and then checks your bag too. Then as you finally get to board your plane (and everyone ignores the seat rows just called up), someone checks and scans your boarding card as per normal. As you put it away thinking that's the end of it, someone, ON THE WALKWAY to the plane, asks to see that bloody boarding pass, the thing that's been scanned, stamped and checked a million times, and then checks it against your passport again as if he is the first to ask to see it. Then just before you board the plane, another charmless soul asks to see your bag tag to check its stamped, and just for good measure checks your boarding pass. Then there is the standard air hostess scene as you board the plane. She has one job; point left for poor, point right for rich. But of course she needs to read that overused boarding card one last time. If that was exhausting to read, imagine doubling that experience when you have a connecting flight, because in India, connecting flight staff don't give a shit about any security checks you may have had to get here, as much as its likely that you are a regular tourist catching a connecting flight, it is equally likely you are a ninja terrorist who has conquered the feat of teleporting past previous security, but then decides to use this technology to board a plane instead of just reaching his or her preferred destination.
3) Indians love a bit of excess.
No, I'm not talking about food, although a brief survey in the hotel we were at did confirm that the majority of wealthy Indians eat way too much, but hey, I'm not going to criticise people for that.. What I mean is luggage. No one seems to travel light. Well, actually, no one seems to have baggage within the allowances. People seem to be travelling with suitcases, boxes, one really heavy wheely bag to take on board, and a rucksack that is so big it may as well be a suitcase. The check in process is always so much longer, as people argue and negotiate with the check in assistant, remove boxes of washing detergent, industrial sized packets of chocolate, or random toys and electrical (genuine items I've seen reshuffled), until they manage to get on the plane. I just found it funny watching people do this in an airport which had a massive poster of Amazon.in hanging on the wall. Whyyyy would you do this to yourself in this day and age?!!
4) Getting off a plane is so chaotic with Indians, I dread to think how bad it'd be with a real emergency.
For some reason, anytime the plane lands, no matter how much the air hostess begs the crowd to stay seated till the seatbelt sign goes off, or at least wait till the plane stops moving, there seems to be a massive number of people that can not wait to get up to get their bags out the overhead compartment, as if there is a winning lottery ticket in there or something. So after forcing people to sit down, there is an almost nervous wait for the sign to go off, followed by an almighty panic as people scramble to get their bags down, and get off the plane as if it was on fire. I don't really get it, but what's hilarious is that its hard not to get caught up in it all, and if enough people start to rush, everyone seems to feel the need to follow, and even as you stand at your seat waiting to be let into a stream of rushing people in the aisle, you soon realise the only two ways you are getting off are either a) last or b) by irrationally charging into the traffic muttering under your breath again like an irritated foreigner. I opted for a) or b) depending on the mood of the music coming through my headphones.
Anyway, I think I could go on and on; from the traffic, to the noise, to the crazy driving that is just accepted as the norm (very similar to their rules on 'queueing' unsurprisingly), but India is like one of those magical places that really makes you work for it, but I'm starting to feel that you learn to love it. There really is no place like it; where multiple layers of chaos combine so seamlessly to form an impressively beautiful and vibrant backdrop, exhaustingly unique, with a drive and ambition so universally present that amongst the shock to the system it always provides, you can't help but be impressed by the tapestry it ends up weaving.
But still:
Lol!! I love your summary of India at the end!
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