www.nickhodge.com

Read­ing this story from The Guard­ian this morn­ing reminded me of an incident.

In 2000 through 2001, I trav­elled to India as a part of my job. I love India: the food, the exper­i­ence and mostly the people. Adobe’s sales team in India were the most gra­cious of hosts, and ensured that I sailed through an enjoyed a great busi­ness trip.

How­ever, and this is the big how­ever, I have vowed never to travel through Inter­na­tional via Chen­nai. Here is why.

First error I made was accept­ing to bring in 200 cus­tom pressed CDs from Aus­tralia in a brown box. These Adobe CDs were free handouts for the sem­inars that I was present­ing, and due to time con­straints could not be freight for­war­ded in the weeks prior to my present­a­tions. I think they were InDes­ign Print­ing CDs with trial soft­ware. Can­not quite remember.

The rules for a busi­ness trav­el­ler land­ing in India is to get your travel agent to arrange a “hotel car” to col­lect you from the air­port. Sup­ply your Flight arrival details, and once through cus­toms and immig­ra­tion: there is a friendly face hold­ing your hotel’s logo on a sign, and your name “Mr Nick” or “Mr Hodge” — and you are safely escor­ted to an air-conditioned car which will nav­ig­ate the streets to your hotel. The cost is added to your hotel bill; tip the driver a R100-R200 or so, and life is good. A hotel car was arranged for this trip.

Let me be blunt: trav­el­ing out­side your own coun­try does have a sig­ni­fic­ant risk of bring­ing on cul­ture shock. In my first trip to the US in 1989, 21 years of Amer­ican TV immer­sion from Ses­ame Street to LA Law could not insu­late me from severe cul­ture shock for a few days. Same for my first trip to Tiajuana. This par­tic­u­lar trip to India was my third (and a fourth fol­lowed) — so I knew what was coming.

India, for all its IT bril­liance, English-speaking and mod­ern­ity still has poverty, smells and sights that are unfa­mil­iar in Aus­tralia. This is ini­tially a shock, but even­tu­ally you absorb what you see and respect the coun­try for what it is — large, with a deep cul­ture and history.

So, Land­ing at Chen­nai Inter­na­tional Air­port at around 10:00pm on a flight con­nec­tion via Singa­pore. Immig­ra­tion OK’d my Visa — pur­chased from great expense from the local con­su­late, col­lec­ted my bag and brown box and star­ted to walk through cus­toms to the hotel car that was wait­ing. That was the plan. The Cus­toms inspector took a deep interest in that box.

Import­ing the box of CDs from Aus­tralia was my error. There is a sig­ni­fic­ant duty for import­ing pre-recorded CDs. Blank CDs at that time had no duty; but pre-recorded CDs could have been duty-able items.

At vari­ous times whilst talk­ing to the Cus­toms agents, I was told the duty on the items was some­thing around US$1 per CD. On 200 CDs, that equates to US$200. The cost of the CDs and duplic­a­tion was way less than this, and I didn’t have US$200 in cash on me. I told the Cus­toms agent that they were just pro­mo­tional CDs, and not worth US$200. More argu­ments, both ways. Even­tu­ally, I was jack of the arguing — and knew that the hotel car was not going to hang around — and would leave without me. The pro­spect of trav­el­ing through Chen­nai late at night was not a good thing.

Even­tu­ally, I was handed off to a more senior cus­toms agent. I told him he could keep the CDs (or con­fis­cate them) and I would do without them. This caused more con­sterna­tion. Even­tu­ally, I was escor­ted under armed guard to an “ATM” to with­draw money to pay for the duty. Thank­fully, my card did not work. Attempt­ing to explain this as an expenses claim to my man­ager was going to tke days, many emails and the risk of being “stiffed” as I was pay­ing a bribe.

As I found out later, based on the words and meth­ods used, the duty asked was a pure bribe. No paper­work or entry to any log was made to this point, and the trans­ac­tion could only be cash. At one point a senior cus­toms agent asked “what would you pay to fix this issue.” We were nego­ti­at­ing the “cus­toms duty” amount on the 200 CDs. I had already decided that I didn’t need the CDs that badly, and could do without them.

As per the Guard­ian art­icle, small-level bribery is some­thing that is com­mon in coun­tries where offi­cials are not paid much money. It greases the wheels. US cor­por­a­tions have very strict laws against bribery, and employ­ees — even nation­als of other coun­tries and jur­is­dic­tions — must abide by these laws. Aus­trali­ans, and Europeans and Asi­ans have to respect both their local laws and the laws of their par­ent company.

I am a pretty straight-up fel­low, and fol­low the rules. I was pay­ing no bribe. I was the last per­son in the cus­toms hall at this point, and as far as I could tell, the last west­erner in the build­ing at Chen­nai Inter­na­tional Air­port at midnight.

The cus­toms officers had given up on the Aus­tralian by this point. I may have left sooner if I had said I had shared a hotel with the crick­et­ing god Den­nis Keith Lillee the last time I was in Chennai.

So, paper­work as draf­ted. I signed the doc­u­ment, and all I could remem­ber was that I had to appear before some local court in a week’s time. My CDs remained in the cus­tody of the cus­toms agents (although I am sure they were “confiscated”)So, you are the last non-Indian at Chen­nai air­port at mid­night. Your hotel car has left. What do you do? I couldn’t call my Indian col­leagues as they were not fly­ing in until the next day from New Delhi. Thank­fully, I had learnt some rules from my pre­vi­ous trips. Never accept taxi rides from touts. I had read how west­ern­ers were found dead and robbed near air­ports as they have accep­ted rides with unscru­pu­lous taxi drivers, never reach­ing their des­tin­a­tions. I did have vis­ions of my fam­ily hear­ing about me from the Aus­tralian con­su­late: so I was a little scared.

At air­ports in India, there is usu­ally a “State Taxi Booth”. Here, you can register, and get a taxi that is registered, with a licensed driver. I gave my name, some money, to the tired booth agent — was walked to the taxi rank; gave the name of my hotel in the city. Jumped in the back, sans 200 CDs, and crossed my fingers.

Chen­nai is not like other Indian cit­ies. Firstly, signs are writ­ten in Tamil, not Hindi script. And the rail­way sta­tions have names like the “Joseph Stalin Rail­way Sta­tion”. There are not as many people out after dark as com­pared to Ban­galore or Mum­bai, but it is a pretty city. At about 12:30am, I arrived at the hotel. I tipped the taxi driver R200. This is a massive tip for a taxi, but I was highly thank­ful. They had been con­cerned that I had not arrived, nor was col­lec­ted by the hotel car.

I never told my wife about this exper­i­ence, as I felt that the fear was unwar­ran­ted. And trav­el­ing to India was a part of the job; and all these edgy stor­ies add to your abil­ity to deal with stress­ful situ­ations. I am prob­ably a felon in Chen­nai as I failed to attend to the court paper­work and pay for fines — although I am not sure. Under­stand the cus­toms rules when you travel over­seas? Pay­ing bribes eases your way through?

The les­son here is, well, there is no les­son. Just a great story.