Column

Tales from the locker room

I hate travelling. Last week, I journeyed from Churchgate to Andheri West twice by car—a trail neither P Stanley nor B Livingstone nor Vasco do Gama could have got through, believe me!

And even worst than domestic travel what I hate and despise is air travel to foreign countries. Without being rude I’ve never hadinterest in going to foreign countries. The moment I’m there I promise my mother to be a good boy and do all my homework, only if she lets me return home immediately.

However, the rising costs of bringing up two children and my wife’s newfound desire to suddenly feed herself more than once a day, has forced me into practising the most disgusting human habit of all—travelling.

Now no matter how many times I travel, I find more and more demons hidden in the ugly process of air-travel. Last week in my three-countries-in-three-days tour, known also as the ‘torture tour’, I discovered some more devils. And this time I’m not referring to the ones in the economy class.

First of all there’s the newspaper culture. Now the air steward, (even without significant alcohol in the bloodstream, he insists we call him that), hands out newspapers like a sub-continental mosquito hands out malaria. However, he doesn’t bother to tutor the hapless passenger/prisoner on how to deal with the newspaper culture.

For example, it has been proven in three studies independently conducted in Cleveland, Estonia and Zambia that it is impossible to turn the page of a newspaper in a plane without injuring the nearest passenger/prisoner. If the recipient of the newspaper blow is sleeping at that time, he is instantly aroused by both the peeling sound of a newspaper turning and the physical amalgamation of all parties—passengers/prisoners and papers involved.

If the incident takes place at the beginning of the flight more the reason to ask immediately for separate parachutes because a cold war is declared automatically.

Every time, I’m forced to travel, it unleashes a new pain. And brother I’ve seen pain—from my mother at the college prom, to marriage, haemorrhoids and violation of space proximity by Indian males.

But none compares to the ultimate torture, the ultimate terror, the dastardly act of travelling!