Ich Bin Ein Sri Lankan...

Well, here I'm back again from GOC after another short trip. And, I flew Sri Lankan for the first time. It was a pleasant experience. The crew were courteous and friendly and pretty too (the female ones), with pleasant, non-mechanical smiles. The food was reasonably good and served at appropriate times as opposed to the "We're-The-World's-Best-Service-Blah-Blah-Singapore-Air". Still, there was a minor drawback in the sense that it was a long and tiring flight and I had to stay overnight at Colombo. (And to be fair, the overnight stay provided by Sri Lankan was substandard.) Though only for a few hours, it totally screwed up my sleep for the next few days, even after taking into account the jetlag.

The best thing I liked about Sri Lankan was they were people like us. By us, I meant mallus. We are so similar, I thought, and the food too. You could airdrop them in Kochi and they'd be right at home. In fact, the crew and most Sri Lankans I met mistook me for a Sri Lankan. A guy who was in the same flight came and started talking to me in Sinhalese at Tokyo airport. I almost felt like I understood what was coming out of his mouth. Though we both settled for English, just as I would do with an Indian from another state. And now I have a friend in Colombo. Not bad, eh. Fifteen years of flying Singapore Air and the only friends I have in Singapore are people I knew beforehand who moved there for work.

Having said all this, I'll probably swallow my pride and fly Singapore Air next time around, since I'll be flying with my family and would like to reach home the same night.

During my stay in GOC, there was one news that caught my attention, which is the kind of news that keeps nagging me. It's about this nun being made into a saint by the Vatican. No, not Mother T (no relation to Mr. T.) This is another lady - Sr. Alphonsa - who has been up for sainthood for sometime and was waiting for confirmation of the miracle, which is a precondition, as we all know. The confirmation came in and it is a kid who was cured of clubfoot.

Well, I have this obsession with miracles, and so, I thought deeply about this one. How complicated a miracle was this? A clubfoot is not exactly leukemia, but still a valid problem. Perhaps this lady's specialization is in curing clubfoot. In that case, I expected to find other cured clubfeet around, but as of now there's only this one case. Is she a one-miracle wonder? Why doesn't the Vatican impose a consistency rule? Say, if a saint is specializing in clubfoot, he or she should consistently cure any devout (or for that matter a reasonably good) person of that problem. It doesn't work that way, does it?
By the way, we haven't heard of any saint, guru or mullah miraculously curing venereal diseases. That would be an interesting area to look into.