Mosquito mistletoe

The best resolution to any problem is to address the root cause. Bangalore airport authorities seemed to have found the root cause : humans. Mosquitoes feed and sustain on humans and the best way to avoid that would be to eliminate the humans.

A thin smoke seeped into the check-in area and I had to ask my ex-colleague Sankar if he had forgotten to stub out his cigarette and caused a minor conflagration outside. Minutes later, as we headed for boarding the buses to take us to the aircraft, the smoke was so thick that we couldn't see beyond 3 feet and I had serious doubts about the visibility for take-off.

If you think that boarding the aeroplane would have solved the problem, you are mistaken. Inside the aircraft came the guy with a spray can. I believe that this would have been the airlines' plan to ensure that no mosquitoes travel without a ticket.

Throne to be thrown?

I have these mini-conspiracy theories why some of these lowly things happen. For example, when someone wears shoes more often than I think is necessary, I believe that person is ashamed of his/her feet.

Likewise, unusual about the participant chairs at The Royal Ballroom at The Leela Palace in Bangalore was the fact that they were all covered with white sheets. Why would they do that?

Unless they have something to hide. It is likely that all chairs are not uniform and to bring in that uniformity they have draped them in white. Or, they have been pilfered from somewhere and the origin needs to be hidden.

Or, as a matter of precaution, to limit the damage caused by white-collared, genteel seminar attendees who might go on the rampage and rip the seats if they don't like the seminars the way our dissatisfied movie fans rip the theatre seats when their hero dies, the powers-that-be at Leela might have decided to cover the soft, velveteen chairs (we assume they are soft and velveteen, no one has seen them) with thick white sheets.

Also, the soft fabric of the thick sheets makes it difficult for the chairs to be grabbed and lifted in case the seminar attendees want to throw the chairs at each other when they come to blows while discussing the merits of non-violence.

Grand Ashok - F & H

Anybody who has stopped by at the Grand Ashok F&H Café inside the domestic airport in Bangalore would have had a few doubts:

• Why does it exist?
• Can't they get someone to clean the area in front of the café & make it welcoming?
• Why do you have a nattily-dressed, irritated-looking, do-nothing guy at the stall when you have an average Ramu doing all the work?
• Can't they teach Mr. Irritated to take some of the other guy's workload at peak times, rather than just handing out tissues to the female customers?
• Finally, what does F& H stand for - Filthy & Hygiene-free?

Grand Shock from Grand Ashok.