Absence of words in my life make me feel defunct and non-existent, but it’s written words I am talking about and not spoken ones. There is no dearth of conversations out here. The conversations in my head however seem to have been given a horse tranquilizer, after which they were last spotted with a backpack on the periphery of my head, waving goodbyes without much promise of a prompt return. Now that scares me-horse tranquilizer and travel plans don’t seem to be congruous, but then again when did you ever hear about personified thoughts doing inane things?
While I construct these inane sentences, I realize that the past month has been a blur of activity. Perhaps since the day I left New Delhi, I haven’t really had the time to sit down and just be by myself without some task at hand or some conversation to indulge in. As the clouds of the inertia start to dissipate, I realize that the travel to Spain was indeed quite flawless and brought with it some people that I will probably not be able to forget so easily. Not that they were grandiose in their gestures or anything out of the ordinary, but just that they were there at the right time..kind of wizarding* my journey into one that can not be forgotten so easily. I guess I owe a thank you to: the lady at the check in counter, at IGI Airport, New Delhi the genteel male steward aboard the BA flight to London, the gentleman on the seat next to mine, Janet in the BA flight to Madrid and the taxi driver who drove me to my hotel in Madrid.
Travel is a word that engenders mixed feelings among people. By Travel here I am referring to the passage of time in moving from one airport to another. From the euphoric enthusiast to the pessimistic business travelers, the feeling varies like day and night. Airport Travel can be particularly fun, and even a way to be present intensely in the now (Reference: The Power of Now and the New Earth by Eckhart Tolle). Here are a few ideas (picked up from personal experience) to enjoy those dreaded fifteen (ten?) hours or more of travel and transit time:
1. Always be nice to the personnel checking in your luggage, immigration officers and security check officers. Smile, talk, exchange cordial words and some inane information. This makes them happy and will make you happy as well.
2. Always set aside some space in your hand bag so you can store some duty free shopping product in it. While not necessary, duty free shopping is useful in killing the long transit hours in the wee hours of the morning. Even if you buy only a bar of chocolate, the thrill of browsing the aisles in these shops is something that can make the most insipid of journeys a little interesting.
3. Perch yourself on a table in one of the many cafes at the airport with a coffee and a magazine or a book and just observe the people ambling by. It can be quite an engaging experience to try and figure out the nationalities and destinations of people from the way they are dressed.
4. Loading your mp3 player with music containing idyllic lyrics can actually soothe your nerves and perhaps transport you to your destination whilst you are waiting to board the aircraft even.
5. In long haul flights, a mix of books like an engaging paperback novel (I recommend Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert), collection of poems, and some periodicals can keep you nicely occupied, intermittently with bouts of sleep.
6. Talk. To your co-passengers in the aircraft, the man behind you in the queue, or the friendly kids on the next table. You don’t need to exchange personal information to share a few laughs and conversations and the best part is that there is a mutual understanding that the conversation would truncate at the cessation of the journey or the end of transit. Cute deal that.
7. Try and orient yourself with the airport prior to departure. On arriving at the airport you’d feel like you are trying to piece together a giant jigsaw puzzle when trying to maneuver the ways.
* Wizarding: A word coined mid-conversation by Janet Kagan and myself aboard the British Airways Flight from London to Madrid to denote an infusion of that unquantifiable extra variable into something banal and routine.
Going Further I would like to use the symbol *w to indicate the wizarding variable. This variable would have to be used with different constants depending upon its usage in different contexts. In the Luxury Hospitality Sector for instance *wH can be a measure of how well the Hotel/Resort can enhance the customers experience over and above the expected outcome.
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