You know, walking through the streets is not a big deal. Walking through a mall or go shopping is neither. But wait, let me start differently.  I am a rather restrained guy, I am not too much a fan of crowded places and I am rather the sitting lonely on the top of the mountain guy. I like landscape, lots of it, preferably without many people. But that’s my problem, not yours. Well, it’s rather a preference and not a problem. Long story short, I do not feel the urge to be always in the spotlight.  I prefer to shine in the background.

Now imagine me in a country like India. If you have been in India, you might know that the cities are busy, fast moving, flowing, loud and crowded. Not my favorite habitat. And now imagine me as a white tall guy walking through a mall in India. Exactly, I am kind of an attraction. Almost everybody is looking at me. It feels like walking in the spotlight. I even can feel the looks behind my back. Interesting experience. So this is what beautiful women feel all the time? Staring eyes. And that I am in average one head higher compared to the people around me doesn’t make it better.  But you get used to it and actually it is good to experience how darker people must feel in whiter countries.  So you walk on with a smile 🙂

Another funny thing is how to walk, or better where to walk. If you are coming from a right-hand traffic world, you have the natural tendency to walk at the right side of the path. This leads to a higher probability of collisions in a mall in a left-hand traffic country. Well, less collisions, rather irritations if everybody expects the other to step aside, or both step aside to the same side.  So what to do? Easy, adjusting, just switch and walk at the left side. Funny thing is, this doesn’t help you much in India. So much fun, by just walking around.

Then I have been in a movie.  There was a big cinema in that mall.  And a movie without popcorn is not a movie. So I went to the counter to get some. Two open counters, four guys behind them, running around in unstructured patterns. If you know India, you know there is not such a concept of a line. If there would be such a thing like a concept, it can be rather described as a cluster approach. Hence there are people coming from the side, pushing themselves in front of you.  This makes the project popcorn a bit more difficult, since the four guys behind the counter seem to be completely busy with themselves. So, the only way to make progress is to not show any gap where somebody could sneak in and to push myself. This works.

Now , there are different popcorn flavors. I got caramel-cheese popcorn. Repeat slowly: “caramel-cheese”. I didn’t even know that those two words are allowed within the same sentence! You can imagine the taste somewhere between awful sweet, salty and one week worn socks. Definitely an experience. But hey, never judge something you haven’t tried. And now I have earned the right to say “awful stuff”. But if you focus on the movie, your brain is able to ignore the taste, until you realize that your fingers stick together from all the caramel sugar, or the cheese, or whatever else has been in there.

And then the movie tried to convince me that smoking is a bad idea. Well, I agree, but why trying to convince me? I do not smoke. Then I found out that there is a law in India, that every time a cigarette is visible in a movie, they have to show you the subtitle “smoking kills”.  Since the movie was in English and had even English subtitles, which I haven’t seen before in any cinema, subtitles, the “smoking kills” was overlapping with the text subtitles. Felt a little like Netflix. But anyway, I was puzzled why they didn’t show “drinking kills” with every visible drink. Or “weapons kill” or “driving fast kills”. But all in all it was a nice experience, especially the comfortable seats, which could be adjusted to almost sleeping position. And know what, there has been a break and during the break a guy came through the rows and asked if I want to order something. But I was afraid to order another bucket of popcorn 😉