Who's the third world now?

There was a time when Egypt or Lagos were considered lawless lands. Now one has to be on guard in London and Paris

- SEEMA GOSWAMI

I still remember the exact moment the thought occurred to me. I had just landed in Dubai, gone through immigration in a jiffy, walked to the baggage belt to see my bags already serenely coasting along on the conveyer belt, walked outside to get a car to take me to my hotel - and that's when I had opened my phone to scroll through Twitter. And there it was: An endless stream of tweets about how people who had landed in Heathrow the same time that my plane had touched down in Dubai, were going to be stuck in the airport for hours on end because the e-gates had failed.

That's when the thought popped into my head. The tables have truly turned, I marvelled. The First World has turned into the Third World - and vice versa.