Category Archives: india
And All I Did Was Type
I watch my colleague as he uses two fingers to painstakingly type and send out an email. It wasn’t a long message but it took him awhile to complete it on his laptop. I almost pulled the keyboard from him so I could do it myself but I held onto my patience.
I could so easily have been just like him. Instead, I have strong keyboarding skills that I learned a long, long, long time ago. Little did I know how much I would come to value them!
I had just finished my tenth grade of high school and my life was about to hurtle out of control.
Starting college – technically “Pre-University” to complete my 11th and 12th grades before starting on my degree, and then finding myself engaged to get married to some stranger in a country and continent far, far away. It was all too much!
I had a few months before I would be whisked away so I decided to quit my pre-university and go spend time living with my parents in the small town which they called home. I figured that I could always go to school later on in life but that that special time with my mom and dad would never come back again. Not sure where I got this wisdom but I never regretted that decision!
As the days passed, I found myself restless and had to something with all my free time. So my dad suggested that I spend a couple of hours each day to learn how to type. Maybe he thought I could be a secretary when I grew up? Whatever it was (serendipity?), I decided I would do it just to so I had something productive to do for part of the time.
What a lucky move that was!
In a small, dingy room no more than 10 X 10 feet were about five typewriters. Every morning for those few months, I would go and learn from this old man – a retired professor as it turned out, who was determined to teach me how to be a fine typist. I had to learn how the keyboard was organized, how my fingers should be positioned on the keys and practice, practice, practice. Then, practice some more.
By the time I was done, I was one fine typist indeed. But I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do with this skill. Soon enough (too soon!), it was time to get married and leave India for the US so there was really not much time to contemplate any of this anyway.
Little did I know that it was a skill I would use during every single day of my career. How much time have I saved all these years? I can guarantee it adds up to a large amount given how much written (typed!) communication there has been over the years. I can look back now and see that it was one smart move, unnoticed at that time. It turned out to be more worthwhile than whatever I would have learned in college for those few months.
No two-finger typing for me, oh no. No looking at the keyboard while I type. Just as I think about what I want to write, my fingers begin typing effortlessly. Such a basic skill, yet such massive dividends it has paid! There were no real goals, no big plans, just another small, accidental gift on my life’s journey.
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Heathrow Airport Welcomes “Paan Thook”
A couple of definitions are in order.
First, “paan” is a concoction made with betel leaf and areca nuts that is consumed quite heavily in India and surrounding countries. Like chewing tobacco, it appears to have addictive properties. Paan is often served after a meal as a palate cleanser but there are many who chew it throughout the day.
Second, “thook” is the Hindi word for “spit”. Yes, it’s as disgusting as it sounds. Just as you would spit out tobacco that has been chewed, so too the paan chewers spit out their paan after they are done. What’s more disgusting is that due to the resulting color of chewing paan, the combination of the two, i.e. “paan thook” is an ugly orange-red.
It is common to see people on streets in India spitting out their paan, usually aiming for a nearby wall or structure. If not, just right there on the sidewalk is quite alright with them. Yep, again, it’s as disgusting as it sounds. Every now and then, you can spot signs like this one, which are virtually always ignored:
A feature article in the New York Times even talked about the menace that paan thook has become in one of the Indian-heavy neighborhoods in Queens, New York. Way to go, Indians, for spreading our “culture”!
So, given that prelude, here’s what I encountered on my recent trip to India.
First, my travel woes started with the winter storm that prevented any travel out of my usual hub of Atlanta, taking me North then East over the Atlantic into British territory for a quick stop, before getting to Mumbai on an airlines I had not traveled in over two decades – Air India. I knew there were good reasons for not traveling Air India for many, many years but that’s a story for another day.
The midway stop between the US and India was Heathrow Airport in London. Busy but well maintained except for a few rude Brits that I encountered, this stop, like Air India, was only a distant memory to me. Terminal 4 where Air India operates is an older terminal but looked like it had been upgraded recently. It was quite swanky actually.
Air India has its lounge in an area off by itself and secluded from other lounges. It has an elevator that appears reserved just for the guests of that lounge. I made my way over there for a couple of hours of rest before the remainder of my journey. There, they told me that I would be flying one of the new Dreamliners that Air India had recently acquired from Boeing. Neat, I thought. This is not so bad after all.
There were hardly any other passengers in the lounge and when they announced boarding for my flight, I made my way out of the lounge to the elevator. It is when I got inside and happened to glance down that, to my utter amazement, I saw one corner covered by, what else but “paan thook“. Amazement and dismay!
I wish I had taken a picture of this revolting sight (just in case you don’t believe me) but my hands were full and my brain must have been otherwise occupied. But if there’s any Indian in you, of course you believe me! Sadly, even Heathrow Airport is scarred now with this ugly mess. 😦
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Photo Credits:
Paan Ingredients: By Eraheem (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Paan Leaves: By McKay Savage from London, UK [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 