The Story of a Package

This is my recollection of some events that had to do with shipping a package from Hyderabad, India to Maryland, USA. In summary, the story is fairly boring in that a package was shipped from the origin and it reached its destination. However, the details make it very interesting.

A dance teacher ordered some costumes for a dance drama by her students. The performance was scheduled on January 9, 2010 in Maryland. She ordered 18 costumes from Hyderabad sometime in December. They were going to be ready around the last week of December. She was looking at options for getting them shipped.

My family happened to be in India (Pune) at the time. My wife and kids were scheduled to leave for their return to Maryland on January 3 from Mumbai. I was staying until the 11th. The dance teacher contacted us and requested them to carry the package from India to USA. We gladly agreed to do that. We told her that the package needed to reach my cousin’s residence in Thane (a suburb of Mumbai) by January 3 for them to be able to bring it. She instructed her folks in Hyderabad to have it shipped to my cousin’s residence around the 30th of December.

On the 2nd of January, we reached my cousin’s place. There was no sign of the package. Normally the courier service in India is pretty good and packages reach their destinations within two days even with normal delivery. Obviously something had gone wrong in this instance. The 3rd came and went and my family left as planned. Still no sign of the package!

On the 4th, the package finally arrived. It was basically a sack with the dresses stuffed in it, and the sack was slightly torn making it useless for further use. However, the dresses in there seemed fine. I had to pay local duty (taxes) to take possession of the package which I did. Now the question was – what to do with the package since I wasn’t going to make it back to the USA before the dance performance. I wrote an email to the dance teacher with that question.

On the 5th, she called in the morning. She said that she was trying to get the package shipped via UPS, but was having a very hard time making progress over the phone. I suspect that language was an issue, as she only spoke English and things work well if one can speak the local language (Marathi in this case). She also told us that the package was late because of something called a bund (shut down) in Hyderabad for almost two days. A bund is a highly political happening and the timing in this case was just awful.

My cousin and I swung into action. We found phone numbers for the main UPS location in Mumbai, and they directed us to a partner outfit in Thane. After a couple of phone calls to this outfit, we made contact and relayed our need to them. They said that they would be able to pick up the package but they needed an authorization from the main location in Mumbai. They also quoted a price for a 10KG package and said that the payment needed to be in cash.

After a few attempts and several emails and phone calls, both the dance teacher and I obtained authorizations from the main UPS location and communicated that to the local outfit. We were told that they would pick up the package sometime during the day. It is impossible to describe the details of all the emails and phone calls, but those two hours were very interesting.

The whole day went by, and there was no sign of anyone looking to pick up a package. In the mean time, we celebrated my sister-in-law’s birthday with a nice lunch at a fine restaurant. At about 7:30pm, two gentlemen wearing UPS uniforms showed up. Before coming over, they called and said that they also needed a photocopy of my cousin’s ID. Another one of my cousins had to rush to a local shop to get the copy.

The UPS guys had the 10KG box with them. We emptied the sack and looked at the box – it became obvious that packing that box with the 18 costumes in hand was going to be quite a challenge. I tried packing them as best as I could, but I could only pack about 15. Then my dad came up with an idea of sorting the different garments by size and packing them. We got about 17 of them in. Finally, we just stuffed the 18th one in somehow and told the UPS guys to close the box and pack it with tape. We literally had to manhandle some of those costumes to get them in. While packing, fortunately, we also discovered a couple of packets of South Indian spice mix which we promptly removed as those would have been problematic if detected downstream. I gave those to my cousin as her reward for helping.

The box would not close easily, but we convinced the guys to take it anyway. They mentioned all sorts of downstream issues that could come up, but we just told them to go ahead and call us if there were problems. Then I had to do all the paperwork since this would have to pass through customs. More duty had to be paid. The UPS guys also said that the box felt heavier than 10KG and that they would call us if that were the case as they would need to charge more.

The box was taken away, and the UPS guys never called back. I found out later that the contents being shipped were only 8½ KG. I informed the dance teacher that the box was gone, and hopefully on its way to her.

Two days later, she informed me the box made its way to her safely and the dance drama was a success. It all worked out just fine in the end but the 5th of January pretty much became the story of the package for me. There were several challenges, but it all worked out fine in the end.

Carrying the weight

The FIFA World Cup 2010 concluded earlier this month with Spain beating Netherlands for the title in a rather unexpected finish to the tournament. The tournament had some great games, some great team play, great individual efforts by players, some good officiating, and some very poor officiating.

I am sure that it must be rather impossible for the Brazilian team (which was considered the hot favorite) to erase the bad memories of their loss to the Netherlands. The stakes are very high and carrying the weight of an entire country must be so difficult. But the one person I feel the most for Ghana’s striker Asamoah Gyan. With a semifinal berth at stake, he had the golden opportunity to take Ghana where they had never gone before. Not only was all of Ghana, but the entire continent of Africa was watching intently as Ghana was the lone remaining African team in the competition. Ghana was awarded a penalty kick against Uruguay in what would have almost certainly been the last play of the game. Gyan kicked hard but right into the crossbar. The rest is history as Uruguay went on to win the game in a penalty shootout.

I can’t even begin to imagine how Gyan must have felt then and feels now. Talk about carrying the weight of an entire continent on his shoulders. One always hears that these star players make too much money and that they don’t deserve much sympathy. Well, I don’t know how much money Gyan makes but to live with something like this for the rest of his life – I don’t care how tough one is, this is just too difficult. I can only hope that Gyan gets another chance to erase these bad memories and do something really special. I really feel for him.