HUMOUR
No escape
INDU BALACHANDRAN
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What you just can't avoid when you treat yourself to a holiday.
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Illustration: Surendra
THERE are two mandatory procedures to go through that no tourist holidaying abroad can escape. One is emptying out your pockets as you pass through a security check, at the start of every trip. The other is emptying out your wallet as you pass through a Gift Shop, at the end of every sight-seeing halt.
They have it all so neatly planned out. No escape. After being completely mesmerised by looking at, say, a "Shakespeare Tree", which (in all probability) was nurtured by Shakespeare himself right here in the garden of the house where he was born, an awestruck bunch of tourists move out through a door marked "Exit" at the end of the guided tour.
But wait. The Exit door leads right into a Gift Shop!
A huge, smiling doorman with very firm arm muscles, very firmly tells you that you have to pass right through the store, on your way out to the road outside, where the tourist bus waits.
Cleverly placed
That's when your eye falls on several tiny replica versions of the (presumed) Shakespeare Tree. Oh my bard! How cute they look! Suddenly a group of 30 assorted international tourists are exclaiming in several languages and grabbing a tree each to take back home — conveniently available in small, medium and large.
This is also when you visualise a scene where four of your favourite office colleagues back home are overcome with ecstasy as you present them each with a unique Shakespeare Tree, which they have never ever heard of in their lives — but will surely place forever on top of their computers... so you tell the attentive sales lady, "Give me four more Shakespeare Trees please, individually wrapped!"
As the tourist bus guide allows you "a final extra five minutes", you have just enough time to grab the irresistible T-shirt which proudly says for you "I saw the Shakespeare Tree", and off you go.
And so it is with every meticulously planned guided tour. You may never realise it but you spend more time looking around the gift store attached than actually looking at the famous landmark or museum or cathedral or castle. So it may be wise to send your child abroad to do advanced studies in Gift Shop Salesmanship rather than to be an MBA in Wall Street, because they definitely make more money in gift shops. (By the way, I have the most exquisite metallic Bull that I picked up — in a souvenir shop of course — at the end of my walk down Wall Street in a guided tour of New York last year.)
And talking about bulls, there's also the Bear. I do of course mean the Teddy Bear — the world's greatest shopping invention, and the patron saint of storeowners everywhere. This versatile, cuddly fellow can be anything you want him to be. Just finished a tour of the Sherlock Holmes Museum? Ah! Time to pick up a Teddy wearing a Sherlock Holmes cap and holding a pipe. Just saw the Crown Jewels? Here's Teddy wearing a miniature crown! Loved all the stories you heard at the bloody Tower of London? How sweet! Look at Teddy wearing a Beefeater costume!
But after a special tour of stunning ball gowns once worn by Princess Diana herself, I rushed to the attached gift store to buy a Teddy wearing a miniature Diana gown. How sad, they were all sold out that day.
When everything else fails
But if all else fails, there's always the fridge magnet. Nobody will deny there's a great use for that — even as they remind people you love every single day as they open their refrigerators that you went to see the Big Ben or Scotland or Tipperrary. Priced just under a pound, and the cheapest thing you can buy abroad (cheaper even than a glass of water), it not only lets your pals know you went to places they've never gone to yet, it also holds up their beloved child's art on the fridge.
Right now, on my fridge, there's a cute little fridge magnet with the Loch Ness monster. (Although we never got to see that monster at all after travelling 150 miles to see it.) My adorable Nessie magnet is holding up a reminder that I have to pay my shocking credit card bill that arrived soon after my own arrival back in India.
Meanwhile I've decided that the next time I travel abroad to go sightseeing, I am going to look for a clever escape route over the castle walls, one that would take me directly right back into the tourist bus.
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