Samosa -> Idea -> Europe

I don’t like the idea cellular commercials except their tagline. “An Idea can change your life”. So true this quote is.

Now I got why Indians are considered so intelligent – if you disagree, let’s change the word with “good at work” – if you still disagree, sorry, you are not in that lot. The reason is – we’ve got Samosas.

Samosas – the precursor of almost all the arranged marriages in india. You get the samosa from the local sweet shop and oh, the girl made it with her beautiful hands. Way before Sheela and Munni were born, shalu was made famous by this charismatic entity called samosa. Our story – just like shalu’s - started with samosa. There was a challenge within my organization XXX(name not revealed on request of the CEOs :P ) in which you had to propose some innovative idea and the best amongst those would get a chance to fly to Germany for the finals which was to be decided on basis of multilevel elimination procedure. Sounds like the fake assurance given by a television manufacturer and spread by a hot actress. Who thought an idea can really change your life especially when Abhishek Bachchan claimed so.

It really did.

“Aah, it worked”.

First flight, that too international. AirHOsTesses.

An idea incubated while having samosas made its way to the finals and there we flew to Walldorf, germany. The sad and hectic part of getting a visa on a really short notice(which eventually shortened out 5 days trip by 2 days) is not discussed here to maintain the charm of the description :).

We had a connecting flight from Dubai. The airport smelled of crude oil and hard cash. The thing you find plenty on airport duty free shops is liquor. 

Germany was awesome. Clean as President’s place in our country would be (I hope). The short fences around the calm houses with garage and ample space for gardening suggested that you will not encounter personalities as we do here back at our home. Walldorf is quite a drive from Frankfurt airport. Cars at around 180 kmph and people respecting traffic rules. Shocking it was, for us at least. The office building was so gigantic that it had an ATM-look-alike machine to find the buildings. We reached frankfurt around 7:30 PM EST and the natural light was enough to put a thread in the smallest knitting needle. We reached walldorf around 10 PM and still one can put that thread. Bewildered were we.

Germans eat a lot. We had all our presentations after which we landed on the dinner table around 7:30 PM. We Indians are done with the dinner in about half to an hour for maximum. But they kept on eating till 10:30 when Indra – Our Indian god for the management of rains and thunders sent a few relieving showers and our dinner at the open restro came to an end.

Next day it was Heidelberg we moved on to. A castle, lake and some shops were all the place has got and is visited quite in numbers. Our search for the 1 Euro shop had just one search result “no match found”. Disheartened we got back to the hotel but were excited for the next day. The reason – France.

The whole Europe is run on trust. Nobody on metro stations to check for ticket. No checking while boarding an inter-country train. We went to paris on a bullet train. Wooo.

Paris – Just like delhi is. Unclean, unsafe, amalgamated, varied in culture, but so damn charming. You find such class in so very narrow streets. Paris is a liberal delhi. Planning is the difference these cities have. Paris is much more planned. The whole city is as symmetrical as they have made Connaught place now. Some attractions on our list were – Musee du Louvre – the home for Monalisa, Eiffel Tower.

I felt like Dan Brown standing in front of that crystal pyramid he explained so explicitly. I felt like a researcher who was looking for some clues – with the church’s and Christianity’s secrets concealed deep within him. I think I went too deep into it :).

There I was. And there was she. Just sitting before me with a glass protecting her from every evil eye or intention that might try to steal her just one more time. We tend to appreciate the things we don’t understand. Same is the case with Monalisa. Nobody understands, so do they appreciate. She got nothing special except a nice work from a genius artist to be so popular and enchanting. There were thousands of paintings and with much more effort and finesse. The point simply is – Leonardo Da Vinci himself quoted that it was his best work ever. We take your word – religiously.

Then it was Eiffel tower from the top of which the city looked so beautiful. Eiffel was the architect of the tower and hence named so. You find Indians virtually anywhere. I was standing in the long queue under the Eiffel tower. It was so cold that time. A man was selling Eiffel key chains and just like every salesman on this planet was repeating the same sentence over and again. He came saying "6 for a Euro" to every person. As he came close to me, he said "Ek Euro mein che le lo". I smiled, he gave me back that assuring smile which i will remember long. Finding an Indian abroad is like finding a friend in Indian Rail when the train is running late by 17 hours .

We got a chance to see the National Academy of Music - where the likes of Mozart, Beethoven had played. A street full of indian shops, right from south Indian saree to punjabi restaurants, you can find them all.

The climax could not have been more dramatic. We missed our return flight from Paris Airport. It was just a matter of minutes. 

Bus, train and now plane. I have missed them all :).