Traveller's diary

Travel brings out the child in almost each one of us, more in some than others. Count me in those "some". The excitement and the need to absorb and imbibe the character of the place, its people, its flavour, create great enthusiasm.

For me, it is the prelude to the journey which sets the wheels in motion. Anyone who has performed on the stage to a sizable audience, shall vouch for the fact that the preparations to a performance and the rehearsals, are a greater source of joy and thrill, as compared to the actual event.

The increasing degree of self preservation and attention to details, so as to avoid the "last minute rush and disappointments", have actually robbed the traveller of the most exciting part of the journey, i.e., the unpredictability and uncertainty giving rise to the unexpectedly beautiful moments.But the old adage applied everywhere to our convenience, better to be safe.........

Hence, the places were picked and chosen and the images already on the desktop backgrounds before we embarked on the recent travel to the far off Italian Riviera. The unraveling of the mystique and intrigue associated with the travel are mercifully still not robbed, by the camera.For knowledge and familiarity destroy the enigma and magic of the unknown and uncharted, and the travel becomes a non event.

The cameras with their still and video photography still, thankfully come a cropper in recreating the atmosphere, the smell, the sound, even the sights and the character of people and places.

So, the sterile and predictably unchanged, (hesitatingly accepting of the travellers, not an open arm welcome, for sure) drabness of Heathrow, as always, failed to surprise. Adherence to systems and protocols have damaged Britain's travel and this becomes more stark and glaring when one visits, say an Italy or an unobtrusive USA.

Having managed to get a fast track clearance to immigration, only meant a greater delay, for the minimalistic attitude towards employment of work force, saw to it that there were unmanned desks a plenty. The couple of desks dedicated to the favoured ones, were the ones which suffered the most.Surprisingly, it required a Brit to call for an officer to get the things moving, after a half an hour of impatient wait and the friends and family mocking at me, as if it was my fault, the ubiquitous queue, the hallmark of the country, started stirring to life.The common queue cleared out much faster than ours.So much for the fast track clearance!

I have been aware of the disparity in the number of personnel employed for a particular task in our country compared to the Western world.But the unflinching, mathematical, predictable regularity with which the Heathrow immigration system fails and reaches newer levels of inefficiency looks worse, every time one returns home at the inexplicable, unearthly wee hours of the morning, to find brilliantly efficient immigration blokes clearing out plane loads of weary souls in a jiffy, be it Mumbai or Delhi. Kudos to the system in India and a huge thumbs down to the under /non performing, non existent system at the Heathrow.

If the immigration counters have not been potent enough to annoy the daylights out of you, then welcome to the unenviable task of grabbing a trolley to the carousel for the non- arrival of your baggage for eternity. The Brits ensure that they are successful in teaching you the lessons in patience, instantly, on your arrival and familiarise you with the inefficiency bursting at its seam.The virtue of patience has been tutored to them not by any design, but by hugely inefficient systems, a default setting now, that are geared to create queues and delays. ( the motor ways and parking issues are another case in point) I am a firm believer that the Brits too want to jostle and grab and jump the signals and the queues,( you can almost hear the gritting of their teeth and the swear words laced with fumes of alcohol), but then there is no pot of promised gold at the end of the rainbow, for the system has outlived its time and surely there is very little to gain. Hence welcome to the school for education in patience through non-performance.

Contd...........1