While packing for a trip (although, when this comes out I’ll be ready to come back home), I realised that 2014 was the year I travelled the most. Just to brag, I started the year in Singapore, then went to Delhi, and towards the end of the year, to Ladakh and Goa. Till now, I hadn’t observed a common, underlying pattern to all my trips — my enduring hatred for packing.
To make my ‘trouble’ seem legitimate, I’m invoking an example from The Mahabharata , because there’s nothing like the epics to justify one’s trivial attempts to appear larger than life. So, just before Arjuna (as Brihannala) prepares to fight the Kauravas, who were raiding Virata’s cattle, he fumbles with the armour, letting Prince Uttara help him wear it. In my present situation, my packing skills are as bad as Brihannala's armour-wearing skills, only I’m not pretending at all (neither am I an avatar of Arjuna; clarifying, just in case some right-wing fanatics want definitive proof).
If that wasn’t enough, I had always packed at the last minute, to the point where I cut it too fine. Case in proof was my Ladakh trip, where I borrowed a much-needed winter coat the night before my flight. But that ‘trick’ helped me avoid overstuffing my suitcase, thanks to sheer panic and the lack of time. I’ve even tried the packing checklist — one look at the universal packing list website sent me into a tizzy and I conveniently pushed packing by a day. Then there was the time where I lazily threw everything into a bag. While my immediate problem was solved, I had no room for souvenirs, forcing me to buy another bag.
However, I think I’ve quite perfected the nagging art of packing by employing my most efficient method — simply asking someone else to pack.
