The Canadian Odyssey

Someone once said that few people are born leaders, others are made leaders and a select few have leadership thrust upon them. I think the same can be said for ‘travellership’ with one addition – some people draw travel upon themselves! Canada must be 6000+ kms from India (who knows the exact distance but it is quite a long way as seen on the atlas and the world map). Victoria in the district of British Columbia is on the western frontier of Canada, which makes it even farther – it is to this ‘nearby destination’ that I had the fortune of visiting for 1 full day from Mumbai. I had a choice not to go but then, the lure of filling a full page on my 4th passport made it too attractive to turn down (BTW, I have just 5 pages left on this passport and I will soon enter the elite league of the Pentagon, the club of frequent flyers who hold five passports – oh you should see the look on the face of the Immigration officials(see footnote 1) when we slam down our ‘booklet’ and look at them with a smirk. The look is priceless – for everything else, I have my Visa card). Of course, the in-flight movies, free booze and day-and-night sleep made it a no-brainer decision. There was just one small catch – I had to make a presentation to a client and also appear quite knowledgeable about the topic, which I was going to present on [Sorry, I can’t talk much about my clients since consulting is like the CIA – if I tell you, I have to kill you]. Rest assured that a veteran consultant does not fear presentations on any topic (see footnote 2) just as the Green Berets do not blink at the prospect of a showdown in the jungles of Columbia at night, unarmed.

So I told my assistant to get me a Canadian visa – she promptly got me a form, which asked for very minute details including the birthplace and education of my parents. I never really understood the reason behind such questions – what if I was born to a carpenter in Wishy-washy Nagar or Foolpur (see footnote 3) ? How does that reduce (or enhance) my eligibility to go to Canada? [Another country that shall not be named (or my name will get into some important not-so-good books) also asks for details on your first girlfriend and reason for the split, the first time you were caught by the cops while speeding, the amount that you have spent in the last 3 years on certain psychedelic substances and such other questions]. Another thing that I have noticed is that all the embassies get paid a percentage of the revenues from the photography industry globally – each embassy has its own specifications for the photo (‘36*45 – white background with ears seen’ , ‘50*50 inch with no beard’, ‘100*27.5 inches with no glasses, ochre shirt, magenta background with one eye shut’) – why cant all the embassies standardize the photo specifications? This is one of those questions that need a session with the Dalai Lama to understand further (BTW, I have a long list of such soul-searching questions – why does my wife always want to go shopping when I want to watch a movie? Why do I always donate some piece of clothing to every hotel I stay in? How do airlines know that the day I am early at the airport, the flight should be delayed, etc etc – you get the drift). Anyway, I finally got my visa and was ready to go to Canada.

My assistant probably wanted me to really ‘experience air travel in its entirety’, which is why she booked me on the longest option possible to Victoria, via Frankfurt and Calgary – a total of ~22 hrs of flying time ONEWAY. So, when I reached the airport at 12:30 AM, I was really looking forward to the flight. Now, I have always maintained that Indian airports are a fantastic place to study anthropology, genealogy, zoology (you won’t believe the animals I have met there) and several other exotic sciences and arts. The moment I show my passport and ticket to the CISF guard at the gate, there begins a study in face reading – the guard tries to identify me from my passport photo (only difference being that I was not clean shaven on a Sunday night whereas in my passport photo, I surely was). Finally, matters were resolved (in my favour of course) and I stood in the Business class queue of Lufthansa (see footnote 4) (hope you noticed the class I am travelling on!). The conversation with the attendant was a case-study in purposeful, effective, receiver-oriented communication that went something like this:
Me: Could I have an Aisle seat please?
Her: Aisle or Window, Sir?
Me: Aisle, please
Her: Are you sure?
Me: Yes
Her: Just to clarify, you have requested for an Aisle seat, right?
Me: Yes, yes, yes – lock kar diya jaye please!!!
Her: I am going to give you an Aisle seat, Sir.
Me: Thanks so much, sweetie – you are a dream come true.
Her: Here is your ticket, seat 2A
Me: Err, 2A in most aircrafts I have travelled is a Window seat – is this a different aircraft (maybe a flying saucer where all seats are aisle and window simultaneously?)
Her: Ooops , I think I gave you a window seat. You wanted an aisle, if I am not mistaken.
Me: Yes, you are so perceptive and your memory is like that of Sir Rangachary Vishwanathan Iyengar (or some such name I must have blurted – the longer the name, greater is the impression and seriousness conveyed)
Her: Did he have a great memory?
Me: BOARDING CARD PEASE – I NEED TO RUN!!!!!!

Phew! Once this ordeal was over, I went into the immigration queue. There were 3 kinds of people who were being successful that night in getting to the immigration counter in time for their flight – the first kind were mathematicians who were calculating the time for each counter using some normal distribution fundae (or was it Poisson distribution? on a separate note, I always thought that distributions were so queer in nature – some were poisons, others were ‘chai square’, X etc). The second category were those who were following the Lal Badhshah principle (the Amitabh Bacchan movie seen by ~137 people in which Amitabh says, “The line starts from where I stand”). These people were just cutting queues – actually, the better ones were almost assuming that no queues existed (see footnote 5) . The third category were people like me – just lucky to be travelling by Business class (please note this in case you missed the earlier mention). So I cleared immigration and then stood in the line for Security check or rather jostled myself ahead as I would in a rugby match (not that I ever played rugby – it is an analogy that I was using to make you understand). By now, I was completely ignoring any concept of queues and just saying,” Excuse me, my flight is boarding – if you don’t mind”. I got frisked by the security and soon found myself in the Lufthansa lounge. Airline lounges are very interesting destinations – they are designed to make you feel inferior and practice all kinds of caste discrimination. Senator Class (just using a Lufthansa example)goes left, Predator class goes right, Sedator class goes straight. What is more touching is the way the staff tells you about it – “Sir, the lounge for Business class is straight and then to left. The one on the right is the lounge for First class – which obviously, you are NOT TO GO TO. Anyway, the First class lounge has better wine and almonds, which you cannot experience (tchik tchik!). Your Business class lounge has beer and peanuts, which obviously are inferior to wine and almonds!”. And then they smile to show their sparkling teeth. In such cases, I have a patented repartee - I almost feign ignorance and ask, “You have a first class also on XX airline? Wonder who in their right mind travels by it? Maybe demented and schizophrenic patients. Maybe because you are the only airline that goes to Goduttoria (or some such back-of-beyond place). Anyway, thanks so much for telling me that you have a First class, which I guess will be empty in most cases”. I wink and take my place in the lounge and start my night snacks – some cake, coffee, fruits and peanuts. Simultaneously, I start a reconnaissance of my surroundings – there is a Japanese lady and her small kid trying to use the free internet to its fullest. There is an Indian businessman who is trying to make sure that nobody can hear the details of his confidential deal – every second sentence (that all within 2 miles can hear) is prefixed with, “its confidential yaar – you know how things are with Mr. AXXXX but here is the high-level summary. Its known only to 7.5 people so far – we will do the media announcement next week, please don’t tell it to anyone…… of course, you can tell Reema and Kavitha, they are family obviously. But please please please don’t tell anyone that I told you this when I was not supposed to.”. There were a few members of the Pentagon Club also – I wanted to chat up the eligibility conditions and benefits of the club but I could not since they were sleeping blissfully and then suddenly waking up and proceeding to their flights, even before I could say anything. There were also the usual ‘jumping Jacks’, who would get up every 5 minutes and ask the lounge attendant if their flight boarding was announced – hearing the negative response, look very surprised (as if their flight was suppose to depart yesterday) and go back to their seats waiting to jump up again in another few minutes). I want to mention one specific ‘jumping Jack’, who was different from others – he would ask the same question to a different attendant each time, trying to check for inconsistency amongst responses. When one of the attendants said, “I think the boarding will be announced in 10 mins”, he got so delighted at having caught an error, that he almost pumped his fist and said, “…but that lady said 15 mins. Has anything changed? Am I going to be late?”. That attendant ran for her life and was never seen again for the time that I was in the lounge.

Well, with nothing more interesting to do, I decided to send a few work emails, reminding my colleagues about the work that they had to do so that I could then edit their work and send them more work to do – life is after all, a highly interdependent circle, said some Chinese philosopher. (actually, this was one of my friends advice – when in doubt about a quotation, always say it was either a Chinese philosopher or Barack Obama or Lindsay Lohan who said it – if anyone actually dares to ask you which Chinese philosopher, you should just look shocked and mumble something like, “…gosh, look at the ignorance around me, truly it is the Age of Kali that has dawned upon the planet”). With all the work emails sent (and replied to), I did the ‘that’s terrific’ responses to all the emails that I had got in the last 2 days. This is a highly effective work technique I learnt some time back from one of my senior colleague (I wonder why he has not got the Noble Prize for something yet, probably Physics – he has invented this idea which is so effective in saving time and effort). The gist of the idea goes something like this:

Mail 1: I think XX should talk to YY and sort this out. What do you think?
Response: That’s a terrific idea.
Mail 2: ……………hence the CEO was really upset. I think you should talk to him tomorrow
Response: That’s a great idea.
Mail 3: Would you want to have coffee in about 15 mins?
Response: That’s a fabulous idea
Mail 4: …..so I have asked him to make a presentation. You should join the discussion that day
Response: (What else! – a synonym like fantabulous, outstanding, distinctive, superlative, genius blah blah blah)

Finally, the boarding of my flight was announced. This was quite uneventful since there was a separate queue for us B-class people and I walked right up to my seat, looking sympathetically at all the hapless E-class passengers standing silently in the queue. Hope these souls know what the great Milton had said, “They also serve, who only stand and wait”.

After a whole host of announcements (in 3 languages - English, Hindi and German), ranging from ‘Welcome on Board’ to a detailed demonstration of the working of a highly complex body device called the Seat belt (which is a combination of mechanics, electronics, robotics, pyrotechnics and metallurgy) to extremely interesting details like the altitude we will reach, the temperature outside, the pressure outside, the route that the aircraft will take etc, we finally took off. Actually, I never realized when we took off since I was wondering why in the name of Orville and Wilbur Wright are such details announced at all? Are we going to be allowed to put our hand outside to feel the temperature or pressure? Is there going to be an emergency landing at one of the destinations on the way? By the way, on a Mumbai-Delhi flight, I once had an extremely courteous pilot who mid-way, offered an extremely profuse apology for telling us that we would be cruising at a speed of 1400 miles per hour when indeed, we were doing 1550! He spent almost 5 mins on this apology. What a gentleman he must have been (like Abu Ben Adem, may his tribe increase!).

After putting the seat flat, I slept for the next 5-6 hours and woke up in time for breakfast, and for watching an episode of Mentalist, the terrific thriller serial (yes, how I love this word!). Then I noticed that in the great movie and serial collection that Lufthansa Business class had (sum total of 16 movies, 12 English, 4 other languages), there was also a movie called Fearless that had Salman Khan on the front. When I clicked on it, I was enlightened that it was Dabangg! – I then finished the full movie in a fast forward mode, focusing on only the most important dialogues (e.g., Chedi Singh, hum tumhare andar itne ched karenge ki bhool jaoge ki saans kahaan se leni hain or XXX (see footnote 6) kahaan se). For the next hour, I spent time eating breakfast and communicating with the German airhostess on what I wanted and what I did not. German efficiency is such that there is a set process and routine to everything – even if you ask for water, the request will be processed via a complex request-taking algorithm that optimizes for the age of the requestor, the quantum of item asked for, the current pre-occupation of the staff¸ the number of passengers on board, the day of the month, the number of unoccupied laterines; I am not joking – some of my requests were complied with immediately, others after 15 mins and some were mildly turned down – like my request for wheatflakes instead of cornflakes). Finally after 7.5 hours, we landed at Frankfurt Airport – or more precisely, the Franfurt Airport maze. One keeps walking, turning and walking again for atleast 15-20 mins before reaching somewhere ‘directionally close’ to the desired destination. I am convinced that airports in general are designed to confuse people and make them walk a lot (see Terminal 3 at New Delhi? I hear that the heart disease rate of travellers using Delhi airport has dropped by 7% since the launch of T3) but Frankfurt is in a league of its own. I am inclined to believe that the chief architect was probably a direct descendant of the guy who designed the labyrinth for the Minotaur whom Perseus, the Greek hero slew. Just as Perseus had a ball of wool to show him the way, I had numerous display boards that kept flashing my gate number. After a long walkathon, I reached my gate and boarded my flight to Calgary with a slightly dejected heart – I did not have the time to go and gorge on the free food in the airport lounge. But then, one cant have it all in life – after all, life is full of choices, said another Chinese philosopher!

I finished another movie on the Calgary flight (Once Upon a Time in the West) – brilliant classic full of cowboys, guns, horses and background music. I cant remember who the hero was (a famous guy, whom everybody would know, I suppose!) but the Director was definitely a long-lost twin of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, our revered ex-Prime Minister. The gap between two dialogues, two scenes and even two bullet shots was almost 45-60 seconds – if the bullets did not kill, the suspense and the waiting definitely did. Nevertheless, I liked the movie a lot and made a few notes to convey back to my Bollywood friends regarding a few stunts and fights, which I found to be quite good, though not in the Rajni class!(see footnote 7). As we descended into Calgary, I realized that I was completely unprepared for the minus 25 degrees weather in Calgary, and was wondering if this would be the case even in Victoria, my destination. However, luck was with me and I was told that Victoria would be a pleasant 5 degrees. I spent about 45 mins deciding if my jacket and sweater would suffice for this kind of ‘pleasant weather’ and concluded that I would probably never have to go out on the road (airport to hotel, hotel to client site, client site to airport – but how, wrong I was!). During this while, I noticed that my flight from Calgary to Victoria was delayed due to reason no.2 (ha ha! got you there – unless you are a member of the Flying Quadron (see footnote 8) Club like me, you wont understand what reason 2 is). Let me elucidate this for mere mortals – there are 5 reasons why a flight can get late – any delay in your flight is probably attributed to one of these reasons on a randomly selected basis (Note: I hear that whenever its flight is delayed, which is almost on a daily basis, a very famous airline, which I cant name obviously, throws a dart on a board containing these 5 reasons – whichever number the dart lands on, that is the reason they give to passengers)
Reason 1: Delay in arrival of incoming aircraft (translation: not our fault – just sit back and enjoy the airport scenery!)
Reason 2: Poor visibility (translation: we have neither upgraded our aircrafts, nor trained our pilots – hence we can’t fly and land on time whenever there is a slightest hint of fog, snowfall, rain, hurricane, tornado, typhoon and tsunami)
Reason 3: Air traffic congestion (translation: Several aircraft are delayed – others are not complaining, so why are you?)
Reason 4: Technical reason (translation: Even we don’t know why but cant tell you so)
Reason 5: Unforeseen emergencies (translation: The pilot and the co-pilot are drunk and we are trying to locate their replacements OR the airhostess and the pilot have run away together OR an important VIP is delayed and we have to hold the flight for him)

Finally, our aircraft took off and I landed in Victoria, my intended destination at the other end of the Earth, looking forward to my Canadian Odyssey. The fact that my luggage arrived 30 mins late and that the driver supposed to pick me up was almost going to go back (due to the slight 2 hr-delay, he had given up any hope of me coming that day), instantly made me feel ‘at home’ in Victoria. This was obviously a place I would relish given my extensive experience of places where time is a vague notion and punctuality is measured on the calendar, rather than the clock. However, what actually happened in Canada is a story for another day – needless to add, it was as one of the great English authors said (I think it was Dickens but am not sure since English literature was never my strong point (see footnote 9)) said, “It was the best of times and the worst of times”.

To conclude, I am reminded of a Sanskrit saying which is the moral of my travelogue thus far, (what a polyglot am I – so many languages to choose from)! :
Travelling makes a man wise, travelling more, makes him wiser (well, this seems quite obvious to me but then, sayings and aphorisms are nothing but common sense said in a deep voice, full of gravitas)
Au Revoir (this is French for the polyclods)


Footnotes:
1. Immigration officials are selected for their ability to ask extremely boring questions repeatedly and still be amazed at the response. The final selection test probably involves asking questions to a brick wall and responding. The caliber of your subsequent questions and the enthusiastic attitude shown during this interrogation determines your selection.

2. One of my fellow consultants once delivered presentations on ‘Effective Cost management’, ‘Leadership and Hockey’, ‘ Cooking for Dummies’ and ‘Macro-economic implications of policies undertaken in the post Vikings era on Scandinavian geopolity’ in the same day. Hats off to such great souls.

3. There is a Phulpur in India – for proper nouns, spellings don’t matter, pronunciations do.

4. I had a choice of another airline, whose pilots have a record for going on-strike at any time, sometimes in mid air. Since I had missed my last 3 parachuting lessons, I decided not to risk this and settled for Lufthansa. But if you are in the mood for adventure, I would not recommend the stolid, steady Lufthansa. Its frankly, quite boring.

5. I think these people were inspired by Neo Andersen from the Matrix Trilogy – the whole world is but an assumption – so you can make it what you want it to be. So if you believe that there are no queues, THERE ARE NO QUEUES!

6. This refers to a certain action that results in a foul stench spreading in the air surrounding the perpetrator.

7. This class has only 2 people in it – Rajnikanth from India and Chuck Norris from US. Even God cannot dare to be in this league, though there is some talk that a few people like Sunny Deol and Superman have tried – they have all failed of course.

8. You need to have 4 passports, missed 40 flights and know all the airline logos correctly to join this club, of which I am a member. I almost missed the membership when I could not identify the logo of Shenaniganland Airways correctly but I was forgiven since the airline (and the country) have both collapsed

9. Actually, what my ‘strong point’ was, was something of a mystery that my school teachers were never able to find, much less agree on.