Confusion has wings

 

Confusion has wings

These past six weeks have brought for me several reasons for travelling within the country and armed with 15 kg + 5 kg, I have happily embarked on these trips. Still not brave enough to travel by bus or train in view of Covid, I have felt fortunate that the cities I had to travel to had direct flights from Lucknow.

But every time I flew out of the city, the cells inside my cranial cavity went into a tizzy and I came back wondering, sometimes even worried, about the mental health of the world outside the brick and mortar safety I call home.

This is not going to be another description of ‘travel during Corona times’, although Covid-19 has impacted our way of living so much that some concerns might just creep into my narrative naturally.

So let me share my misgivings/thoughts with you in the hope that some intelligent mind will help me and my readers find the solutions.

Domestic air travel looks like a whole new chapter of economics altogether. The air fares compared to the pre-Covid times have gone down, and maybe that is why the planes are full. There is a bombardment of emails and SMS as soon as one books the seat. Instructions, suggestions, new routes- the information blitzkrieg overwhelms me. The battery in my mouse might die down merely deleting them. Why, I just got a mail which suggests Chalo Durgapur! Our newest destination, for you! Why for me? I have no business of any kind in Durgapur. Do they know something that I don’t? So much for privacy!

For a flight the directive is that you check-in online, print your boarding pass, self-health declaration form and bag tag, and bring them to the airport. Web check-in is fine, but so far nobody has looked at either my health declaration forms or as much as glanced at the clever ways I have devised to display my bag tags. Instead I start feeling stupid for not just having wasted my time and effort, but also guilty for taking unnecessary prints and harming the environment.

Social distancing seems to be unheard of at the check-in counters and fellow passengers continue with their sincere efforts of jumping the queue to win the race to the security check. The person at the check-in counter cautions me about carrying power bank in my checked-in baggage but there is no query about carrying Corona virus. I would have preferred a dog trying to sniff out virus carriers.

At the security check as I start to empty some of the contents of my bag into the tray for inspection, my concentration is ruined by the strong push of the short man with a protruding belly  who is in the process of taking his belt off. Absolutely unapologetic, he continues with his undressing as he slowly takes off his scarf, cap, jacket and wrist watch, empties his pockets of keys, coins, mobile, wallet and earphones and waddles ahead. As is the usual scene in our country, behind him is his wife saddled with a few bags of varying sizes, colours and shapes. Whatever happened to the airline instruction on the size, number and weight of cabin baggage? 

The young lady behind me perched precariously on high heels with her flesh barely contained in her tight jeans, mutters something offensive. Undecided whom to support or encourage, I trudge ahead explaining the contents of the flask I am carrying to the CISF personnel and leave the bag I had been clinging to, in the tray and go into the curtained cubicle for the security check.

Everyone waiting at the gate is staring at a mobile screen and flicking images up. You are forced to listen to everything from Modiji’s soliloquy to personal conversations, comedy shows, film clips, Bhojpuri songs to Pawri hori hai and I wonder why were earphones invented.

The photos of food displayed at shiny stalls are tempting but the arithmetic confuses me. How does merely bringing the food from outside to sell at the airport add to its price? Why do vendors at bus and railway stations sell their wares cheaper? Why does a seller at the airport have to jack up the price threefold?

I tax my short-sighted eyes to peer at the display screens to ensure that the flight has neither been delayed nor has the gate been changed again. As I join the queue to leave the gate and board the bus, the airline official scans my boarding pass and lets me go to get into the bus. Inside the bus you see people putting on white gowns and know they are stuck in the middle seat. The ties given on it are no help for closing the front. As it is, the gown barely reaches the knees and then too, it rides up with every movement of the body.  Does the (most probably) non-biodegradable gear with its front open repel  Coronavirus in exactly the same manner as we were told the north-north poles of a magnet do?

Once at the plane, the same people who were in a rush to get ahead at the check-in counter/clear security/board the bus now start to look relaxed for this is the time to pat hair into place, straighten up collars and clothes, bare teeth into the phone camera and take selfies. The white gowns, the masks and face shields euphemistically called PPE kits have added to the ‘photogenicity’ of every passenger. I imagine thousand of selfies floating about in cyberspace competing with each other for eyeball attention.

The airline staff at the foot of the ramp looks at my boarding pass the third time. If the bit of paper was a living creature, it would have blushed a beetroot red at getting so much attention within a span of a couple of hours. Would I wander off somewhere else like a lost cow if they did not check so often?  

Once their bags are arranged in the overhead bins or bundled into the tiniest space available or they have given free suggestions to the others about putting their hand baggage away, the passengers finally leave the aisle and shuffle into their seats.

The aircraft crew start their mono-acting bit with security instructions. They begin explaining in sign language the basics of how to fasten the seat belt and move on to how to use oxygen masks. Is boarding a plane a lesson in speed-learning and enlightenment that someone who is yet to learn how to buckle his belt, suddenly becomes adept at using an oxygen mask, that too in an emergency?

The crew further gestures what to do if the flight lands on water. Travelling within India I get worried sick when I hear that. Why would a flight going from the north to the south of my country land on water? Is a novice pilot flying the plane from Lucknow to Chennai via the Andamans? Why in the name of heavens should a plane moving in the Indian skies with terra firma below land on water? Did the geography of India change while I was sleeping at night?

Also, how can a plane land on water? Would it not be called falling or crashing or even water-landing? Are the pilots trained for that too these days? Is the Miracle on the Hudson now a regular phenomenon?  

The plane finally takes off. We should all appreciate the airlines’ training of the crew who do not bat an eyelid when they witness a mother struggling to pacify her cranky baby, an overweight person fumbling to fasten his seat belt or a tall gentleman trying to fold his legs in various yoga-like poses to sit comfortably even as the supposedly larger front row seats remain vacant. The seats are for sale and a rule is a rule, so no upgrade or allowing to sit comfortably, please.

Have you noticed that the first thing the airlines staff do when they are sure that the machine is in the sky, is to start giving out or selling food? It looks like they have taken a tip from mothers that properly-fed babies sleep and one can then sit in peace. One good thing is that to save the passengers from embarrassment they ask –would you like to ‘buy’ something, making it crystal clear that nothing is gratis.

After a short struggle with catching what she and I are speaking through our masks and face shields, I ask for their famous chicken sandwich, and I am told it comes only if I ‘pre-book’ it. I try to reason that the airline website shows a two minute video to assure that their sandwiches are hygienically packed, so what is the fear? My thought is if they themselves are so unsure about their hygiene standards, should I just open the door and jump out? Would I survive the jump? Unable to decide between a fairly long hospital stay due to multiple fractures and injuries or a shorter but risky one due to Coronavirus, I choose something else from the coloured boxes on the trolley and try to focus on digging into it.

The experience of the journey requires a blog post in itself, so I leave it for now. As soon as the wheels touch the land again at the destination, the passengers all get up in a rush. It seems everyone has an urgent/important business to attend to and I am the only ‘vehli’ (idle) person whiling my time away on this planet. Braving many pushes and shoves despite moving in what I thought was a queue, after a few minutes, I also manage to get out of the mechanical bird to breathe fresh air and get into the bus to take me to the terminal.

The time of the arrival of your bag on the belt has no relation to how early you checked in. As you resign yourself to waiting for your luggage to make its appearance, you also try to steer clear of others moving the trolleys which they seemed to have won in the race for the contraption. Maneuvering them in various directions and angles, they finally position the front wheel to touch the belt as if invoking the spirits so their suitcase lands exactly there. Nursing injured toes if you are not alert and careful, you see them overturning several other pieces before they can identify their own and then hauling it off the belt with the look of victory matching that of a candidate in the city council elections.

As I come out of the airport, a big signboard catches my attention. My expectations from this world come crashing down. If they cannot write the matra in their own language right on a signboard, should I hope for anything going as it should? Don’t you think only the word ‘Metro’ with an arrow would have been enough?

                                                                                                                       - Anupama S Mani