Travel checklist!

There are some who live a jet set lifestyle, hopping from continent to continent. Their job needs them to be up and about, sleeping at Los Angeles and waking up at London!

Some of us are different. We stay rooted to one place, so much so, going from Chennai to Bengaluru is like going to the moon! Preparation for the trip starts with an elaborate checklist. The modern generation trivializes the entire process with absurd ideas- “Checklists are already available on the Internet.  Why do you need a fresh one?” The suggestion irritates you. You question, “Does your blessed Internet know that I have to carry my “pancha-paatram” for daily Sandhya Vandanam? Then?”

Preparing a checklist is like practicing mindfulness. You visualize each moment right from the time you wake up till you go to sleep. If you gloss over any step, you could be stranded without your reading glasses or worse, without dentures! It should cover every contingency- from a cloudburst at Bengaluru to a stomach-upset. Oversimplifications like “You can buy it in Bengaluru” are struck down with an iron hand.

Ideally, you want to strike off the checklist after placing the item in the suitcase. It is now that you hit a traveler’s block. If you pack the toothbrush right away, what will you do tomorrow morning? After all, the travel is still one week away! Evidently, your hands are tied till the day of the travel.

Meanwhile, your wife looks at the checklist and is alarmed. She strikes out items deemed unnecessary like jacket, thermal innerwear, and monkey cap. “We are not going to Alaska!” she argues. You hit back, “Do you know how freezing the train air conditioner is? And Bengaluru is not like your Chennai. It is frightfully cold!” She warns, “If you wear a monkey cap at Chennai station, the dogs on the platform will be after you!”

The checklist soon gets out of hand. There are scratched out items and overwritten items and items that can only be packed later. Some items are undecipherable because they were written in a Eureka moment of enlightenment, with an unsteady hand. A smaller checklist is prepared for the critical items alone- ticket, cellphone, and wallet. Another checklist is to match each item with its location in the suitcase. And yet another checklist referencing what each checklist broadly contains.

Totally exhausted, you sink back in your easy-chair and switch on the fan. You watch the checklist papers swirl in the air and scatter across the room. Suddenly, they appear completely irrelevant. You resolve to travel light and pack the most important checklist item- an uncluttered and uncomplicated mind. Everything else can be left behind!