Walking Sticks – sticks that walk? - a date with Indian Customs
Yesterday the New York Times carried a story about a sculptor's experiences with Indian Customs. MICHAEL ARAM visited India for the first time in 1988 and he writes about the mishaps, mistakes, missteps and the overall misses with Indian Customs.
His Indian friends wanted him to bring from USA things like pasta, toothpaste and believe it or not, bras.
One of the things he learnt about Customs was that underwire-type bras show up on X-ray and cause a lot of embarrassment.
Recently an ailing friend in New York wanted him to bring in a decorative walking stick from India. He found an inexpensive silver cane with a falcon-shaped handle. It was perfect for her. It also had a really cool feature: it screwed apart midshaft, which made it easy to pack.
On his way out of India, the Indian Customs officer told him that he could not keep the cane unless he was using it. So he took it out of his carry-on, screwed it together and turned to walk away from him, while holding the cane.
Now the customs officer said he could carry it only if he actually needed to use it.
Realizing it would be too comical, somewhat distasteful and potentially bad luck to pretend to limp, he asked him politely to show him where it was written in the rule book that canes not on active duty were not allowed on the aircraft.
The Customs Officer and our Aram together searched the rule book, but they could not find anything about the walking stick, though the American found that he could not carry chilli powder, pickles, pornography, polo mallets and cricket bats, alcohol, and surprisingly, deodorant. There was nothing written about a cane. Not a word.
And what are walking sticks, which figure in the Customs and excise tariffs? Are they sticks that walk?