waiting to pack

I wonder how many of you have seen the movie “Gandhi” .Waittttt - this is not the same Gandhi story – this is a new one –and it was not in the movie either. I just thought I would use the same beginning since I cannot think up new ones all the time.

The story is that Nehru , Patel and others were bustling around when Gandhi asked them what they were so busy doing. Nehru replied that they were busy organizing the next trip Gandhi was to take. Gandhi immediately retorted that he was a simple man traveling only third class by rail and staying in an ashram or a hut. Why would the trip of a poor man take so much organizing he wondered? “ohh Bapu “ replied Nehru “you have no idea how much money has to be spent to keep you poor” He alluded no doubt to the security , the paraphlenia the arrangements for the hangers on and the visitors and so on.

If Nehru was around now he would look at what we were doing and say” Neelesh if you really are so poor that you need to walk why don’t you just take a flight – it would be cheaper.” Actually he would be right- this walkathon is costing us so much it would be cheaper to take flight to Jaipur and hire a Mercedes or an Audi from there to Ajmer and follow the same route back - maybe with lunch at the Ram Bagh palace thrown in for effect.

Jesus!!! Who ever could think so much money would be involved. Hotel bookings for ourselves and the support teams, food for at least 10 people every day including the driver, the cost of the fuel, medicines of all types, the new shoes and the food together are costing us a bomb. Two or three walks like this and it will actually be cheaper to shift the temple to Delhi. Spending hard earned money in a recession on torturing oneself should actually be classified as the ultimate in self flagellation!!!!! Wonder if the Guinness book has a category on that!!!!

And the food- oh God !! How much food we are carrying has to be seen to be believed. We have biscuits, chocolates, corn flakes , muesli , all forms of nuts ( nuts carrying nuts – look at the irony) energy bars , oats, tea coffee making stuff, butter , jam, jelly. Take a look at my dining table – I don’t think it has had so much food set up on it over the last year in totality. Food is piled over the dining table, it is piled over the center table and people are still pouring it into our house.
Just today Anil and Manju came over with some energy bars- and threw them over the main gate since we were not at home. We had incidentally gone to another friend Sangeeta’s place to pick up the 2 kg of marathi chiwda and an equal amount of ladoos she has made for us and yet Sarry is still going on and on about what to serve us for breakfast every day. Last night me and Mangesh had a real loud fight with Swati and Sarita because they did not know what to feed us for breakfast!!!

And then there are the medicines- medicines for coughs. Medicines for colds, medicines for allergies, medicines for blood pressure, sprays for sprains, creams for skin rashes and yes - two cans of pepper spray.


For the uninitiated this sprays pepper (how clearly I explain) onto any attackers out to trouble us. This is generally kept by women in their purses to ward off eve teasers. We were the cause of much ribbing on this item of purchase yesterday evening when friend who had come over wanted to know why I and Mangesh wanted pepper spray. Were we afraid strange women might tease us and run away,? Were we venturing into Adam teasing territory? Did we really think we were sexy enough for some women to tease us? Were we often teasd by strange women? in hindi it sounds better “kya tumhe tumahree izzat loote jane ka dar hai?” (are you afraid you will be raped ? virtually translates at that) It was finally concluded that we were carrying the pepper spray so that enroute if any women showed the slightest possibility of molesting us – we could threaten to spray them with pepper- unless they agreed to complete the molestation. A weapon to ensure no women ran away before molesting us was the use assigned to these two bottles.

Now if we can get all of this stuff into the bags that we own and we can get all the bags into the car that we own – leaving some space for a driver to sit- we leave house today at 4-00 pm .Let the drums rollllllll .