The India Experience

sucks.
been here for two days, and I've hated every minute of my first 24 hours here. I've also loved every minute that I have spent at home.

The journey home was nice till I got on the Air India flight in Hong Kong. I hate to say this, but it's people from my own country who never fail to impress me. Due to some weird reason, they wouldn't let me take my carry-on luggage on board, and insisted on checking it in. Not having the greatest amount of trust in them, (but still not expecting anything of the sort that happened), I took out the laptop and gave them my carry-on, which was locked by Air India. At Mumbai airport, I got back my bag with the AI lock missing, the zipper cut out, and everything ransacked. And yes, gone was my precious Canon digital camera, my PDA and a spare battery for the camera.

I wonder if the person who stole my camera realizes how much it meant to me. Of course the compensation that AI offers is $20 per kg, so I can expect a few cents from them!

That was just the beginning of the experience. This trip has been more of a shock than I expected. How can that be, u say - after all wasn't I born in this country? didn't I live an eternity here before I went to the US? True, but now I see everything in perspective. Having always lived here, I used to expect everything to be 'the way things happen'. Not any more.

At mumbai airport, every official was prepared to be rude. (To be fair, there were some extremely nice people too). And outside the airport, everyone was prepared to cheat the 'foreign-returned' people out of some dollars. A fifteen minute trip to the domestic terminal was Rs. 950 (instead of something in the range of Rs. 100) ! Of course, I didn't pay that. But I wonder how many foreigners are fleeced out of money like that since Rs. 950 ~=$19 might seem reasonable to many. And if a very indian looking person like me can be surrounded by touts trying to fleece every dollar out of me, I wonder how badly foreigners are treated. For all our talk about hospitality.

So I was robbed and cheated and treated like dirt - all within 5 hours of landing in India.

Thankfully home was great as usual. Meeting my folks, and eating mom's food... want nothing more in life. So all I've been doing in the past couple of days is eat, sleep and watch tv.

Losing my camera still sucks, but I've been trying to get it out of my head so that I don't ruin the rest of my trip. There will not be any pictures in my photoblog from India. I will not come back with pictures of home, family, friends and Kerala. I'll come back wishing I hadn't made this trip. I wish I could be as proud of my country as I always pretend to be.