Domestic airports are anthropology museums

Where Personality Loses Its Training

A bullish shove shook my whole being. I rocked on my feet, trying to retain my balance. When I turned around, I discovered the source of this minor seismic event; a young man, ironically, the word ‘patience’ tattooed vertically along the right side of his neck. His pink and grey Little Rabbit neck pillow & backpack had also enthusiastically participated in the shove.

He wanted to get ahead of me. Why, I will never know. Seats in an aircraft, after all, are assigned, even purchased, not seized like disputed territory.

Somewhere between the aerobridge and the aircraft door, it occurred to me that airports are no longer places you pass through, but settings where our personality briefly loses its training.

This is only an introduction to that belief, shaped by recent flights to Jaipur and Indore, and back.

Strangely enough, I enjoy being at airports: I breathe in the aroma of food and coffee. I have confessed that shopping is one of my weakest points, but the airport shops keep me updated on what is in fashion. You can browse in or walk past the corridor-like shops selling luxury goods, airport is a great place to scout for last minute gifts, and you can always find books.

You want a coffee during the two-hour wait, there is no dearth of coffee shops. But what a shame! Rs 400 for a cup of coffee that tastes like it has been reheated since the liberalization of the Indian economy.

And then there is the airport lounge with generally long queues outside. Every once in a while, you can see somebody emptying their wallet of all the debit, credit and membership cards to ascertain which one can buy them dignity for an hour.

Inside, the way people pile up their plates, makes me feel we Indians cannot afford food from our own earnings. Yet the manner in which some of us leave food on the plates untouched or uneaten, our sanskriti, it seems, goes on a vacation in airport lounges.

In the Indore lounge, a mother and son duo, the latter about 8-10 years old, was sitting on a table diametrically opposite to mine. I saw the boy leave a plate that looked like it had survived a small landslide, to get a cup of coffee. He brought it, emptied three sachets of sugar into it, stirred, took a sip, and left the cup. The mother continued with her eating and scrolling the phone. The boy got up, put two sandwiches and two slices of cake on a fresh plate, kept it on his table and picking up the mobile, lay down on the sofa, watching a video with the sound audible to everyone around.

Did I want to say something? Of course, yes! But before I could form a sentence, a man came, presumably the missing husband-father in the picture, bearing a plate full of poha, and two uttapams. He sat down with them. I could see him masticating his uttapam with his mouth open. He ate some, decided it was not up to his taste and pushed the plate away. I wondered why he hadn’t asked his wife and son about the food before piling his plate. And why take so much if you are not sure you can eat it? Just because it is free? The woman did notice my gaze flitting towards them, but it had no effect on her. The plate in front of her also had a lot of food on it.

After a while, a server came, stared at the plates, took them away and the proof was gone.

Suddenly I didn’t like the family and for the next half hour I wasted my precious anxious thoughts hoping they are not on our flight.  

Then there is cabin luggage. While the airlines are dictator- like about checking in not-a-gram-above-15 kgs, the amount of stuff you can carry into the cabin is beyond the limitations of rules. No airline staff weighs them.

In the overhead bin Olympics, these small compartments seem as precious as real estate in Mumbai. Hey, you smart suitcases, backpacks, handbags with brand names emblazoned on them, step aside! Thailas, jholas, potlis, gathris, (bags, sacks, pouches, bundles) of various sizes and shapes with the names of garments, mithai shops or gifts received when A wed B, all demand ancestral rights over the overhead bin.

And this time, I chose not to give in to emotional blackmail when a ‘mother’ wanted me to swap my aisle seat for her middle one in the back so that she could sit with her son. No, her explaining the whole family tree did not make me change my mind. I declined, politely, firmly, unrepentantly.

And I am not forgetting the child who cried for the entire 1.5 hours. His parents appeared to be on a different flight, emotionally.

By the time we landed, I was no longer irritated, only observant. Airports, I have learnt, are not stressful places. They are merely honest ones.

They reveal who we are when rules exist, but accountability does not.

Civilisation boards last.                                                                                                 - Anupama S Mani