Phew! Team India
Indian skipper M S Dhoni is visibly disgusted with the long and tedious travelling schedule to New Zealand where Team India goes to play its last two matches of the Group Stage – against Ireland in Hamilton and Zimbabwe in Auckland – before returning to Australia for the quarter-finals. One wonders though why would the team be sent on a long winded flight from Perth, hopping into Melbourne, going to Auckland and then driving down to Hamilton, reaching final destination past midnight! All this when there is a direct flight from Perth to Auckland! “We have a fantastic journey from here. We go to Melbourne. From Melbourne we go to Auckland. From Auckland we drive to Hamilton, and we reach at midnight. I don’t know what time we leave, so we have perfect journey, should do for us that will keep us busy. That will give us less time to think about cricket. But that’s something we have to deal with,” he said. Anger, sarcasm and resignation – all in one for the skipper here.
Windows 2015
Reaching New Zealand may be an unsettling route but once there, it is picture perfect and all this change of face starts the moment you come aboard Air New Zealand. Their planes are smarter than any other airline, in the economy section too. There is more leg space, seats are broader and the windows are, well, smart. No turning up the shades on take-off. That’s not a request the crew needs to make as the option of pulling down does not exist. Just a button on your seat – to be pressed twice and the windows turn shaded – turquoise blue if you please! No pressing the light for the stewardess. Just send her an email that you need water, wine or snack. She’s there with it! Airlines in India are you listening pleaseIJ
Hobbit safety mid-air
And while on in-flight innovations, this one is something that our Civil Aviation ministry needs to adapt. The on-flight air safety demo related monotonously before every flight is not for the Kiwis. They’ve given their drill a Hobbit overhaul and made passengers look up and actually see it. The drill starts with the indigenous Maori girl telling you how beautiful and safe it is to be in New Zealand – standing atop a cliff with the deep blue lake underneath. Then come the Hobbits with their fun and frolic leading you through safety belts, life jackets and the rest of it all. It’s both hilarious and interesting what with the passengers being transported off the plane and into Middle Earth, where Sylvester McCoy, Elijah Wood and Peter Jackson deliver tips on how to survive a mid-air disaster. The orc wears an oxygen, Gandalf demonstrates his preferred brace position and Peter Jackson himself comes into the picture. In India, the only innovation done thus far is Vijay Mallya introducing a Bollywood item girl to go through the drill for the passengers. That’s about it! India needs to have some fun with regulations and learn from the Kiwis.
Oh Christchurch!
While in Christchurch if you happen to take a day-long ticket for a city tour, it will depress you. After the massive earthquake, the city is still in the pull down mode with many of the “unstable buildings” still to be razed. The razing of 150 buildings is due to be completed this year-end and then begins the phase of rebuilding which is a 34 billion dollar, 10-year reconstruction plan! Meanwhile, unsuspecting tourists are taken through the rubble and the graveyards, the fallen houses, the dismantled cliffs, the memorial grounds, the ruined church and all things that unsettle you. But as you mourn with them their dead and their destroyed, you also applaud their resilience and their organised response to the quake. They have remade malls out of container boxes and they have replaced the Victorian churches with makeshift asbestos structures with stained glasses. By the way, between 2011 and 2013, the city went through 14,000 aftershocks, lost more than half its population to migration and has spent millions bringing down a heritage. “The people who went away did not get scared of the earth shiver so much as they broke down to the fact that the aftershocks just came coming and coming for years,” said a resident who is still there and is now part of a construction job boom in a city that was known for its picturesque buildings and old-world roofs over them.