continental airlines thinks it's an okay idea for their employees to steal from your luggage

On a recent flight from Newark to Greenville, SC, I was forced to "gate-check" my carry-on bag. This carry-on bag was in my possession every moment from Madurai, India, all the way to Newark, NJ, USA. Once I reached the gate at Newark I was forced to temporarily part with this bag because they said it was too big to carry on the small airplane. I reluctantly parted with it on the jetway and felt really weird about leaving it there unattended along with everyone else's gate checked bags. But I foolishly trusted that it would be okay. I watched very nervously from inside the plane to make sure it made it onto the plane, but it was out of my possession for at least 20 minutes before we took off. This carry-on bag contained all my research materials from the past several months along with my brand new $400 digital camera. This camera contained hundreds of photos from my research. Whoever put my bag under the airplane went ahead and helped themselves to (read: STOLE) my digital camera. I've complained to Continental Airlines only to be told that they "do not cover electronic items." Basically their policy is that employees can steal whatever electronics they want. If someone stole my T-shirt, they "might" cover it. I tried explaining to them the convenience of this policy for the company, but they kept parroting the same lines back to me.

Actually, Continental Airlines employees can steal anything they want from your baggage because Continental Airlines will do nothing about it and they don't care. Wow. I should really consider a change of career! Because being a baggage handler for Continental Airlines would be a plum job. Stealing of expensive electronics is encouraged! No one will ever look into it. It really makes you feel safe, let me tell you. Baggage handlers can steal from your luggage and never be seen by anyone! Wonder if these lowlifes would accept money to put something INTO the gate-checked baggage? I mean, no one sees them when they steal!

I've spent a lot of years in India and I've (carelessly) lost many things, some valuable and some not so valuable. I cannot tell you how many times I have had things returned to me. Things like a video camera I left in the back of a rickshaw. I had this returned to me. I also lost a housekey inside a rickshaw and the driver went to all sorts of trouble to find me to give it back. Once I dropped a cheap pair of sunglasses in an auto and the driver drove all the way back to this function I was attending and searched until he found me so he could give them back. When my parents were visiting India we somehow left an entire piece of luggage in a restaurant and then boarded at 24 hour houseboat tour upriver from the town where we left the bag. Someone in the restaurant alerted the boat owner who called the boat drivers (we were in the middle of the Kerala backwaters) who informed us about the bag. By the time we got to our destination several kilometers upriver the next morning, the bag was there waiting for us. I've been lucky in that I have never had anything stolen from me in India. In fact, I've only had numerous items returned to me by people who make less money per month, or maybe per YEAR, than some of these items are worth. But the moment I make it back to American soil, my $400 digital camera is stolen from my luggage and the employers of these thieves couldn't give a damn less.

I am in the process of suing Continental Airlines in small claims court here in Greenville, SC. I will probably lose $80 (the fee for making a claim). But I've already lost priceless photos and a $400 camera so it might be worth the $80 for the satisfaction of suing these jerks.

Example of an electronic item that Continental Airlines
baggage handlers are permitted to "pilfer" from your luggage.
(from Continental Airlines employee handbook)

indecent proposal

Just like many American perceptions of Indians are often mediated by cinema, both Hollywood and Bollywood, Indian perceptions of Americans are largely mediated by American movies. In most cases, the absolute worst that Hollywood has to offer is what makes it over to India, both in cinemas and in DVD form. I think I have mentioned some of these films in previous blogs. Americans have concluded (falsely of course) from watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that Indians eat monkey brains; somehow or another many Indians have seen something in movie form which has convinced them that Americans eat snakes on a regular basis. In fact, I am asked if I eat snake soup just about as often as Americans ask me if Indians eat monkey brains. Which is to say, quite often. My point is that individuals from both cultures have ridiculous ideas about the other culture that are based almost entirely on Hollywood movies. As I have mentioned before, friends of mine in Madurai have variously concluded from films such as 300 that in "America" the sun doesn't shine and everything is sepia-toned; further, naked women wearing nothing but gold coins on their nipples grind against hunchbacks for fun. (See earlier post regarding this). But let me add again that this is no more ridiculous than concluding from Indiana Jones that Indians sacrifice human beings to Kali by ripping out their beating hearts and then celebrate by dining on almost-living monkey brains.

Most Indians are very familiar also with WWF (professional wrestling) and will usually chat me up about this, since these wrestlers are my countrymen after all. Another entertainment venue for getting to understand foreigners and their strange behaviors seems to be Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel, both of which regularly feature white people carrying backpacks and roaming various wildernesses with cameras and binoculars. A friend of mine has noted from these programs that you will regularly find white people roaming around the countryside using binoculars to stare at birds and other animals. I told her that I do this myself for fun. But from the perspective of my friends here, this sort of behavior seems a little bit insane. It would never occur to someone here to walk around with binoculars and look at birds close up for fun. People are, however, fascinated with these various nature programs and will watch them even if they don't understand English. Many grandmothers that I know seem to like these programs quite a bit, especially ones that feature underwater creatures. The grandma next door was particularly taken by a program on whale sharks.

A good friend of mine recently watched a number of American movies on DVD with her family. One of them was a (probably B movie) called "Turn Around." Some sort of horror movie. According to her review, it features a number of college girls who go into the wilderness for some sort of hiking and caving/mountain climbing adventure. My friend and her relations were shocked that "age-attend panna ponna" (girls who have reached puberty) would leave their parents and go roaming around the woods alone. She said they kept scolding them the whole time, "What sort of adolescent girl roams the woods alone?! Don't they have parents? Is this necessary?!!" Of course the girls end up getting slaughtered by some sort of man-eating ghosts, so I suppose that their trip wasn't such a good idea after all. My friend then recounted to me a scene in the movie in which a married woman inexplicably leaves her husband and baby on the shore and goes white-water rafting. This was also an unbelievable scene for them. The idea that a woman would go and board a plastic boat and forge into rushing currents just for fun seemed to be completely insane. I told her that I myself have been caving and whitewater rafting; she wasn't surprised because my friends have accepted that American girls, despite having reached puberty, not only leave their homes, but do so to engage in such crazy activities as roaming around pitch black caves.

Because Madurai people have come to understand that many Americans do indeed like to roam through jungles, seemingly without any purpose other than to take photographs, I wasn't quite sure how to interpret a recent interaction that took me by surprise. Just a few days ago I was chatting with a woman a few doors down when a man from inside a photo shop suddenly came out of his shop and approached me with a couple of photographs. (This is a man who has showed far too much interest in me in past weeks, and by too much interest I mean any shred of interest which results in unnecessary conversation with me -- a big "no-no" with any age-attend panna ponna such as myself.) These photographs were "nature" photographs he had taken up at Alagar Kovil. But these weren't just any nature photographs, they were extreme close-ups of FLIES HAVING SEX. I had no idea how to react to these photos. Are they obscene? What is this pervent implying? It was an interesting problem in that I am an American who is accustomed to seeing nature photography but who realizes that this is not a medium you often find in Madurai culture. Americans might take pictures of fly sex, but I don't think it occurs to most Madurai citizens to objectify such things. Therefore it is difficult to interpret a photo such as this in such a cultural context. He then asked me if I liked the photos and I said "yes they are nice" and handed them back to him immediately and avoided all eye contact from that point forward. He also showed them to Sumathi and she just looked at him and asked "WHY?" My sentiments exactly. Apparently my typical American response of "yeah they are nice" was the wrong thing to say because he interpreted my "liking" the photos as an indication that I liked him. And he then sent Sumathi over here a couple of nights ago to ask me if I wanted him to take me to the temple one day. NO THANK YOU. I reported the fly porn to the local ladies tonight and they went into an uproar. Apparently showing fly sex photos is considered inappropriate. What do u think?

Should this be considered pornography?

(female) cows do indeed have horns

Today I was walking through a (very) open dusty field usually populated by a number of bovines. There was a bull standing nearby that looked ominous. I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be scary if that bull charged at me?" I continued on my merry way and the bull wasn't interested, thankfully. But as I passed through the field I came upon a cow that was eating some trash. Apparently something in the trash pile stung this cow because as soon as I got nearby it started jumping up and down and then saw me and came running straight for me. I was pretty terrified. Every once in a while a cow will go nuts here and run through the streets; people will grab their children and run. When this cow came after me today I sort of froze. They say with bears you are supposed to freeze/play dead; I think this tactic may work with insane cows as well. I also started immediately praying and sending brain waves to the cow "I am a vegetarian! Please don't stampede me!" Apparently this worked, because as the very last second the cow veered off and ran off to another of her bovine friends and got her stirred up like a Mexican jumping bean. I got the heck out of there. Tonight Chellapandi confirmed that cows do stab people here, and not just during the infamous jallikattu! And those of you who are doubting that female cows have horns, believe it! They may not be as menacing as the bull's horns, but they have some horns! By the way is "female cow" redundant?

This is a selection of males and females;
you will note that they all have horns.