Like my dad, I am a total gadget-head.  This becomes a liability when traveling in areas where toys are not easily replaced. 

Before I left for my Panchgani trip on Saturday morning, I opened my Swiss-Army brand flight bag ($49 at Target) to retrieve the beloved Leatherman multi-tool that I’d brought along just in case – again, there’s the ex-Boy Scout in me.  I had put in with my toiletries in the bag that I checked, and “secured” the whole bag with a TSA-approved lock – approved only because every single airport in the world has keys to open it.  Of course, my Leatherman was gone, most likely lifted by some no-good, born-insecure, rat soup-eatin’ baggage clerk either in the U.S. or here.  And I’m sure it wasn’t because they thought I was going to wreak some kind of havoc with a pair of pliers between Chhatripatri Shivaji Airport’s baggage claim and my cab. 

To put things in perspective, my luck could be worse: Bollywood (or as he prefers it, the Hindi film industry) titan Amitabh Bachchan, who is a national icon in India, seems to be getting the bum’s rush by airlines in the west on his current “Unforgettable” world tour.  Between the bumbling of British Airways and Air Canada, Big B is out half his baggage.  So I wonder if these ham-and-eggers in baggage claims realize that they are dealing with a guy who once caused a nation of nearly a billion to drop what they were doing and hold vigil while he recuperated from a near-fatal movie set accident.  Going from being all but revered in one context to being treated like Ravi Q. Public at the end of a 14-hour flight out of your hood must be a really odd sensation.   

In real news, Government of India is taking a trust vote today to see if the current United Progressive Alliance-led Lok Sabha (lower Parliament) will collapse in the wake of the left’s withdrawal of support over the Hyde Act nuclear deal.  Today Abhilash and I saw an anti-UPA billboard near office, with dramatic color photographs of opposition leaders captioned “Best of Luck UPA!”. 

Personal opinion, totally uninformed by hard economic fact and shot through with 7th-grade idealism.  India’s focus should be on exploring renewable resources, as it should be in other parts of the power-hungry developing world.  Why create so much more poisonous waste in a region already beset with environmental challenges?  India has an opportunity to set an example for the rest of us in the “developed” world, both in terms of alternative energy and nuclear non-proliferation.  The newspapers here suggest that China, too, now has a small nuclear arsenal, which one can surmise is part of the reason why India wants its own M.A.D. safeguard.  Could this be the beginning of a sort of three-sided cold war in the seat of the world’s new economic empire?  Such exciting times for cub eschatologists. 

In sports news, my first cricket at-bat ended in a collision with a retaining wall made of sharp, volcanic stone in Panchgani.  So, I’ll be sitting out the forthcoming IPL season with an elbow :)  Today I registered for the Mumbai Marathon (the main reason being that a portion of the fee benefits CRY), which will be held in January, 2009.  I don’t think I’ll be here for that, but I may be able to arrange for a stand-in for the half-marathon - she knows who she is :)