I remember that process very well from the time I sent home a parcel from India, during my first trip in 2006. Same procedure including sewing a piece of cloth around the parcel.

There was something else that I also remember, and it is about the differences in India concerning people's spatial relationships to each other.

I was at the service window, ready to pay for my parcel to be sent, and when the clerk told me how much it would cost, I reached into my pocket to get the money. When my arm bent, with my elbow protruding behind me, the elbow went directly into the chest of a man whom I had not realized was standing DIRECTLY BEHIND ME, with no personal space between us.

He doubled over in pain at having been jabbed like that. I was sorry to have injured him. And I was also wondering, Why were you standing so close?