Welcome, you have Arrived!
You
had more faith in Newton’s law of Inertia than Newton himself and state of rest
was all you ever wanted in life. This was not the world of your dreams and you
have wife and kids who have been applying an external force to take them out.
You sustain the force for a long time but it grows exponentially with time. You
soon realize world peace is more important and even Newton would have chosen it
if given a choice.
Your
wife says she wishes to go to a place that is popular yet pristine and you tell
her that was an example of oxymoron. You complement yourself on wisecrack but anyways
suffer the consequences for voicing that. You are now family’s odd one out and even
the kids are on the other side of this divide.
You
demonstrate your seriousness and surf the internet for a long time looking for
various tourist sites. You search for hotels and flight discounts. During this
time, you have gifted yourself spams for a lifetime. You start getting deals
for hotel/airlines and there are even offers for baggage loss insurance.
You
show all this to your wife as an alibi in being helpless in locating any site
and you are reminded of ‘one that should not be named’ popups that have been receiving
without any complain for a long time. You quietly open your laptop and book the
first exotic holiday that appears on the website. You feel a large hole in your
pocket and show the amount to your wife to salvage some pride. You get a consolatory
pat on the cheek. Next few days are spent in shopping for suitable dress, hats and
goggles and you are ready with an attire that screams ‘See how a tourist looks
like’.
The
D-day arrives and you board the flight. Your kids punish the flight attendant for
committing the mistake of offering a candy one time. They also compete in who
can press the flight attendant call button more number of times.
After
a long arduous journey, you are at the hotel and it does not disappoint. All
you want to do in the hotel room is to sleep on the soft bed and wonder why there
is no such mattress in your house. You have competitive kids and they treat the
bed as a Bouncy and demonstrate their high jump capabilities. You remember the
fortune this booking has cost and do not ask your kids to stop. They also
scribble their names on the hotel walls.
Next
day, you request the hotel to book a Cab and your driver is an English-speaking
man. You now can only get impressed. He confidently tells you about the not to
be missed sites and for next three days, you are his ungrudging hostage. You visit/do
not visit places that he recommends and you sincerely want to live up in his
eyes. You eat, drink and shop at places that he says befits your stature and you
enviously calculate his cut in your mind.
Long
traffic snarls in the place tell you that it is anything but pristine now. You
buy chips packet, water bottles and cold drink cans like all other tourists to leave
your own mark at the tourist spot. You still have to negotiate a long queue in
entering tourist attractions and you haggle with salesmen and beggars during
that.
Your
kids take toilet breaks at odd places at odd times and locating a public toilet
is now your favourite pastime. Soon you have experience of sniffing public
toilets of various kinds and you realise finding a clean toilet would be the
ultimate dream of any Indian voyager. You have also started appreciating Graffiti
on the toilet walls. There are complex biological concepts demonstrated, love professed
in pure primal forms and simple copulation described. You are confident that A
L Basham named his book ‘Wonder that is India’ after having a look at graffiti
on toilet walls.
You
reach a historical site and since you already have been tricked, you do not
mind becoming a fool one more time. You hire a tourist guide at an exorbitant
price. Soon you realise hearing him may spoil chances of your kids studying
history any time. You spend rest of the time in reading information written at
the spot to your children and the tourist guide. You extract your revenge by
not buying anything from the souvenir shop that he guides you outside.
On
last day, you buy Souvenirs for neighbours and relatives. One cannot miss
telling them about the great time that you had and see their envy of not being at
this site. You also duly click pictures at all places and make funny smiling
face. You realize breathing out when the picture is clicked helps as it hides
your family pack. You keep on doing that all the time. Once you are back, you get
an uncanny feeling that your trip was a waste. You still post pictures on your Facebook
wall.
You
finally feel that your trip was a success when you have attained the objective
of getting maximum likes!
