Column

I have been travelling this past week, an inhabitant of airports, an itinerant guest at lounges, a fly by night visitor at terminals. This business of airports is a strange one, all the best ones are best in the same way: they’re efficient, they’re friendly, they offer you comfort and nurturing and they blur in to sameness once you have departed from them.

But the bad ones- ah, that’s a whole new ball game. The bad ones are all different in different ways; some are chaotic, some sinister, some mean and some nightmarish.

Like exotic blooms they each tell a different tale. And today I am going to tell you about Mumbai airport, the international terminal at Sahar. When you enter it, to take an out bound flight, its features are deceptively disguised, it almost appears non descript. Sleepy doorkeepers, obsequious porters, and somnolent airline staff. You check in at the counter, you fill in the departure forms you make yourself to the immigration counters. So far so good.

Yes, you might encounter a particularly garrulous or worse still inquisitive officer, you might have to service their abject curiosity about your antecedents, your reasons for travel, your choice of garment, and even your appearance on your passport picture and how you’ve ceased to resemble it. (As a wag once said-if you look like your passport picture you probably need the trip!).

But that’s all par for the course. You’re outbound, exuberant, un- put downable remember? You don’t notice the rusty escalator, the smelly loos or the shabby never ending corridors. You’re going somewhere after all. Somewhere far away where all this will be behind you.

You search for the waiting lounge you’ve been assigned to. It’s a throwback to another era another city. It resembles the lobby of a three star hotel you once visited in Ludhiana Retro sofas, a clunky bar, greasy crockery. There is a sign that tells you it offers massages and a shower room. Perish the thought. You’d rather have the Boston strangler give you a neck massage.

But you don’t let any of this affect you. Neither the smarmy staff, nor the dusty table tops. Very soon you will be leaving all this behind so you do not let any of it get you down.

But guess what? After your fabulous trip, in sleek and shiny airports, guess what’s waiting for you stealthily, silently, patiently like a beast in the marshland on your return? That very same airport. This time the arrival lounge. Like a night mare on wheels. A throbbing, screaming, chaotic, demonic machine that’s out to get you.

Lose that overflow. Trolleys that dysfunction. Officials who treat your disembarkation form as if it were a sobriety test. Porters who bully you. Conveyor belts that spit out your luggage as if they were angry children being fed stew. Flies that attack you. Queues that wind their way to hell and back. And a malevolent dark fetid smell that envelopes you.

And you know you are backing Mumbai. The entire effect of your sleek and shiny trip wiped out. You are now the arms of the Airport Authority of India. Welcome home!

s_malavika@dnaindia.net