Yesterday I dedicated my post to the power of positive thinking. Today, pushed by a sad event that happened relatively close to Kolkata (Calcutta) a couple of days ago, I choose ‘the power of… white lying’ as topic of the day. Some hardliners, passionate lovers of truth, may say that a lie is always a lie, no matter if it is a small or big one, no matter if it is an innocent one or not, no matter if it is a ‘white’ one or not. But let’s be honest here… I’m willing to bet my whole Lonely Planet guidebooks collection (in other words, one of my fetishes) on that all of us, occasionally, resort to little ‘white’ lies, for various reasons, don’t we…
In my case, these last months, the main receivers of the… few, OK, not so few, eeehm, come to think of it… anything but few, OK, you got me, a whole BUNCH of white lies I needed to say, were my… poor parents. The thing is… they don’t just love me, more like… they live because I live, which may have to do with the fact that I am an only child (yep, Spoiled is one of my middle names, one of the first in the list, and with capital S). Anyhow, put yourself in my shoes and imagine what you would say to my parents if they asked you, the day before yesterday, “what was that we saw on the news about a train blast in India?” (more than ten people died in a bomb explosion in West Bengal). Let me answer myself… The ONLY thing you can do in such a case, is… yeah, I think THIS is the most appropriate word, BULLSHIT your parents. “The part of the country I am going to, has nothing to do with the place this bomb explosion happened. The part of the country I am going to is 100% safe. Nooooothing to worry about” (as if only a few months ago, much worse things didn’t happen in Mumbai…). Before that, I had to face questions like, “what kind of rooms are you going to stay at? What are you going to eat there? Don’t they only eat spicy food? You haven’t touched spicy food once in your life… Are their airplanes safe, or are they like those old Russian ones that fall every now and then (they know I am taking two internal flights)? What are their trains like? We hope they are not like those old ones we used to travel with to Germany back in the sixties… What if you get sick? What if you get robbed? How are you going to return home without money/tickets/passport?” and so on, so on, so on… Answers (feel free to… admire me): “since accommodation is so cheap in India, I will only stay at four star hotels. Noooothing to worry about. I have already made all the necessary bookings, great clean rooms will be waiting for me. I’ll be sleeping like a king… Food? I will only trust the hotels’ restaurants, where the hygiene standards are very high. The government has a body which inspects restaurants at hotels every now and then, and when they find a fault in the hygiene standards, they shut down not only the restaurant, but also the hotel. They are very-very strict… Noooothing to worry about. And not all their dishes are spicy… Airplanes? Super safe! For your information, they have earned awards for their safety… Trains? The new Thessaloniki-Athens intercity which is supposed to be top class, is crap if you compare it with modern Indian trains. They keep them spotlessly clean, and there are attendants, amazingly polite all of them, who take care of things in case you need something. All Indians speak perfect English, so communicating with them will be piece of cake. Noooothing to worry about. Sick? I have bought a great travel insurance, so if something happens to me, I will be taken to the best hospital and I will pay nothing for it. Robbed? The same travel insurance will cover me in case I get left with no money/tickets/passport. Everything has been taken care of. Noooothing to worry about…”
What’s true from all these? Well… not all Indian dishes are spicy. That’s true. And Air Deccan, the low-cost airline I’m flying with, twice, has a good safety record (hasn’t gotten any award of course, but a little exaggeration doesn’t hurt, if it makes your worrying parents less worried). Also, a good number of Indians are quite fluent in English, and I’m sure I will meet MANY locals who will be THAT fluent that I myself will sound like a beginner… Apart form these three, well… let me put it this way: don’t take any words of mine for granted…
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