AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

CRANK'S CORNER

        All through last week, I was in  Sri Lanka. I have more than 300 photographs to show for it. But don't ask me what all I saw there. I won't be able to tell you, as I was busy taking the aforementioned pictures. This is the travesty of being a tourist: you are forever looking to capture things in your camera that you fail to register anything in your mental aperture. On vacations, the vision is mostly voyeuristic through the viewfinder.

        Most tourists when they talk of their trips to be 'draining', they are by definition referring to the batteries on the various gizmos that they inevitably carry along. On an average, most tourists carry a still camera, a video one and a mobile phone. All these contraptions are apparently made with built-in sensors that make their batteries run dry or lose charge at a place where even a Malayalee would not set shop. All the gadgets that man has invented so far prefer to malfunction at such locations. I have checked out, you can quote me, this is a global rule. By the time a fresh battery or recharged one is found, the tourist himself is so impossibly drained that he or she would need another vacation (perhaps in office) to regroup. These days when people say that they are taking a vacation to recharge their batteries, trust me, they are not idiomatically speaking. The reality is literal. You know why Tenzing and Hillary had just a single picture to show for their efforts atop the Everest? The historical (and Himalayan) truth is that the camera batteries lost charge after one click. When tourists say that they covered eight places in five days, look out for what is said in parenthesis - in search of batteries, that is. I covered seven in six over the last week and the only good quality batteries that I eventually managed to find were confiscated by the conscientious sentry at the airport.

        Talking of airport security, it is understandable that they have to be doubly careful and cannot take chances in these days of global terrorism. So we sheepishly agree to throw batteries, pens and anything that has a pointed edge and a comfortable handle . But when the flight takes off and the food is served (I promise am not going to make yet another silly joke of the things on the menu), the airhostess supplies along what seems to be the annual arms quota of a fully paid-up member of al-Qaeda: Knives of various sizes and shapes, sharpened forks, toothpicks with edges more pointed and piercing than king Arthur's sword. These are good enough to bring an entire platoon down on its knees. No potential hijacker needs to worry. All his needs are sure to be taken care of by the thoughtful cabin crew, who serve him literally on a platter. But trust the modern security to take away the battery that is anyway going to conk out after hardly powering a zero-watt bulb.

        Security apart, the other fetish of the times is the irresistible urge to use the cell phones after every alternate breathing second no matter where it is. Most travellers on commercial flights are edgy and testy simply because they can't switch their mobiles on. Without a powered cell phone, most of them probably feel like locks-less Samsons. On overseas trips, tourists these days are forever running for, apart from batteries, re-charge cards or ad-hoc SIMs. On the day we landed in Sri Lanka, the entire country seemed to have gone to sleep. 'It is the day after the New Year, you see,' our guide said helpfully. No, I didn't see. If it happened to be the day after new year should a country close down almost totally? Any way, it didn't bother me much. But a couple of fellow travellers felt almost as if their oxygen supply had been cut as they couldn't find SIM cards to call back their homes in India. 'Why are you so tensed up? Take it easy,' I said, trying to cool things off. 'No, we have families to speak to,' she replied, sounding as if the rest of us were dropped by UFOs. This is the problem with many tourists — constantly thinking on tours about the family they had left behind, and upon return trying to remember the place they had gone to as an escape from the family.

        Little wonder even batteries run out of patience with such people.