April 01, 2007
The Flight In
It’s beautiful what you see from the plane as you land in Stockholm – beautiful because it’s unexpected. The flight from Vienna landed on a tarmac surrounded by pine forests – a nice change from the usual drab buildings you see when you land at an airport.
Standing at the baggage claim area, I noticed the yellow line around the ramp (didn’t know what else to call the moving surface you pick up your bags from) – I hadn’t seen this before at other countries I’ve been to like the USA and Dubai; it’s definitely not there in India – we’re too “chaos prone” to have to temper down and not rush to collect our bags .
That set me thinking about chaos and India – 2 words that I think go hand in hand. On the one hand, I think the fact that because we’re surrounded by chaos in India, we’re able to adapt so effectively wherever else we go. Whichever countries I’ve gone to, I’ve seen how we manage to adapt no matter how hard it is being away from the familiar: family…..friends…..festivals?
No matter how motivating the motivating factors can be (money?? A symbol of success?? “Abroad” tag to make oneself more eligible in the marriage market???), being in a new place with its own set of rules can be very very hard…….
Having said that, there’s the other side to being surrounded by chaos: I think when we go outside of India, because we don’t have clear rules always (or, rather, we don’t follow rules : -) ), we end up having to consciously ‘mellow down’ abroad: we need to be alert about signs we see around us….watch others to see how they follow rules….the yellow line at the airport that says “stand behind this line” really means standing behind it ..…not on the line, not just in front of it, not with one foot forward and one foot behind…but behind it.
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