Trip to India - Entry 11 - Racial Profiling

Today, I was racially profiled. Instead of having my water bottles (three of them, I forgot about the two in my backpack) taken away, I was waved through by the very nice man with the gun at the security checkpoint. Just as an aside – the number of security guards with big scary guns is actually pretty alarming here.

We are now riding on Spice Airways instead of Jet Airways. Apparently, there was a pilot’s strike, which makes me happy that we’re not riding on the airline with the angry pilots. I am reminded again however, how completely antiseptic and smell-o-phobic we Americans are. The sheer volume of *scent* that one encounters nearly everywhere here in India can feel like a literal assault, so unused to it most of us are.

The stewardesses on this airline are young and pretty, which has been my experience everywhere in the world except the United States, where you have either a variety, or all veteran stewardesses. I was told in Statistics by Prof. Rex Toh that stewardesses are retired on Singapore Airlines when they reach the age of 25. Based on my experience with airlines in this part of the world, I can definitely see that in practice. I remember traveling back from Myanmar a few years ago, and knowing that I was on an American airline again on the arrival from Tokyo to Seattle when a flight attendant literally yelled at the passengers, saying that if they all didn’t immediately sit down, she was going to tell the pilot not to open the gate until they did. Very few of the passengers were actually ten years old – but this was clearly no matter to this veteran flight attendant.

Still, putting up with rudeness and a lack of real customer service is better than simply accepting a world in which sexist ageism is accepted as a matter of course.
It just rained – for five minutes, the heavens poured forth and the rain gods got into a spat. Then it stopped. Very, very odd.

And on that note – we take off for Mumbai.