Travelogue by Sri Krishnan
Off late, One of the topics that keeps my mind occupied is "The philosophy of success" or to be more precise..."The psychology of expression of success".
Let me illustrate with my recent experience on the flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore.This flight raised many questions and answered a few at least.
As a certified INTJ on MBTI, normally I do not open the conversation with strangers. I enjoy the "live" inflight entertainment more.
So far I have oberved and classified the travellers in to a few major categories.
1. First time / less frequent fliers
You can easily identify this Type 1 either on the lounge or in the flight easily.
Typical signs to look for before boarding--
Three piece suit for the long flight as if in a hurry to the board meeting about to start in 15 minutes (If you watch carefully one can notice the label of the tailor like some Rao from MG Road )
Ill-fitting leather jacket and biting shoes (Bought the previous day in a 50 % discount sale)
Other paraphernalia like protruding thermals,gloves, mufflers, monkey caps in the month of June (Thanks to Eastern stores ads,there is a general belief among Bangalore public that it is snowing and bitter cold in the west throughout the year !)
Passport and boarding card tightly clutched on hand or inside seven layers of packaging in the hand baggage, ( Due to the generous advice from the veterans about pickpockets loitering around in
Frankfurt airport)
Once on the flight the scene gets more interesting -
- Jostling around to stuff the oversized hand baggage exactly above the allotted seat
- Collect all the newspapaers and magazines in a frenzy, glance through in a minute
- As soon as settled in the seat, peep through the window and enjoy the wonderful sight of baggages getting loaded
- Pressing all the buttons and calling the flight attendants inadvertantly
- Eagerly awaiting flight attendants who dole out tiny packet of nuts or fresh towels,like children waiting for Santa
- Trying various seat angles and sleeping positions, which will make Vatsyayana look like a novice.
- Arguing with the stubborn Lufthansa flight attendant that AVML was ordered
- Tasting every liquid that is offered in a sequnce like Champagne,Orange juice, Red wine and finally Tomato juice with salt within 30 minutes.
Type 2 : Grandparents on onsite assignment to the projects with critical "delivery"
These are much easy to locate.
Again typical signs :
-Hand luggage with additional "Manjal pai" or plastic cover ( could range from Saravana stores to Adayar ananda bhavan )
-Men in white ( Dhothi / old style pants + Bata Hawaii chappal + HMT watch + ...OR
-The ladies with 9 yard sarees or first time trousers + few more first time apparels ...
- Generally you will find them in the region between A and B terminals, in the neighborhood of Goethe cafe, sitting on the stone benches and eating Idlies or Thayir sadam.
Some of them appear sophisticated, who know the geography of the Frankfurt airport like the train in between terminals, location of telephone booths,the corner in the duty free shop where you get
Lindt chocolates,etc. They can navigate fast like well trained mice on the maze.These are the veterans who have seen successful project deliveries in their previous assignments
Type 3 : Now comes the more advanced species - the professionals.
Typically you can judge the hierachical level from watching their laptop screens ( Thanks to technology,the LCD screens are getting wider in size and viewing angles,It is easy to watch conveniently from neighbouring seats without much strain )
There are sub types within type 3.
3.1 : Young men furiously writing line after line of programs ( just out of college, new programmer, probably intelligent among the lot,the project is already in bad shape,customer has been told beta
version will be released in about 2 weeks time, on rescue mission)
3.2 : middle aged men / woman on a 163 slide ppt continuosly cutting pasting from 3 other ppts, and re arranging slides
( You guessed it right, middle level manager, with career aspirations )
3.3 : A face frozen in age, the glasses on the nose tip, eyes focussed at an imaginary point in space about 3 feet in distance at an elevation angle of 37 Degrees, a thin device with large screen
( which makes you wonder if it is an oversized mobilephone or miniaturized lap top ), the ppt much smaller in number of slides,lots of charts,but absolutely abstract and makes no sense : The so called senior management or top management.
If at all the type 3.3s talk, there will be ample subtext.
It could start with seemingly harmless statements like
"Nowadays, Bangalore flight is too crowded " ( I have been travelling since ages when Bangalore flight was empty)
" Today's young People are not diet conscious" ( "why are you hogging as if you starved for past one week ?)
Watch out for "nowadays", "today", etc which point out that this species does not belong to the present but to the previous 'yuga' when men of virtue lived.
Type 4 : Careful readers would have observed that the categories discussed so far are somehow IT or IT 'related' travelers . there are a whole lot of organisms, out side the IT world.
These come in a wide variety of shape, size, colour,moods and attitudes.That makes my travels really interesting.
A few samples..
An old man who claimed that he can get a private appointment with saibaba the next day ( He became more pushy to fix an appointment after making sure that I am not very keen )
A man with whom I fought for a seat - unfortunately my family name (which is my fathers name as expanded initials)happens to be similar to his name created a confusion in seats allocatted. He wanted
priority because he is Rajnikanth's personal assistant and he is accompanying Rajnikanth's daughter. I asked him who is Rajnikanth,I have heard this name somewhere..
Let me come to the main course of the story..
On the fateful day of Dec 15th, 2007, on LH 754 to Bangalore I met this old man.
A little short than normal Indian height,mostly bald head with few grey hairs,cool looking eyes behind silver rims,,perfectly fitting over coat, expensive white sports shoes...
Profusely thanking the tall flight attendant for helping with his baggage, he settled quite efficiently next to me.
His fine accent made me search matching patterns deep in to audio regions of my brain.A little of British , no sounds like US , is it mutation of mid west ?..
I was trying to classify in to my 4 types. Defenitely not type 1 or 2. Either 3 or 4.. Ah ! There he pulls out his laptop.
Type 3 ?
Last year I had bad time with a type 3.3. An Indian, working with an American MNC,who had settled in the USA for about 20 years, just now returned to Bangalore..
You know I hated selling my BMW before coming back..
Oh ! I had a 3000 sq ft home in 2 acre land..
My daughter is absolutely sure of getting in to the Harvard B school..
I am still negotiating my salary in India, could you tell me how is the salary situation here ?
He did not stop till landing, in spite of the fact that I made my lack of interest and point of irritation clear in all possible verbal and body languages !
Having learnt my lessons, this time I made the opening move.
To be continued . . .