If not for Newtonian limitations of space and time and an airline upper limit on the weight of the baggage, Desis would love to haul their entire garages on India trips.
The airline allowance of 25 or 32kg have forced desis come up with strategies to make up for the limit.
One popular strategy is to keep a tab on India trips of co-workers, friends and not-so-close-friends. It is not uncommon to request familiar-stranger desi co-workers to piggyback their stuff to India. Persistent requests should not be interpreted as harassment.
Victims of the above strategies have evolved successful counter strategies. They create fictional cousins and friends who are likely to give 10kgs in the last minute at the airport and hence cannot accomodate your requests.
A typical desi family travels with six big bags (and only one luggage trolley in the airport). Desis carry everything that is on-sale for Thanksgiving to Sumeet mixies to spices to Indian snacks and sweets and everything else people request them to piggyback.
It is common for desis to receive multiple requests for the same item. Tamils solve this commons problem by carrying rasam or sambar powder in bulk (like 10kgs).
LOL….FLIPS totally do the same thing!
Dude..I know a person who carried few pounds of Indian Reporter (free newsweekly in US) back home to sell them off because he still had few lbs baggage allowance left…fill me in:))
when u going to india? ping me.. i need to send a few things
ROFL.
The puppy-eyed groveling is pretty typical also. The authorities still fall for it. GOD bless that good faith.
[...] throw away culture proves to be a formidable obstacle in a desi’s reuse endeavours, there is always room for those broken shoes on trips back [...]