My infrequent trips to India never fail to provide food for thought. This time it was the Air India direct flight which I preferred to other options I had. The flight attendants wore an outfit that was a cross between pants or skirts and a sari. While everyone wore the strange outfit the best it could be worn, the fact of its existence says a lot about India. We want to hang on to tradition while running full-speed in the opposite direction with odd and unpredictable results. To that end there is an arranged marriage followed by a surprise engagement complete with a professional photographer and later a bachelorette party. It bothers no one that these things inherently do not belong together.
The ladies needed a variety to pins to hold this outfit together and what might have been the elegant pallu of the sari now looked like a pleated tail - oddly shaped and sized. Any number of tray tables were atleast partly broken and one was held together by duct-tape. The elderly woman who sat in the seat next to mine, reapplied the tape every-time it fell apart. She treated it as a job she had to do for the greater good of the great nation. She did not look once annoyed, irritated or disappointed at her predicament. Just an activity she needed to keep busy on a very long flight.
The flight attendants spent time chit-chatting with her, one brought out a pair of large tweezers to help fix the broken tray-table but ofcourse that did not work. It was unclear why the old lady was assigned such a job. But this all speaks to level of tenacity of our people and our sky-high bar for tolerating things that are broken, disorganized and even irreparably broken. One of the movies I watched in-flight Eeb Ally Ooh! is exactly about this circular train of circumstances that a person cannot prevail over. It is a matter of adjustment and adaptation only. The flight was a good preparation for my arrival in a city I have not seen since my college days.
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