- Joined
- Apr 17, 2009
- Messages
- 43,132
- Likes
- 23,835
So true to like!A SURPRISE IN THE LUGGAGE
- The things people are made to carry on long-distance travel
I am not at all surprised that a recent article by Mukul Kesavan in this newspaper has gone viral on the internet and in the email boxes of people of a certain age. As I read it, I could smell so strongly the heady bouquet of Cinthol soap that I rushed to find a cake of it among the Doves and Camays in the local kirana store.
Those of us that grew up in the India of the 1960s and 70s know exactly what that article is talking about when it accuses our generation of a deep-seated hankering for material things. Among the many vaguely heard of things that I recall desperately wishing I could have as a 15-year-old in small-town India, two stand out in particular — a 'permanent' or 'electric' pleated skirt and an Avon cream perfume called Timeless. Needless to say, my daughter, living in large-city post-reform India, recoils when I ask her to don either of these things.
How did one hear of or see these things before television appeared on the scene? From the lucky few who had a friend or close relative abroad who had been induced to bring (or send) the skirt or the perfume in his or another traveller's suitcase. And that is what this essay is about: the sending and getting of things from distances large and small and the culture that we developed of never allowing a piece of luggage to carry only the belongings of the owner of that luggage. So potent was this culture that to this day I cannot see a friend or relative depart without sending something through her and I cannot travel myself without weighing down my back with things being sent by friends and relatives to other friends and relatives.
Today, it may have to do with our globalized world that there is invariably someone at my place of origin who needs to send something to someone at my place of destination, whatever the direction of my travel. But perhaps it has nothing to do with globalization. When I began my travels, when I was a student in London in the 1970s for example, it was in fact because people were so cut off and stationary that I was told to make space in my suitcase for little trinkets to carry to brethren in the places I was flying to.
But even before London, there were the local and domestic carrying duties that seemed to always seek one out. As young girls, we were often artful couriers of tokens of love. Artful, because this was a time of strict parents, where even the telephone calls we could make to boys had to be made secretly and in groups and in the knowledge that interceding operators and blackmailing younger sisters were eavesdropping on every word. And still some of my friends managed to fall in love. And I then became the carrier of letters, photographs, scented handkerchiefs and (most of common of all, at a time in which long lustrous hair was our only allowed form of physical indulgence) locks of hair. Only once was I caught, by the brother of a girl who had packed her special twist of hair in a scented handkerchief, wanting to kill two birds with one stone. The boy this was intended for was of a different caste, community and religion, but luckily all that my friend got was a smack on her head and a threat to have her withdrawn from school if she did not stop such nonsense.
Another regretful sender was a man who asked a group of us to carry a tiffin-carrier of his son-in-law's favourite food on an overnight train journey. Of course we soon diverted our sleepy attentions to the tempting tiffin-carrier — on opening it, we were knocked delirious by the fragrance of a bright red crab curry. The poor son-in-law's wife had to scrub and clean an empty lunch box the next day.
Once I found a profession in which there was always an excuse to travel, the luggage supplements began in earnest, increasing in size but decreasing in romantic fervour. But sentimentality was always evoked. For the most part, the parcels were innocuous even if they were bulky — books, decorative knick-knacks, favourite foods, cosmetics, kitchen accessories. Or at least that is what one was told one was carrying. Before the tensions of international travel were multiplied by the possibility of intentional destruction of planes and life, I trustingly accepted these well wrapped parcels.
My faith in these descriptions of the contents of the boxes I was entrusted with may have been misplaced. I still think these were innocuous things I carried but now that I always carry only open items or else open and repack whatever packed goods I take, I know that what I am told is often not what a package actually contains and I have a sociological theory about the things they make me carry as well as a psychological theory about the way they make me agree to carry them.
The first theory is in two parts. The first part is that some people are congenital senders. They cannot have the slightest hint of another person's travel plans without frantically scouring their brains for names of friends, relations and acquaintances in that person's place of destination to whom they might send a surprise gift. Any long lost acquaintance is dredged up and the self-righteous conviction created that this person's day will be made by the appearance of a sudden present from someone she can barely remember.
The second part of my sociological theory states that people send things because they believe that from so many hundreds of miles away, it is the thought that counts, not the actual gift. Few of the items people ask me to carry are essential or even really wanted by the party at the other end. The book will never be read, the perfume will never be sprayed even if the perfume bottle is proudly displayed in a glass cupboard, that fancy egg slicer, ditto. Only the chocolate covered ginger candy and the honey roasted peanuts will be opened and consumed. But given that it is usually a large group that will share this gift, one peanut per capita is just not something worth the bother of buying and sending.
More interestingly, I have a theory that these senders of long distance presents can be divided into two groups according to their own theory about what moral and emotional argument will make me agree to increase the stoop in my back by carrying a heavier suitcase than I would like.
The first group rightly believes that I can be won by the casual, I-don't really-care if-you-do-or-don't-carry-my-gift argument. The members of this group dump their parcel on me with the assurance that it is something insignificant that they are asking me to do and something insignificant that they are asking me to carry, the implication being that I would be a very petty person indeed to therefore refuse to do them this insignificant favour. Most times I am swayed by this nonchalance and meekly accept the extra pounds.
And I realize only too late that this nonchalance is usually nothing but a pose. What I am being asked to carry turns out to be something that they would think several times before subjecting their own baggage to. Either it weighs a ton, or it is perishable and smelly, or it looks suspicious, or it is slightly illegal. The last was particularly the case in the pre-economic-liberalization days of yore when customs officials went through our luggage with a toothcomb looking for any contraband — contraband being generously defined to range from a souvenir pencil that glittered too brightly to anything that required electricity or batteries to operate. Which is why a friend was once asked to carry "a few parts for a food processor" from London to Bombay; at Bombay airport the customs official who opened his suitcase triumphantly reassembled these parts to create an entire food processor. Which he naturally confiscated.
The second group of persuasive senders uses the tactic of tugging at one's heartstrings. This is best explained with an example. I was recently asked to carry some new generation blood pressure medication for the father of my requester; apparently his hypertension was alarming and resistant to the old generic unpatented as well as the new patented and pirated medications on the Indian market. Obviously I like saving a life as much as the next person, so I agreed to do this good deed. But I also took my now usual precaution of opening the bulky package I was given to transport. And lo and behold: while the package contained a few strips of some ancient looking tablets which seemed to be for acidity rather than for hypertension, the real booty obviously was something completely different — a pair of those cute child's running shoes with lights in them that both glow as well as squeak when their wearer skips across a room. I think such shoes have a name, but I don't know it.
As I said, the shoes were quite cute. And telling me about the cute kid they were intended for would probably have been enough to make me carry them. I can only surmise that this subterfuge was resorted to by the sender's false estimation of me as a person too mean to be swayed by anything but a life and death matter.
The author is professor, department of Development Sociology, Cornell University
A surprise in the luggage
I am sure many of you have had this experience repeatedly, whether you were on the international or long distance domestic haul!
Maybe this story will give you a chance to laugh at yourself for being conned in hauling luggage for everyone else but yourself when you were moving long distance!!:thumb:
