Going Back — Part 2
18th April 2023 — Still In India
We left Bangalore on the 18th of April in a convoy of two cars because our three bags plus other smaller bags wouldn’t fit into one car’s boot. Perhaps an SUV would have been more sensible? And more eco-friendly? I travelled with the daughter who regaled me with tales of San, a K-pop star and his colleagues. It was interesting in a macabre way.
K-pop and its stars are quite phenomenal in the strategies and tactics they use to keep people like my daughter obsessed with them. I find their use of social media absolutely fascinating. They are constantly dropping dribs and drabs of entertaining clips leading to the final album and the videos that go with them. Their singing is not always competent but their dancing is always superlative. Their entire fandom is based on their visual appeal. It’s something worth studying.
Check-in was problem-free despite those three large bags. Bangalore Airport has a porter service, which makes things easier. The only issue was getting a wheelchair for my mother-in-law, which took some time.
The flight to Mumbai by Air India was broken up by a sort of brunch/lunch/breakfast. The quality was mixed. The food came in boxes and the croissant was light and well-made. However, the scrambled eggs were so overcooked that they had turned into little rubbery balls. If dropped, I’m sure they would have bounced around the aircraft like marbles. The eggs were not inedible but the texture was strange.
On the plane, I made a resolution not to watch any television or anything with a moving picture, no movies, no shorts, no YouTube — on my cell phone or on my iPad — until we had returned to Bangalore. Instead, I downloaded around 15 books of The Saint, Leslie Charteris’ hero. I enjoyed his books in my youth and hadn’t finished the entire collection. I decided to read as many as I could in airports, on places, in stations and on trains and wherever else. The advantage of an iPad was also evident in that I could listen to music while reading. I also downloaded a number of my favourite Playlists on Spotify. So I was prepared for my resolution.
Somehow, over the last few months, I’ve been watching far too much on Netflix, YouTube and other channels. This was an opportunity to detox and I decided to grab it.
Once we got to Mumbai, my sister-in-law arranged an SUV to take us to her place. All our bags fit in easily.
Mumbai Airport has a con job going. You have to lift your bag off the conveyor belt on your own — no porters, unlike Bangalore Airport — however, there are a whole bunch of husky guys in blue uniforms waiting near the car park. They help you put your bags into your car and then ask for a tip. A rather large tip. And one of them is deputed to keep you out of the way so that you can’t do it yourself. It’s all a scam albeit, in some ways, a helpful one.
In the evening, we went over to an aunt and uncle’s home at Sunset Heights in Bandra. It is probably the last time we’ll see their place because they’ve sold it and will be moving out soon. I had taken along two packets of coffee from Firefly Estate in Coorg — so it’s a single estate coffee — that I had enjoyed. There are a number of single-estate coffees available in India nowadays and this was the first I have tried. I found it much better than the usual packaged stuff you can get off the shelves. I intend to keep trying various coffees.
The 19th was a day of doing nothing. We had planned to go and see my wife’s uncle but he wasn’t free.