My Journey by Vande Bharat flight from Chicago to Mumbai

 

I traveled to Chicago on the 13^th March from Mumbai to be with my daughter. I was supposed to return on the 27^th April but couldn’t as all the international flights to India were canceled.

After waiting for 3 months and with no immediate possibility of normal flights resuming, I finally decided to return to Mumbai on August 23^rd.

Booking tickets wasn’t straightforward and there were other minutiae that we had to pay attention to. As this is a rapidly evolving situation, I couldn’t find adequate resources online. But here is my experience:

Process

1. Registered myself with the closest Indian Consulate. I was in Illinois, and hence I registered with the Indian Consulate in Chicago.
2. On successful registration, I received an email with a link for online booking of an Air India ticket on a Vande Bharat flight. Before online booking, I finalized my itinerary. I identified the Vande Bharat destination International Airport Mumbai that was closest to my final destination Pune and in the same state of Maharashtra. This is important because each state has a different Quarantine policy. Had I opted to take a domestic flight from Delhi to Pune, I would have had to quarantine in Delhi before proceeding to Pune. I went ahead and made my booking right after that.
3. After a little bit of research, I found out that there are two forms to fill prior to arriving at the airport for departure:
1. Mandatory -Air Suvidha Self Reporting Form by all International Arriving Passengers to India. https://www.newdelhiairport.in/airsuvidha/apho-registration 
2. Optional (but needed if you want to avoid the institutional quarantine) – this form should be filled in after you take the Covid 19 test (more below) https://www.newdelhiairport.in/airsuvidha/covid-19-exemption-international-passenger. 
4. To be exempted from institutional quarantine, I used a negative COVID-19 test as the exemption category. For this you have to get a RT-PCR COVID-19 test done not more than 96 hours before date and time of travel. Normally the test results are given within 24 to 48 hours. I took this test and once I got my results, filled in the form in 3b above. I received a confirmation of receipt of form via email immediately and within 24 hours I received another email confirming the exemption.
5. Before travel, I printed the following documents to take in my carry-on baggage.
1. Document that was sent along with the Self Reporting form submission confirmation email.
2. Document confirming the exemption acceptance based on negative COVID-19 results.
3. RT-PCR Test Report
6. Before travel I also downloaded the Aarogya Setu app on my phone.
7. At the airport before check-in, Air India checked if I had filled the Self Reporting Form.
8. Air India gave me a packet that contained a face shield, a surgical mask and several small sachets of Sanitizer. However, I recommend that you take your own mask, sanitizer bottle and tissues. Keep some disposable gloves with you for use in the toilet. They also had sanitizer in the galley and in the toilets.
9. Food packets were kept on my seat for the whole journey. Water was also provided. Additional bottles of water were available in the galley. I brought my own snacks, so didn’t really have any food provided by Air India.
10. I transited through Delhi in India, but my baggage was booked through to Mumbai, my final destination and that is where I cleared customs and immigration. But, keep in mind that my entire trip was booked on the same ticket, and that I did international transfer at Delhi Airport to the flight taking me to Mumbai.
1. For example, I flew from Chicago to Mumbai via Delhi. I had a layover of 3 hours in Delhi. The layover is in international transit area and one can go straight to the departure gates area where seating is available.
11. At my final destination airport Mumbai on deplaning I had kept all my printed documents readily available along with my boarding pass. They checked my self-reporting form and based on that they stamped my Boarding Pass and then there is a health check counter and seeing that I was well, they let me pass through to immigration. At immigration they also asked me to show them the Aarogya Setu App on my phone.
12. After I picked up my baggage and cleared customs, I was directed to a counter for my flight for the Quarantine related processing. Since, I had an exemption, they just noted down my details and let me go.

1.      I had a good flight and since I was prepared my journey was smooth. It is very important to keep one’s mask on throughout the journey and use sanitizer whenever one touched other surfaces.

A word of boredom caution: The entertainment system is not functional during these flights so please take care of your own entertainment needs.

My experience about a burglary in my house

After much planning, my husband and I set off on a long holiday to visit all our three children in Germany and USA in the third week of August. Our first stop was Germany where our elder daughter lives with her husband  and son. We were having a nice time with them especially our little grandson who is just 3 years old. We were to celebrate our grandson's 3rd birthday and then leave for Seattle around mid-Sept.

About 10 days into our holiday, I saw missed calls from my neighbor in Pune. To my shock and horror she was calling to inform me that our house had been broken into and robbed earlier in the afternoon that day. I just couldn't believe that such a thing could happen during the day in our neighborhood where we had been living for 29 years. Our neighbors didn't even realize that our house had been broken into till in the early evening they noticed that the doors were open and no one seemed to be inside. 

Still in disbelief, I made several calls to know more about what had happened and the state of the house. This was my first such experience. The foremost question in our minds was how did it happen with good locks, security iron door and a thick teak wooden door how did they manage to break in and that too during the day. We spoke to the police on the phone and they kept asking us what all we had lost. I kept asking questions on the phone whether this piece of jewelry was there and whether that was there etc etc. Fortunately I could remember most of what I had in the safe because a few years ago I had cataloged whatever jewelry I had. The whole evening was spent on phone with my maid, my cousin and the police trying to assess our loss. I decided to fly back to Pune for a few days to take care of the police and insurance related formalities and sort out the mess in the house.

I arrived home early in the morning on the 5th Sept. The first thing I did was to look at the front doors. The thieves did not break the lock on the steel door, they just cut a 1-2mm piece of the latch loop and twisted it and the bolt with the intact lock came off and the door was open and they twisted it back in place as in the photo. 

The steel door bolt

On the wooden door they made the Godrej latch lock look like a toy lock. They just cut around it and put pressure and bent the screws such that the lock fell off on the inside. From outside both the locks looked non tampered. I was aghast as they made it look so easy to break in. They were obviously well equipped.

The wooden door lock dangling

Broken wooden door latch and lock

The wooden door lock from inside

I entered my bedroom and was really dumbfounded to see the mess even though I had seen the photos. I couldn't even walk around as there were papers, check books, cards and empty boxes all over the place and my cupboard was lying on the floor on its back. They had opened my husband's cupboard and drawers and thrown all the papers around. The worst was what they did to my my steel cupboard. They had made it sleep on the floor and pried it open by bending the rods inside and bending the door. They had used chemical and other tools to remove from the hinges the heavy door of my safe locker. 

My steel cupboard

My steel cupboard from another angle

All the contents of my safe locker had been taken out and were strewn all over our bed. All the contents were examined and they took all the gold and precious stones jewelry that they found. They didn't bother with the silverware and silver and costume jewelry. There was some emergency cash that I had kept in a pouch which was also found and taken. They checked and threw all my papers, ids, bank check books  credit cards etc all over the place but didn't take any of them. They didn't touch any electronic gadgets like TVs, music system, desktop etc. They opened the cupboards in all the bedrooms. Another set of cupboards in which I had kept all my heavy silk sarees were also locked and they broke open the locks and cut off the door handles but didn't take anything as there was no jewelry. I lost about 6 lakhs worth of items.

Mind you all this they did in the afternoon in around an hour or two. There definitely must have been noise as my steel cupboard was very heavy but no one in the building paid attention to the noise if there was any. All the lights were on during the day but again no one paid attention to it as they probably rationalized it as negligence on the part of my maid. This was the work of professional thieves who were very efficient. 

I learnt some very valuable lessons from this unfortunate episode.

• What hurt the most was violation of our privacy. Strangers ransacked our house and went through our personal belongings without our permission.
• The loss of material things only hurt because of the sentimental value attached to the items like my mangalsutra, pair of ear rings gifted by my husband etc.
• My day to day wear jewelry was in the safe in my cupboard and not in the Bank vault because of my perception of value. What I wore occasionally or at weddings was perceived as valuable and in the vault. Even though my daily wear jewelry items were valuable in absolute terms as they were made of precious stones and gold but in my mind I wore them everyday.
• I had two new pieces of jewelry that I was planning to take with me on my travels but decided at the last moment that I would not take them. I left them in my cupboard safe even though there was a small voice telling me that I should take them to the vault early in the morning before leaving for Mumbai. If only I had listened to my inner voice. 
• We ourselves tell the whole world that we are going to be away from our house for a period of time. These are likely to be part of the burglars' information network.
• Newspaper agent
• Milk man
• Car cleaner and washer
• Maid
• Neighbors
• Dog kennel owner and workers
• Watchman 
• Cable TV
• Internet Service Provider etc.
• Any other regular service provider
• We believe that a heavy metallic security door, wooden door with multi-lever locks are safe and will keep intruders out. Actually it is very easy to break in with all this security. The burglars are well prepared with tools that make you appear like a fool for thinking your house was safe. 
• The perception of the thieves is that more the locks and doors the more valuable stuff is in the house.  Don't put a big lock on the outside door as that is a clear signal that you are out. 
• The house should give an impression of a house that is occupied and being lived in. Don't close all the windows and balcony doors. Let them be open. Keep something in the balconies that gives an impression that someone is there. Leave a light on in the house.
•  I had kept the Society money in a pouch that was under my dupattas on one of the shelves. They didn't find it and it was safe. Keep money under clothes and jewelry under your bed. Keep your valuables in unlikely places. They won't even look. Even the police told me this. Don't keep a safe as it is not really safe. We are expressing our fear of loss and robbery by putting in obvious security measures.
• Get a house insurance. Fortunately I had got a policy just two months before this happened.
• Catalog all your valuable possessions and maintain it. Keep all the bills of your jewelry purchases.  
• We all have to look after ourselves and our spaces and not expect others to do that. Security, police etc are deterrents and reduce the probability that there will be a violation. 
• Life is most precious and we must do our utmost to protect it. Material things if lost can always be replaced.

I think all of us need to think about our personal safety and the safety of our house with a different perspective in keeping with the realities of today. I thought I should share my experience and learning so that others could benefit from the same. 

Superstitions

I always wondered how superstitions were formed and where they originated from. As children we pick up superstitions from our parents, friends and people around us and blindly follow them without thinking. I always had a problem with abiding by superstitions especially if I didn't understand them. I always asked questions and wanted to know the rationale but most often I wouldn't get an answer and was told that I should just accept what was told.

Today early in the morning suddenly I got up from my sleep and I remembered an anecdote from my childhood and it was like a brain wave on the genesis of superstitions and how we subconsciously take them forward from one life to another.

The anecdote I remembered was about my brother and I in the swimming pool. My brother who is younger than me was about 4 years old and we were swimming and suddenly he was struggling and gasping for breath and the life guard had to jump in and pull him out. After that day he swam but he never wore his swimming trunks with the red color on the outside because when he almost drowned he was wearing his swimming trunks with the red color on the outside. Nobody told him to do so but on his own he made his own superstition even though he was only 4 years old. What struck me this morning about this anecdote was that obviously as children we subconsciously adhere to our belief  systems borrowed from our subconscious memories built over our various past lives. This I believe is a plausible explanation.

Thinking about various beliefs and superstitions made me realize that these are nothing but age old accepted patterns of behavior or nature of things. As times change and our living environment changes the nature of things and accepted norms of behavior should also change to adapt to the changing environment. However most often most people just follow beliefs, norms and superstitions blindly without understanding or questioning their rationale or relevance.

If by following a particular pattern something positive or good happened for a lot of people it becomes a good practice. If by following certain practices or doing certain things a lot of people had bad or negative experiences then those practices got labeled as bad or unlucky practices.

Hence each individual has a set of beliefs and superstitions that are borrowed from soul experiences that comes from the subconscious mind, another set that is dictated by the country, the state, the society, the religious group, the school, college, work place, friend circle and family he/she belongs to.

Each one of us is weighed down by this big collection of beliefs and superstitions and it is up to each one of us to reduce our burden of compliance and conformance by understanding and removing the beliefs and superstitions that are not relevant anymore. Spiritual maturity I think is what will really help an individual to reach a state of being without any burden and be really free.

What I learnt from my pet dog

Yesterday I had a very interesting experience. Since last 2 months my son's pet dog is living with us as my son has relocated to the US.

In the afternoon his car was delivered to us. I knew the car had come because our dog started barking in the way he does when someone from the family comes through the building gate. Then I started wondering how did the dog know the car without even seeing it. I understood that with us human beings we have unique vibrations and pets recognize us by those vibrations which become strong when we are within a close distance from them. Obviously something similar happened with the car. Even though the car is an inanimate object it has it's own vibration because it is made of matter. This vibration is unique. Dogs are sensitive to these vibrations and recognize objects and people using this sense.

I recall having read about this and accepting it but yet not completely believing in it. Later during one of the courses that I attended on spirituality the same concept was explained in a slightly different way. We were told that all earthly matter like stones and rocks had souls and that a soul is a vibrational entity. It is the soul residing in an inanimate body that probably gives it a unique vibrational identity.

Thanks to my experience with our pet and my son's car I got an experiential understanding of this concept. It was a profound experience.

It has been 6 years since I started this blog and I did not go past the first post. As they say better late than never.

Since a few years I have been thinking about our soul, death, life after death, past life and reincarnation and my beliefs about all this. Even though in India people generally believe in reincarnation as a lot has been written about it in our scriptures. Being of a scientific bent of mind I was not sure. I started asking myself several questions and made efforts to find answers. I have always wanted to know the genesis of things and the philosophy or rationale and logic behind any concept. I asked myself questions like:-

• How is it that I see places and people that look so real in my dreams, even though in reality I had never seen those places or met those people.
• I came across people who took instant like or dislike to people whom they didn't know anything about. How is this possible?
• Why is it that we talk to some strangers on the train or the aircraft as if we had known them before whereas others we don't even exchange a word with.
• Since a very young age of 4-5 I picked up needle work and handicraft very easily. In fact I just observed my mother's friends doing crochet, knitting, tatting etc and I would learn on my own and even help others.
• I felt the presence of my father at my cousin's wedding and couldn't believe how it could be possible but I just knew he was there. It could only have been his soul that was present that day My aunt was pregnant with this cousin when my father passed away.
• After analyzing several events in my life, I came to a realization that in some way I wanted those experiences and that they had a purpose to serve in my life.
• People came into my life to make me realize that I had to learn something and do this or that and also to make me recognize some facets of myself that I didn't even know existed.
• Two persons who are very close to me but not close to each other, but who are unrealistically similar in their thoughts, likes and dislikes and reactions to things.

All the above and many more questions, were bothering me and I wanted answers and understanding.  By chance I came across the concepts of existence of past life and reincarnation and intuitively was convinced that I would find most of the answers in past life regression. I came in touch with people who had exposure to these areas and had knowledge too. I actually went through past life regression sessions and found answers to some of my questions. So much so that I have now decided to learn more about past life regression therapy.

My first post

Heard so much about blogging and now I have actually joined the band wagon, thanks to my son Pratik an ardent blogger.

There is so much that I would like talk about or write about. So many experiences, so many interesting anecdotes to share. When there is time there is nobody to listen and other times there are people but they don't always have time or interest to listen. The good thing with a blog is, I can write when I have the time and people can read when they have the time.

The good thing is that I don't really read blogs and hence will not be influenced by any blogger's style. Of course, since my son started his blog I have read his blog on several occasions. Of course one has read the controversies over the blogs written by various celebrities from Bollywood.

I have thought about blogging a lot and why a person should start a blog and who should start a blog. In this my first post I would like to share my thoughts on this. I believe every person needs to give vent to his or her own creativity to be a satisfied and happy person. Creativity according to me is creating something using your own skills. What you create need not be original. For example, a person who likes painting may use a painting or a photograph as a basis for his/her painting. The result is the painter's own version made out of his or her perception. One normally creates using one's own inherent abilities to express oneself. We can use our voice, our hands and our whole body to create. What we assimilate and imbibe through our five senses we can express by creating something.

• A writer uses the written word
• A painter creates visual images on various surfaces with different kinds of material
• A film maker uses multimedia
• A singer emotes and expresses through the use of voice and sound
• An actor creates by bringing the written character to life
• A person who cooks creates culinary delights to titilate the senses of the consumer
• An artisan uses handicraft to express creativity and create various kinds of artifacts
• A musician creates pleasing harmonious sound using different kinds of instruments
• and so on and so forth

If one closely examines all the above listed creative pursuits one finds that there is a connection between creativity and the kind of person one is as per the NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) principles. I will expand on this observation in my next post.

Some of us make our living out of creating and some of us pass time with creating as a hobby. I am fortunate that I can give vent to my creativity both at work as well at home. Being the CTO of a Software Company we are always creating new software for our customers and that is extremely satisfying. At home, I have several hobbies like embroidery, lace making, knitting, painting and cooking that are all creative in nature. I am a person who thrives on expressing my creativity. I am always making something that is Work in progress. Instead of buying gifts for people I am close to I make things for them. To this list of creative pursuits that I have been doing since I was a child I have recently added about a year ago playing the piano and now today with this blog writing.

Writing these few words makes me feel very good. It is a welcome change from writing proposals and design documents.

Hello World!

Mom's first post!
: )
- Pratik