Why do I spend so much on flights?

Well, I take home a decent salary at the end of the month. I hardly have any commitments, apart from the monthly installment of the loan I took from the bank to purchase my flat. I am not married, I don't have a girlfriend nor am I a drug addict. A few drinks now and then but nothing of a sort to burn a hole in my pocket. But what is left at the end of the month is disappointing. I have reviewed my expenses and have not found anything wrong except for the fact that I have been spending a part of my salary on air travel. I'd been thinking recently the cause for this and I have found out that apart from my last minute travel plans and tight schedules the majority of the blame goes to the Indian Railways. The government has made the reservation system that there is hardly any scope for late planning of the trip. There are only two options. Either you plan your trip 90 days in advance or you wait for the tatkal window to open one day prior to the I travel. This brings out two extremes. Since I've been unable to plan my travel plan 90 days in advance I am only left with the second option. The problem with the second option is that I need to compete with thousands of other people in the country to reserve the few seats available in the tatkal quota. I can't take that risk.

In view of my above problem, my suggestion would be to reduce the ticketing period of 90 days to 30 days. This would look strange as the government has been increasing the duration so that travel plans can be made much in advance and tickets can be booked. Or seats on the trains need to be allocated in a manner that the period of 90 to 70 days before travel allows only for booking of certain number of seats, 70-50 another set of seats and so on. What would make it even better was to introduce different fares for different periods but in the descending order. That is, if you make your reservation in the first window you have to pay more than the reservation in the second ticket window. While the first option would not be received well by the public, I'd suggest that the railways adopt the latter. This keeps the hopes alive for people such as I to make reservations in the desired trains in the desired class even when I have not been able to plan my travel 90 days in advance. Since railways know that trains are running full most of the time, they could take that risk unless they have got other reasons.

Weekends

We are group of friends. Everyone’s working. Everyone’s earning well. While I spoke to one of them, she said “yes everyone has a job, but we turn jobless on weekend”. True. Everyone has a two day weekend. Before this I had never seen this as a problem. But after some thought I realised that this is where the whole problem began.

I remember when I was a child, a weekend was an access to unlimited playtime with your schoolmates or your neighbours. While in college, it meant unlimited access to Quake III. Until then a weekend was fun.

When I moved to Mumbai, being the one of the most happening places in India, I enjoyed a few weekends . Though later, I realized that enjoying meant paying for killing time. Let’s consider this situation, you call a friend on a weekend, you say “hey, let’s go to a movie or a restaurant, a club, etc, etc”. Try recalling when was the last time you were invited to a game of say, cricket or football? If you were invited, what you’d be thinking is “yeah, this is a good way of burning the calories I acquired having all that jalebi, lasagna, or the 10 pints of beer gulped the last evening”. Over the years, our thinking has changed a lot. Is this what a metropolitan lifestyle means?

On giving it a deeper thought, I have failed to understand on what actually entertains us nowadays. I have even had to take help of that idiot box lying in my drawing room. I hardly ever found a single television channel that hit the note right. One morning I got up and said “I’m to watch TV and spend the whole day at home”. This meant my TV and me together for one whole day. After an hour, you will not believe, I picked up the phone and ordered a pizza and along with it I bought garlic bread, coke, extra cheese topping and many other things that I didn’t need. I must admit that the advertisements were very entertaining but the shows weren’t.And then, you've got the option of doing work at home. Nah!, it'd be too middle aged. Another friend of mine advised that I engage myself in guitar, singing or dancing lessons. A good idea, quality pass time but it calls for a lot of discipline. There has got to be something....something!! God! . Did I say God? I haven't been to a temple either in years. So what are we game for? I really don't know. All I know, is with every passing day, I am growing fatter and lazier.

Tell me if you noticed this, people nowadays spend most of the day sleeping. It’s only in the evening they get up. That is actually a tactical move to spend time and not spend money. At daytime, there are several options to choose from. But at night, most of them don’t exist. So you end up spending lesser.

Turn nocturnal.