Short-Stories

One weird aspect of life in the USA is not just the weird labor vs material costs but even how much the material costs vary from retailer to retailer. I have been to 50 countries now and have not seen this variance in any high-income, middle-income, or low-income country. It taxes your mental energy because even simple tasks can have a huge cost variance. My car has two battery-powered keys. One was dead, other one started giving low-battery notifications as well. Over the weekend, I learned about different ways to change the car battery with a 100X variation in costs. ...

After an amazing 5-day trip in Sri Lanka, we were to catch a late night Air India flight from Colombo to New Delhi. The flight was delayed to due an engine malfunction. First by an hour. Then another hour. And four-hours later, when the repair work finished, the flight pilot’s shift had already ended! An emergency flight was planned and it was supposed to arrive 20-hours later! Air India sent all the passengers to a complimentary all-inclusive stay in Taj Samundra. ...

There was no water fountain at the airport. Everyone was expected to buy the overpriced water bottles sold alongside the “Save Environment” banner. The bathrooms were slightly damp. The AC was only partially working. There wasn’t enough space to stand, let alone sit, in the boarding area. The boarding process was haphazard with little information being conveyed about why it was delayed. The restless passengers queued up in multiple lines that merge into each other at various points. Everyone was ready to leave escape. ...

I crawled through the 2 by 2 feet hole. I checked the map again. If the map is right then in about 30 ft, this passage should open into a big enough chamber for me to walk out of this aptly named Labyrinth cave. My elbows were bruised. So were my knees. And then a small stalactite scratched my forehead. That’s when time stopped for me. I decided to lie down. 100s of small thorny stones were pinching me. I was calm. I looked around. A video feed of this would have been claustrophobic for the viewers but I felt nothing. At least not till my forehead got scratched.

On my way from the Prague airport to the city of Prague, I sat on a bus next to a man wearing a suit and tie. “Here for business?”, I asked. “European Space Agency meeting”, he replied. Those were the days of Brexit, so, I had to ask, “What’s the language of ESA now?”.

While traveling in the streets of Cairo or Qahira/क़ाहिरा, I came across a group of Indians who didn’t look like tourists.

My flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco was overbooked. There was a generous voucher to take for a volunteer who was willing to take the next flight. The next flight was scheduled for the next day in the morning! I wondered why not take a bus through the California hinterlands instead. So, I volunteered. At the bus station’s waiting area, an Indian-looking man walked towards me. Before I could say something, he asked me in Hindi where I was from. “Haryana”, I replied, assuming he was an Indian. He didn’t recognize it. “That’s beyond west Punjab”, he asked further in Hindi. “Yes”, I replied. ...

I have traveled to many countries around the world. Some accept credit cards. Some only deal in cash. Some accept US Dollars. Some only accept local currency. Nowhere, however, I have dealt with a system as weird as Argentina. There are myriad exchange rates.

An American’s experience in Luxor made me write this. The story is long and vivid, but the core theme is how she and many other foreigners were duped into buying and then selling properties losing money in the process.

While Sitting at a local restaurant in Cairo, Egypt, I deliberated between Subia and Dom Palm to drink. Two adult women, the mother (in-law?) wearing a burqa and the daughter (in-law?) wearing an abaya sat in front of me. The third member of their party was a little girl, wearing a bright pink frock. She was small enough to be placed right on the table. Dom Palm, I decided, will be the “authentic” Egyptian taste for tonight.