After the last couple blogs, you must be saying to yourself
“hum, that doesn’t sound so bad.
What is all the fuss about?”
Right? Well, life always
looks good out of the window of a 5 star hotel. It is the arrival back to reality that tends to hurt…
And my arrival back into Delhi life was not exception.
March was shaping up to be a busy month. We had already traveled to Udaipur, but I still had trips to Indonesia and Bangladesh to get through before the end of the month. Indonesia was not an issue, as Singapore airlines bars no expense to ensure that your life is splendid for the time you are with them and generally speaking, Jakarta is a pretty cosmopolitan city. Bangladesh, though, always proves to be interesting.
I had been to Bangladesh for the first time in January and, to be honest, it is not unlike India. I mean, at the end of the day, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians are all basically cur from the same cloth. It was only the haste to get out of the region (which I now completely understand), that the British divided them up. Interestingly, though, I found Dhaka to be more tolerable than Delhi. Traffic is less aggressive, it is actually cleaner and, since it is a Muslim country, rather than Hindu, they serve beef! The problem with Bangladesh is that you can only fly an Indian airline, Jet Airways, to get there.
Indian Airlines are the most poorly run airlines in the world – and that is saying something considering the existence of Air Italia. Like most Indian run businesses, there is no real business model; no vision for the company and definitely no investment for the future. In India, companies are all about today's profit... while there are still profits to be had. Unfortunately, most of the Indian airlines now operate in a state of bankruptcy, including the national airline, Air India. How fitting!
Anyway, as always, while checking in, I specifically ask the desk if the flight is on time. “Absolutely, sir,” was the answer accompanied by the head bob that indicates anything from "yes" to “I will tell you anything you want to hear.” I then proceeded to the lounge where the screen tells me the flight is delayed. Ugh! In Delhi in the winter, delays are very common due to fog/smog/haze/blowing dust, but when they do not give an estimated boarding time, this indicates something far worse than weather. Eventually I meandered down to the gate and the gate agent tells me that there is no set time for departure, but I should take a seat and wait.
Now, nobody, especially me, is in any hurry to get to Bangladesh. More importantly, no one, particularly me, is wiling to sit and wait endless for the privilege of a second rate airline to shuttle me to Bangladesh. After about 2 minutes, I decide that enough was enough and that I would go home and catch tomorrows flight to Dhaka. I was all so simple in my head - I would have an agent rebook my flight, call the driver and after 30 minutes waiting for him, head home. Oh, how wrong I was. So, so wrong.
The one element of Indian life that crushes your soul faster than all others is the amount of non-value added bureaucracy and paperwork there is. It is incomprehensible. To be fair, most governments are run by idiots that would not last 10 minutes in the private sector. – would you hire Barney Frank or Joe Biden to run your company? But in India, they take incompetence and elevate it to the level of functioning morons. Worse yet, you don’t even have to be a professional bureaucrat to be a bureaucrat, you just have to be associated with one. Case in point at the highest levels - Sonia Gandhi (yes, of those Gandhis). Here you have a woman that just because of her last name, is the head of the ruling party. The best part is that she is not even born into the family, but married into it. To add insult to injury, she is not even Indian – she is Italian! So think about this, basically some random foreigner is running the ruling party of India simply because she married the right guy. At the lower levels, it works roughly the same way with generation after generation of incompetent Dillweeds holding coveted positions that allow them to suck the populous dry and line their pockets. To be honest, I have little issue with this, as it is the nature of public servants everywhere, but in most places public servants at least make a small effort to improve the life of those in their charge, if only marginally. In India, they do not even pay lip service to it. The narcissistic ethos by which the country lives eliminates any need to be apologetic. I saw a statistic the other day that said that if Indian government officials returned all the money that has been stolen and was currently sitting in Swiss bank accounts, Indians would not need to pay taxes for 50+ years. So, the result of this, is that the bureaucracy continues to expand to support the bureaucracy.
But I digress.
I find an agent sitting quietly at an empty gate and tell him what I want to do. He points me down a few gates to a gentleman also sitting around doing nothing. The gentleman then escorts me to another desk where I am handed off to a woman. She and I then walk back to the security check point where I am ask to sit. She than takes my passport and boarding card and disappears ... for 1.5 hours. Yes, for 90 minutes, I am left sitting in a chair next to the metal detectors watching the circus of airport security.
A man finally returns with a document that states I have voluntarily removed myself from the flight. There are three copies. I sign all three. We then proceed to a high counter at the end of the hall where we must find the customs exit form I filled out when I passed through customs. Yep, the actually form. The man from the airline and the man from customs dig through what must be thousands of forms until they find finally find it - another 45 minutes gone.
We then proceed to the other side of the hall and sit and wait outside an office. The is the office of the guy that will take the signed documents and the form, verify that they are corresponding and stamp the documents, form and passport. By the time he finishes his tea, chatting with his friends and reading the newspaper, we have waited another 30 minutes. Finally the documents are signed, my exit stamp voided and a special stamp that I "Have been removed from a flight" placed in my passport. That stamp, unbeknownst to me, will prove to be a serious pain in the ass during future flights.
We are then escorted into the main terminal where you check in for your flights. Now remember, in India to enter the airport, you must show your itinerary and passport to the crack security guard policing the entrance. To get out, it is much more difficult. I must show all the approved documents to two guards sitting inside the door at a card table, After they verify the documents, I must sign a log. Then, and only then, may you approach the exit door. But if you though that was it, you would be wrong. The outside guard, 5 feet away, cannot directly communicate with the guard sitting at the card table in the entry way, so I am now pig-ponged back and forth between the two until in an apoplectic fit, blow past the outside guard and make a run for the road and my waiting driver.
All in, it took over 4 hours to get from the gate to the road - a distance of roughly a football field. The flight to Bangladesh, just so you know, left at the 2 hour 45 minute mark.
The best part is that I got to go back the next day and do it all over again!
And my arrival back into Delhi life was not exception.
March was shaping up to be a busy month. We had already traveled to Udaipur, but I still had trips to Indonesia and Bangladesh to get through before the end of the month. Indonesia was not an issue, as Singapore airlines bars no expense to ensure that your life is splendid for the time you are with them and generally speaking, Jakarta is a pretty cosmopolitan city. Bangladesh, though, always proves to be interesting.
I had been to Bangladesh for the first time in January and, to be honest, it is not unlike India. I mean, at the end of the day, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians are all basically cur from the same cloth. It was only the haste to get out of the region (which I now completely understand), that the British divided them up. Interestingly, though, I found Dhaka to be more tolerable than Delhi. Traffic is less aggressive, it is actually cleaner and, since it is a Muslim country, rather than Hindu, they serve beef! The problem with Bangladesh is that you can only fly an Indian airline, Jet Airways, to get there.
Indian Airlines are the most poorly run airlines in the world – and that is saying something considering the existence of Air Italia. Like most Indian run businesses, there is no real business model; no vision for the company and definitely no investment for the future. In India, companies are all about today's profit... while there are still profits to be had. Unfortunately, most of the Indian airlines now operate in a state of bankruptcy, including the national airline, Air India. How fitting!
Anyway, as always, while checking in, I specifically ask the desk if the flight is on time. “Absolutely, sir,” was the answer accompanied by the head bob that indicates anything from "yes" to “I will tell you anything you want to hear.” I then proceeded to the lounge where the screen tells me the flight is delayed. Ugh! In Delhi in the winter, delays are very common due to fog/smog/haze/blowing dust, but when they do not give an estimated boarding time, this indicates something far worse than weather. Eventually I meandered down to the gate and the gate agent tells me that there is no set time for departure, but I should take a seat and wait.
Now, nobody, especially me, is in any hurry to get to Bangladesh. More importantly, no one, particularly me, is wiling to sit and wait endless for the privilege of a second rate airline to shuttle me to Bangladesh. After about 2 minutes, I decide that enough was enough and that I would go home and catch tomorrows flight to Dhaka. I was all so simple in my head - I would have an agent rebook my flight, call the driver and after 30 minutes waiting for him, head home. Oh, how wrong I was. So, so wrong.
The one element of Indian life that crushes your soul faster than all others is the amount of non-value added bureaucracy and paperwork there is. It is incomprehensible. To be fair, most governments are run by idiots that would not last 10 minutes in the private sector. – would you hire Barney Frank or Joe Biden to run your company? But in India, they take incompetence and elevate it to the level of functioning morons. Worse yet, you don’t even have to be a professional bureaucrat to be a bureaucrat, you just have to be associated with one. Case in point at the highest levels - Sonia Gandhi (yes, of those Gandhis). Here you have a woman that just because of her last name, is the head of the ruling party. The best part is that she is not even born into the family, but married into it. To add insult to injury, she is not even Indian – she is Italian! So think about this, basically some random foreigner is running the ruling party of India simply because she married the right guy. At the lower levels, it works roughly the same way with generation after generation of incompetent Dillweeds holding coveted positions that allow them to suck the populous dry and line their pockets. To be honest, I have little issue with this, as it is the nature of public servants everywhere, but in most places public servants at least make a small effort to improve the life of those in their charge, if only marginally. In India, they do not even pay lip service to it. The narcissistic ethos by which the country lives eliminates any need to be apologetic. I saw a statistic the other day that said that if Indian government officials returned all the money that has been stolen and was currently sitting in Swiss bank accounts, Indians would not need to pay taxes for 50+ years. So, the result of this, is that the bureaucracy continues to expand to support the bureaucracy.
But I digress.
I find an agent sitting quietly at an empty gate and tell him what I want to do. He points me down a few gates to a gentleman also sitting around doing nothing. The gentleman then escorts me to another desk where I am handed off to a woman. She and I then walk back to the security check point where I am ask to sit. She than takes my passport and boarding card and disappears ... for 1.5 hours. Yes, for 90 minutes, I am left sitting in a chair next to the metal detectors watching the circus of airport security.
A man finally returns with a document that states I have voluntarily removed myself from the flight. There are three copies. I sign all three. We then proceed to a high counter at the end of the hall where we must find the customs exit form I filled out when I passed through customs. Yep, the actually form. The man from the airline and the man from customs dig through what must be thousands of forms until they find finally find it - another 45 minutes gone.
We then proceed to the other side of the hall and sit and wait outside an office. The is the office of the guy that will take the signed documents and the form, verify that they are corresponding and stamp the documents, form and passport. By the time he finishes his tea, chatting with his friends and reading the newspaper, we have waited another 30 minutes. Finally the documents are signed, my exit stamp voided and a special stamp that I "Have been removed from a flight" placed in my passport. That stamp, unbeknownst to me, will prove to be a serious pain in the ass during future flights.
We are then escorted into the main terminal where you check in for your flights. Now remember, in India to enter the airport, you must show your itinerary and passport to the crack security guard policing the entrance. To get out, it is much more difficult. I must show all the approved documents to two guards sitting inside the door at a card table, After they verify the documents, I must sign a log. Then, and only then, may you approach the exit door. But if you though that was it, you would be wrong. The outside guard, 5 feet away, cannot directly communicate with the guard sitting at the card table in the entry way, so I am now pig-ponged back and forth between the two until in an apoplectic fit, blow past the outside guard and make a run for the road and my waiting driver.
All in, it took over 4 hours to get from the gate to the road - a distance of roughly a football field. The flight to Bangladesh, just so you know, left at the 2 hour 45 minute mark.
The best part is that I got to go back the next day and do it all over again!
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