For international flights it is necessary to arrive at the airport, at least three hours before the scheduled departure. This is two hours more than the requirement at most international airports throughout the world, but as you read this, the reason for this requirement will soon become clear.

For some inexplicable reason, most international flights arrive and depart between 11.00PM and 3.00AM. The passengers, their relatives and even the officials are more often than not, bleary-eyed and look as if they all have a headache. This short time-window also leads to large crowds and total chaos outside the departure gates. Cars, taxis, relatives and passengers jostle with each other for space. There is always an artificial scarcity of trolleys; typically, this means finding a place to park if someone has come to drop you, jumping out, grabbing any trolley in sight or paying a tout for one, running to the car, dumping the bags in the trolley and then finding or fighting a way through the crowds into the departure lounge.

Once you have managed to push yourself into the departure lounge, comes the long queue at the checked-in baggage security-check. Indian airports have a system wherein checked-in baggage has to go through an X-ray scanner before the actual process of checking-in. This means again having to unload and load your trolley. Since the number of scanners is far less than the number of passengers travelling, it may take up to half an hour to finish this procedure.

Next comes the process of checking-in. If you are lucky, the queue is short. Typically, since there are only two-three counters, the queues are long and it may take another half an hour to check-in.

Once checking-in is over, you have to immediately get into the queues for immigration/passport control, a process that is handled by the Mumbai police. The officers take their own sweet time to clear passengers and often by 1.00PM, the queues are more than 100m long. When passengers have still not been cleared by departure time, they are put into a fast-track lane by the airline officials who have to plead with the officers to be able to do so. This however causes even more delays for those, whose flights are a little later and this effect may snowball.

Past immigration come the customs officials. Typically, they are not a problem, but if you are carrying a notebook or other similar item (expensive camera, videocam, etc), you need to get it registered with them. They either give a receipt or write the item down in the passport, so that on the return journey you don't have to pay customs duty on these items. To do this, you have to remember to carry the original receipt for the item, so that there is proof of purchase in India. If the item has been purchased abroad, the purchase receipt and the customs duty receipt have to be presented. How many people remember to carry these? The procedure itself does not take much time, but if you forget to carry the necessary documents, things can get really sticky.

There is still one more baggage check procedure to go through, before entering the security lounge. This is for the carry-on baggage. Again, if there are a couple of flights departing from two gates with a single entry, it can take up to half an hour to get through this security check.

It is no wonder therefore that very often flights are delayed. Imagine if you have to really wait for 30 minutes at each step. It is unlikely that you would make it into the aircraft in time.

Passport and customs control in Europe and the US are a dream. It takes usually less than 15 minutes if everything is fine, unless you look suspicious and this too is a problem only when entering a country.

Coming into Mumbai is even worse than leaving it. Again there are long queues for passport control and I know of people who actually run from the aircraft so that they can be at the head of these queues and get out faster. Once this is done, there is again a scramble for trolleys, which are always in short-supply. The baggage claim area is a mess because of overcrowding, touts and coolies. Then comes the rite of passage through customs, which again entails a long queue, since all baggage has to be screened through an X-ray scanner.

You can get used to this if you live in Mumbai. Most foreign tourists too take it in their stride, since this is considered part of the entire tourist experience. The worst hit however are those of Indian origin living abroad, who are making their annual or biannual trip to India; having got used to faster and more efficient systems abroad, they find it very difficult to accept these delays and the harassment at the hands of the customs officials; they are easy prey for the latter, since they invariably carry large suitcases with gifts for their friends and families in India.

Though imperceptibly so, things are a bit better than they used to be, say five years ago. I guess things will improve, but by that time, things elsewhere will have improved even more. The channel V slogan is apt here, "We are like that only."

It's easy when I set out to write for my daily site because I try to think back, honestly, on the last twenty-four hours and then pick something that won't be too embarrassing to me and yet suitable for the delicate sensibilities of my readers. And since honesty is a prime directive, I have a limited slate du jour from which to choose.

Tonight, for instance, it was easy. I'm talking about my next, inevitable, diet because last night I wrote about my glorious run-in with a pizza delivery van. And in no time at all I will have loads of raw material for new pieces as I succeed swimmingly in this, the most perfect diet yet.

But my weekly writing assignment -- this piece without an accompanying daily photo to set the mood -- this piece that goes out to the bigger world than those who can find my little site ... this one is a very, very hard. It doesn't help at all when the Whiz from Matunga spins out not one, but two! Two different entries ... and I can not respond to either one in kind. You'll very much enjoy his piece this week, by the way, in which he handily juggles a dream, the city politic, and a witty conclusion all at once. I suggest you pop on over and save yourself while you can.

Gloom sets in when I reflect on my week. I haven't traveled any further than my own mailbox, which isn't very far from my own front door. I have not set foot in or on a wheeled vehicle, neither a gross polluter nor an emission-compliant one. Instead, I've been working all week long on a book project that must be completed or we will lose our place in the queue and thus miss the printer's scheduled deadline.

I fear, therefore, that I must now tell you all about my life as a book packager. I really have no choice, you see. If I look to the left of me, or to the right, or into the next room or the next week ... books are all I see. I work, quite happily I might add, with books. I help to bring them to you. I bring them to life. I will explain.

Yes! Topic achieved!

Lots of people wonder about what a book packager does, and they always want to know if we are agents or publishers ... or writers, illustrators ... or what? Well, we're all those things at once. We are also the future of publishing, if publishing is to survive. All that -- and we haven't even been around that long.

Our official trade organization, The Book Producers Association, of which my company was one of the founding members, is only fifteen years old. Packagers like to call themselves "producers" because we think it's entirely more classy. Producers in Hollywood have a glamour image, and the poor, benighted book folk from New York thought some of that glitter would rub off .. but it never did. Guys in riding jodhpurs and berets produce movies; sedentary men and women in sweats package books.

Book packaging came about in the 1980s right after the first big wave of media mergers, when large conglomerates were buying up traditional book publishers and a talented virtual mob of editors, designers, agents, indexers, advertising generalists, and marketing types found themselves literally out on the street. They were smart, hungry people with more skills than luck, and some of them began to work their Rolodexes and pay for their own lunches and talk to each other and voila! Book packaging was born.

The publishing world used to be two locked doors with a literal transom overhead. The transom was left open for air circulation and desperate writers would actually fling their manuscripts into the open space and hope for the best. But editors would not buy a book from someone without an agent and agents would not look at your work until you'd made a sale. Ah, those were the days. Plus, the publishing houses always paid for lunch.

But book packagers have changed all that. We put together whatever elements are necessary to make a book project ready for market. Are you a children's book author who can't draw pretty pictures? We'll partner you up with an illustrator who isn't very verbal and together, we will find you a publisher. Are you a career army officer with an amazing story to tell about Roswell in 1947? We'll work with your memoirs until they begin to resemble a book, and then we'll find you a publisher. We might even get on the New York Times bestseller list for fourteen weeks in a row.

If we can't find a publisher, sometimes we'll publish your book ourselves. Sometimes we'll co-publish with an existing publisher to split the risk. But no matter what, if we like your project, we will get the job done. For example, we've had a prisoner from death row who sent us his story a full ten years ago and just this past week, after years of trying, we finally sold it. There's almost always hope.

And it can be a whole lot of fun, too. The book I'm getting ready for the printer right now is a co-publishing venture called Flying Saucers 101. In this instance, I've designed and edited the book, and even created my first-ever cover. Look for it in your local bookstores and online in just a few more weeks, assuming I get it finished on time.

I started my book packaging company, Shadow Lawn Press, right after I published my first novel the traditional way, with an agent and a dream and a publisher's free lunch. I loved the whole process of working with the book's many editors and designers almost as much as writing the book in the first place. When the process was over, I felt a little bereft, and so I started looking around for more books I could get involved with while I waited for my next novel to gel.

We've since packaged hundreds of books, on topics ranging from cookbooks to crime to child-rearing. I've learned how to create an index almost overnight. Which reminds me -- I've only got a few hours left in this night and there's yet another index to create. I love a good index. My two favorite words in the English language are "See also ..."

One page leads to another, one link to the next, one book turns into a voyage back in time and you haven't even left your easy chair. That's a sort of travel that I do know well. In fact, I always travel first class these days because I've amassed so darn many frequent filer miles.

See you next week!