I am just back from a wonderful one month holiday in India!! So it is obvious that i want to share my experience with you all. In short, my trip was mostly about meeting my family, attending a friends wedding and eating a lot and lot of delicious food ... and mangoes :) :)
To say the least, my trip started with a lot of confusion. When i reached schipol airport to take my KLM flight on 9th of June, after checking in my luggage and going through the security, KLM informed me at the departure gate that my flight to New Delhi is overbooked and i cannot board the plane!! WTF! I didn't even clearly understood what that meant so i asked the airline what do they mean by overbooked. The lady in blue there told me that airlines are legally allowed to overbook the flight by 10%. This means that if there are 100 seats in a flight, airline will put on sale 110 seats. This is because according to stats, around 10% people cancel their tickets after booking. So if they put on sale only 100 tickets, the flight will on average have around 10 empty seats when they fly which means financial loss for airlines. So they sell 110 tickets hoping that after all the cancellations, the flight will still be full. Now sometimes they sell all 110 tickets and less then 10% people cancel their tickets. As the airline only has 100 seats, this results in an overbooked flight! And this was the case with my flight. In this case obviously all the passengers with tickets cannot fly. To deal with this and to decide who gets to fly and who is left behind, airline allots seats to passengers when they are checking-in (online or on airport). The first 100 people to check-in get to fly and the remaining are left behind. Because of this rule, recently there is so much emphasis given to early online check-in. I recommend everyone who has an important flight to take, please check-in as soon as possible to confirm your seat on the flight. Now, for the people who are left behind, the airline is supposed to arrange their tickets in the next available flight for free and reimburse them for the inconvenience caused. This reimbursement depends on the distance of your air travel going till a maximum of 600 euros cash. And guess what, KLM paid me 600 euros cash on the spot!! And they booked me on an evening flight (the same day) to New Delhi via Athens. I didn't want to take with me 600 euros to India so I decided to go to an ABN AMRO counter to deposit the cash. This counter was in the main hall of the airport. I had to go through the arrivals area and through the passport control to reach this counter. When the security guy at the passport control asked me where am i coming from, I replied 'Netherlands'!! haha imagine how funny it was, entering back in Netherlands without leaving Netherlands :P Anyways i explained my situation and he let me go. So i deposited the cash, went through the security check again to go inside the departure terminal and at the gate waited for my flight to Athens. Just before the boarding of this flight was scheduled, it was announced that an airplane is stuck on the airstrip in Athens and hence all the flights going to Athens have been delayed by 2 hours!! For me, this meant that i will certainly miss my connecting Athens - New Delhi flight. Seriously?? I was quite nervous at this point. Anyways, i went back to KLM helpdesk to discuss this. They told me that the best option i have now is to take the direct KLM flight to New Delhi the following day. If i want, i can decide to stay overnight near airport (in which case KLM will book a hotel for me) or just go back home and come back tomorrow. Fuck! Quite annoying eh? Well, i calmed myself down and stayed overnight at the hotel that KLM booked. And guess what? To do this, I again had to enter Netherlands without leaving Netherlands :P Anyways, the hotel stay was nice and next day every thing went smooth. So after some confusion and waiting, I was finally in India! The only things that made this whole ordeal bearable was the 600 euro compensation and a young Dutch couple who were supposed to travel to India in the same flight as me on the 9th but were overbooked as well. So they were with me the whole time and went through the exact same events as described above!
Finally, I was in Sitamarhi, Bihar. Home sweet home! My 2 week stay there comprised of spending time with my extended family, eating delicious mangoes, cursing the heat, enjoying monsoon and picking fresh vegetables from my parent's new garden.
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| With Mom |
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| My favorite person, my grand mother ... |
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| This is how you eat mangoes in my hometown :D |
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| My mom said that after waking up, even before seeing God, she sees mangoes :P |
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| Monsoon Bitches!! |
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| A look at our garden from the roof |
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| Fresh Okra (or lady's fingers) in the garden |
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| One random evening in Sitamarhi, somehow this pic makes me homesick. |
The following picture is a very special one. Once i was going with my cousin on a rickshaw and i saw this printed in front of a government office "To stop rapes, we must make toilets". This didn't made sense to us at all! We both thought this was so funny and disgusting. I remember that i was really angry thinking that how can someone write a crappy message like this? How is making toilets going to stop rapes?? I was so disgusted that i asked the rickshaw to stop so that i can take a picture. I went back home and showed it to my grand mother out of anger. What she explained me was so horrifying that i could have never imagined it even in my dreams. She told me that the printed statement makes complete sense. In rural areas, most households don't have toilets and people defecate in open. Women usually (and i guess obviously) go to a bit secluded areas to defecate. A lot of them go in farms with lot of plantation so that no one sees them defecating. This is when they are pulled by men in high bushes and raped. This phenomenon is rampant in rural areas of Bihar. After listening this, i was so shocked and not just because of how disgusting this whole thing was, but also because i realized that as a middle class Indian, I am so unaware and so cutoff from the problems poor people face in India. I am sure that almost all of my Indian friends will have never heard about this heinous act. There is a rape in Delhi and media goes crazy! There are so many protests! What about these voiceless poor women from rural India?
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| "To stop rapes, we must make toilets" |
After my stay in my hometown of Sitamarhi, it was time to head to Hyderabad to attend my friend's wedding. It was great to meet so many people i haven't met in ages!
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| @ chuha and sonam's wedding in Hyderabad |
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| With Doga darling @ wedding! :) |
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| Havas and Doga @ wedding! |
After the wedding, it was time to go to Bangalore to meet my remaining extended family. My parent also joined me there from Sitamarhi. It was so much fun!! I was meeting some of my cousins after 7-8 years. In my mind, they were still kids.
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| With Mom, Dad and Bro @ some temple in Bangalore |
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| Me and Bro sharing a coconut drink :) |
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| With chinki after 8 years... she came all the way from Mumbai to meet me! |
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| Chinu in my new suitcase, i guess she secretly wanted to sneak inside Holland with me :P |
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| Papa with ranjan and raju chacha in Bangalore |
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| Pizza party with bacha party :P |
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| It was time to dig in some delicious South Indian food! |
It was first time after i don't remember how many years that 10 out of 12 'bhawsinka kids' were together, so we decided to go for a professional photo-shoot. The 2 kids missing are Chinki and Sonu. Sorry guys :( I hope all 12 of us will be together some day soon for an awesome holiday. We will have better pictures then!
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| The genX bhawsinkas ;) |
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| I am blessed with kick-ass sisters :) |
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| Say cheeseeeeeeeee :) |
So after an awesome week-long stay in Bangalore, my India trip came to an end. On last couple of days i did most of my shopping, packed, bid and emotional farewell to my family and took my flight back to Amsterdam.
Seriously, for a moment there, i didn't want to comeback to Holland. I didn't want to come back to the cold and lonely life. There are too many problems in India and its too easy to get frustrated. Comparatively, life in Holland is so easy. The light bulb is always glowing, the tap is always filled with water, the air is fresh, supermarkets are filled with food and I have a great job. But I have a big and close knit family and leaving them behind every time just breaks my heart. My family provides me an emotional security which is, i guess, far more important then social security of Holland. Anyways, i am here in Holland for the moment. Lets see for how long i stay.
I will leave you, my dear readers, with a pic from one of the taxi's I took in India. This taxi had a freaking Van Persie jersey hanging in front. As if life was giving me signals that i am going to stay in Holland for the moment.
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| Van Persie in India! |
Well, that's all for the moment. Life is back to its regular grind.
Cheers,
Karan
