Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Note: this post is entirely off-topic, stay tuned for a relevant post!

Patna, Saturday 22nd March - Whenever I travel long distances, especially when I arrive in the middle of the night, it always takes me a while to properly realize that I've arrived. In America the thing which really drove it in was (no kidding) seeing a 7-11 for the first time. In England it's the way that whenever I land in London, no matter what time of year, the temperature is ten degrees Celsius with light ain. In India it was Holi, the festival of colours.

The streets of New Delhi were surprisingly deserted. Nothing except for a few dhabas (small road-side restaurants) was open. Most people who were out were celebrating - and some celebration it was too! Walking down the street was a hazardous affair: water balloons or coloured powder came from every direction; bucketfuls of water (sometimes clear, sometimes dyed) came tumbling down from the roofs. A few people wore traditional white kurtas, most were in T-shirts and jeans, but all were stained with irregular blotches of bright pink, orange, green and so forth.

Motorcyclists and cars weren't exempt, on the contrary people gathered on rooftops to hurl down buckets of water when they drove past. They gave as good
as they got though: I saw one biker scream past with his pillion rider shouting 'Holi hai!' and throwing fistfuls of powder at hapless pedestrians. And right alongside the neatly conical piles of brightly-coloured powder for sale by the roadside were pump-action water guns made of just-as-brightly-coloured plastic, like you can buy the world over.

I managed to stay out of the way of most of the festivities, not having brought enough clothes to risk it and feeling that turning in Patna with Holi-
stained jeans would be a tad unprofessional. There were a few people in business suits on the plane though who had evidently been caught - willingly or
not - in the crossfire.

I spent most of the plane journey asleep to try and stave off jet-lag. This was not quite such a foolproof idea as I'd thought, however. The plane stopped
in Ranchi, Jharkand on the way to Patna, and having had my boarding pass inspected I assumed all the formalities were over and fell back asleep. Through
some sort of divine intervention I woke up just in time to see someone carrying a bag that looked remarkably like mine out of the door. I got up to check, and
sure enough, my bag was missing.

I frantically ran to the front and breathlessly said, in a mixture of broken Hindi and English, "My bag's gone!" To which the exasperated flight attendant
responded, "Sir, there were several announcements. You should have identified your luggage." Luckily they got it back quickly enough that the other
passengers' amusement didn't turn to annoyance as the flight was delayed - in fact, we reached Patna 20 minutes early! Ironically, I hadn't checked my bag because I didn't want it to end up offloaded in the wrong place!