Girish Gangadharan

Vacation

// May 23rd, 2007 // Miscellaneous, Personal

It’s been 3 since years since i took a decent vacation. The last time i took one, it was a trip to India. Back then I was still a student just about to graduate that semester. It was a calculated move since i knew as soon i as came back to the US, i would look for a first full-time job and to ask for a 4 weeks vacation within a year of joining any company would not look all that impressive to the employers. So it was then or at least 2 years from then.

I added the ticket expense to the student loans account and booked my tickets. Boy! Did i have fun or did i have fun! I loved it. It was so cool. Everywhere i went, i was treated with so much love and respect. After all, not many kids in the family gets to go to the US and complete a Masters degree in Engineering.

So this time when my sister said she was moving to India for good, and the fact that my father is retiring after serving the Central Government defense ministry for about 38 years, i thought “Well…may be this would be the best time to take a vacation. I can help her move, carry some stuff for her to India (actually the plane did but i packed as little as possible so that i can pack an extra luggage for her and show it as mine)…and be there when my father’s loved ones are celebrating his achievement”.

And so i decided to take a 4 week vacation this summer. Bad time to plan a trip to India but …oh well! The journey was not all that fun as expected – nobody likes to fly for 19 hours with a break of couple of hours in between. The break was at Frankurt, Germany.

Man…what a shitty airport! They made people sit in a big hall and then after about an hour. They asked all of us to leave so that they can “board” us …sounds fine…right? Yeah..the only difference is that they were not actually “boarding”. They just wanted to check everybody’s ticket and then let them back in to the same freaking hall.

Yeah…more than 200 passengers including nursing mothers and older people, were standing in front of this little gate where Lufthansa had 2 people “checking” people’s tickets and letting them in. There were no lines ..nothing. Just a huge crowd comprised of mostly brown people – about 98%. Looked like a refugee camp to me where people were waiting for food packets.

And after about an hour of crawling through an ocean of people and check-in baggages, everyone finally got back into the hall and then within about 15 minutes, they said “yeah…you can all board now…”. Again, people rushed to the gate. This time we didn’t have anyone standing at the gate and actually boarding each one in. So it was a race-to-your-seat game. What a freaking mess!

After 8 hours and 30 minutes of seemingly never-ending flight, we finally landed in Chennai at about midnight. And after about an hour of immigration paper work, we got out of the airport and walked into the spread out loving arms of my dad. And that’s when i realized, DAMN….it is HOT! I was sweating like crazy! And my cousin mentioned “i know dude…the humidity is gonna kill you. You realize it is 2 AM in the morning…right? Wait until you get to see the sunlight tomorrow man”. Sigh!

Boy was he right? It is sooooo hoooootttttt here! I feel like i have already lost 10 lbs…and got dehydrated the first day itself.

Another interesting thing happened today. I got a chance to attempt to change the system a little bit. Something that has been on every Indian’s mind…something that every one has dealt with at least once in their lifetime in India….i took it on…

Stay tuned for the next post!

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