Page 30 - Masala Lite Issue 157 January 2024

30 MUSINGS OF AN AUNTY DOWN UNDER

When Overplanning Backfires

Dolly Koghar explores the futility of packing, unpacking, and repacking.

I’m meticulous about most even paid for extra weight, and yet it fell thatha to set the beard, and
things, and I’ve got lists short! I packed keeping in mind that the patka for covering his head.
for almost anything and common decency of helping children, I will not travel without a
everything, obviously pregnant, and aged people is now as hot water bag to pad my
including a very solid one extinct as the dodo, and that since back through the flight,
for travelling. This in turn we were travelling to a country with which the cabin crew readily
forks off into sub-lists for no hope of porters, the luggage comply with, thanks to the
different destinations and needed to be manageable white hair and a little
types of trips: whether it’s a between the two of us; one acting. Then there’s my
twosome or with family, nucleus already on more than a dozen made-to-order cushion to
or extended; whether it’s a trip to the pills a day, and the other almost bolster my tailbone, and the
beach, for religious purposes, or for fun; there. indispensable BACKJOY, to
whether it’s a trip to Asia, the West, or as in this support the spine for long
case, all the way Down Under, to my baby daughter in But can anyone tell me, how rides or when I sit writing
Melbourne, who’s been hounding us for years to visit. does one travel without the articles for you readers.
Finally, hubby dear and I took the plunge, sacrificing medications that’s been
the comforts of home and the maids, and decided increasing alongside the In summary, I’m
on a two-month trip to Australia. This long, so as to number of New Year’s sad to concede that
justify being cooped up in the plane cabin for nine countdowns, and enough either I’m getting
hours, and to get a fuller experience of our daughter’s to suffice for 60 days in a senile, or it’s an early
daily life, and more importantly to acquaint ourselves country, where not a single pill onset of Alzheimer’s or
with our two grandchildren and their adorable, will be sold without a prescription? Then there’s whatever fancy name the medical world
dewy-eyed, pink-nosed lab, Milo, in their natural the homeopathy for the sniffles and the burps, and wants to give the simple fact that I’m satthiya, passed
habitat. But the never-done-before, extended trip the Ayurvedic supplements which enable us to ignore 60; a clear indication that the poor brain and of
complicated the packing, made worse with the the screaming limbs and joints, and a few others for course the body as a whole, has long past its usage
repeated forewarnings of Melbourne’s infamous four- the digestive tract’s smooth journey, and yet some date and is chugging along on its last puff of energy.
seasons-in-one-day. more, for functions taken for granted thus far. In goes
the creams and ointments, not for beautification, but Subsequently, now that I am finally here in
The list required major adjustments, and though I to soothe and relief. Then there’s a retinue of shoes, Melbourne, I am having a hard time forgiving
sincerely tried to minimise the essentials, I stand not for style, ‘cause each one is uglier than the next, myself for the million faux pas I made, and this is
guilty as charged for being an overpacking Indian. but because my super-sensitive feet can’t repeat a despite all the packing, unpacking, and repacking
Or is it just me that can’t, though I wished I could, pair for more than a day. So, I toss in a pair each for of the bags till the very moment when Grab came
travel like the tourists inundating our Sukhumvit exercise-walking, shopping-walking, indoor-walking, to take us to the airport. I got it all wrong; first one
Soi 11 with nary but a backpack, or a coloured trolley and a decent one for an outing. Of course, I cannot being mistranslating the Aussie ‘summer,’ which in
obediently rolling alongside their owners? In fact, we ignore hubby dear’s serd paraphernalia, gel and Bangkokian lingo meant ‘frozen-solid!’