You Gotta Love It...

The amalgam of anxiety and excitement is always developed when you fly to India. I was looking forward to my trip2Home after almost 3 years.
I have liked flying with Air India for several reasons:

1. They have couple channels to hear Hindi Songs and most of them are old melodies.
2. It's a good preparation to acquaint yourself with seeing tons of desis before meeting millions of us :-)
3. The flight service has been pretty good compared to Indian standards and it's just a good feeling to see polite desi hosts and hostesses (a rare sight few years back).
4. The constant noise of little cranky desi kids, some arguments with air-hostess, typical discussions on Indian politics and infrastructure with co-passengers and so on tunes you mentally and physically for what’s gonna come next.
5. This has helped me greatly in terms of being patient and considerate the moment I land, and trust me, it keeps your “attitude” in check, which helps in the trip immensely.
6. For the Long Islanders and folks from Queens, make sure to visit Jackson Heights or Edison before your journey to India.

As always, the world is small and it was a pleasure to meet a UICTite in the same flight, sitting in front of me. I didn't knew how to react when one of his initial questions were "were you a hostelite or a localite?" The question was innocent, but it was good enough to keep me busy for another hour reminiscing on all the sweet/not so sweet memories of my engineering days. I was surprised to see the hostelite/localite thing so much prevalent even now at UICT. The question sounded like are you a Hindu or a Muslim. Dude, I am an Indian and for him an UICTite:-) The first leg to London was very comfortable and I was not too happy with the feeling. This ain't possible! Something's got to go wrong! It has to happen. My doubts got their assertion. There was a long walk of 25 mins from one terminal to another in London, with no shuttle service. The desi Air India herd started the march with all the cribs and curses. The flight was delayed by about 90 mins, and I was relieved, I am in the right flight and that the world is normal :-)
No sooner did we land in Mumbai, we heard "Nagpur, Calcutta, Aurangabad ke liye yaha chalo...". Trust me, you would not hear this on any airport in the world. And I said, "Dude the fun has begun!"

After a quick immigration, I thought of taking a leak and organizing myself before I meet my family. I am not sure why everyone is in such a hurry in India or it's just that “I don't give a damn about you, let me get my job done”. When I was washing my hands, at least 2 other guys took a quick shot at the tap water!! I mean, dude hold it for at least 30 secs, I am cleaning my pee-hand. How awesome is that. :) Some people call bribing, a "service available", however you take it, I could not help smiling to myself when I heard "Sir, 50 Rs. I will get you out of customs quick". Where I spent 2 hrs at baggage I was not keen on cutting another 20 mins at customs. I politely declined the otherwise tempting offer. The last stop at the airport was the Pandu collecting the immigration slip. Shamelessly he was asking too!! Pity or otherwise, how different was that from Hazi Ali beggars? "Saab, kharcha pani?" I was like, sorry I am not carrying Indian cash. "Saab, dollar bhi chalega". :-)

Getting out of the airport after a long wait at baggage and customs was very refreshing. You feel like a VIP with tons of people waiting outside for their dear ones. I would bet the ratio is about 1:6 (6 family members to receive one passenger). Look at the contrast, when you land in Chicago or NY, you need to make sure thrice that your friend would be available to pick you up and may be wait about an hour on airport so he can show up after work! Then carry your entire luggage, put in car, carry it to your apartment and be your own maid/servant from there on. Here, there were 4 people waiting to get my entire luggage, before I realized what was going on, the luggage was all set in the car, I was offered mineral water, some traditional sweets and tons of hugs. It was a good feeling. The smile on my sister and bro-in-law's face and the sight of overwhelmed in-laws was soothing enough to forget the flying trauma, however small.