On Leaving India
Deciding on a return flight had proven complicated. The SARS reports on TV had pushed us to avoid Singapore and look for another way to fly to Bangkok. With rather limited choices available from Kerala, we picked Sri Lankan Airlines. It was the cheapest ticket costing us about half of the cost of Air India or Indian Airlines flights to Thailand. In addition, Sri Lankan Airlines gave us all expenses paid stopover in Colombo. Our 22 hour break between flight was classified us a technical break. The airline has offered to pay for a hotel, drive to the hotel and back, and food. It sounded like a good deal, and it was.
But before getting to Sri Lanka we encountered one of the longest security checks at Thrivandram airport. Apparently, due to the long-standing conflict with Tamil Tigers, the flight to Colombo is considered to be a high risk. Remembering that Colombo airport had been bombed not that long ago, I did not protest (much).
It took only three scans of luggage, two body searches (one at the airport and another at the entrance to the plane), and two times opening the hand luggage (one at the airport, and another again at the door of the plane). Poor security officer at the airport: he had no idea what the metal chain belt is.
Flying toward equator I was thinking of India. It is a country of opportunity. Life there is booming. Hotels in Kerala are growing like mushrooms after the rain. New bridges link islands around Cochin making travel faster and easier. Four lane highways and finally (and hopefully) subsiding labour troubles are slowly attracting business.
Unfortunately, labour troubles are still there. Couple of years ago the High Court of Kerala banned bandh – lively practice of threatening businesses into shutting down for a strike. This popular among various groups practice includes closing down national highways, shops, services, etc. The joy of business owners was not long-lived. The practice was reborn with minor modifications under the name of hartal.
The labour practices are not the only thing harming business. For all its active investor-aimed marketing, government of Kerala had managed to add its share of ‘support’. On the 1st of April hotels greeted us with depressed signs “Sale of alcohol is prohibited on a first day of every month by the decision of Kerala government. Please, bear with us”. After Ukraine, it was rather painful to find out that beer is an alcoholic drink and, therefore, is not served. Memories of drinking beer in the middle of Independence Square of Kyiv earned Ukraine a brownie point.
Nevertheless, things are happening. There is so much of life in the air you feel dizzy from the sensory overload.
P.S. I have to make a special note of appreciation to the Sri Lankan Airlines.
They were good. The hotel in Colombo was very nice. Everything was well organized.
It is surely an airline I would fly again. Did I mention it was half price of
Air India?
Indian Snippets
Going through my notes on trip to India, I found two little snippets that never made it to the adventure stories. Hence, this little addition:
(1) I got bitten by an ant. The bite became red and sore and itchy. In addition to sympathy and soothing cream, I got lectured for ‘wondering around in tropical jungles’. The upsetting part of it is that all ‘wondering’ I did was walking about seven meters from the house in a back yard!
(2) Driving in the night we saw two twinkling red lights at a very strange
height. Moving closer we found two elephants walking peacefully along the highway
slowly waving their tails with bicycle light reflectors attached to them.
©Lidia Bhaskar, 2003