Another One

It was that time again. Shouting my name and address again and again at the call taxi reservation desk over phone, then at the driver for having gone in an irrelevant direction, then to giving him directions, trundling my bag to a place on the main road for having given up hope that the driver would ever make it to my doorstep.

After the usual Murphy-influenced check-in procedure (literally, this time I changed 3 queues after the counters at each of them developed some problem or the other) and the zero noise frisking, (I love it when I wear my track pants or the Thai trouser that doesn’t need a belt – the guy goes mad searching for a metal beep where the belt buckle usually sits and it takes him a while to figure that the detector is perfectly alright and that I am actually not wearing a belt – so in the end the detector does not make even a single beep. Not even the calibration one.) there was still 40 minutes’ time left for the boarding, thanks to the last minute series of delays announced by our good(?) old national carrier.

Then something happened which made me wish I were cruising. Uss, Chandasa, Random Access, Mugga, yawl know what I am referring to, right?

I noticed a godforsaken aquarium close to a nondescript advertise-carrying pier in the waiting area. The area was teeming with people, as most of the airlines had chosen to go easy on their schedule. Anyway, the aquarium called for such a qualification because literally not even the children were giving its existence a dingo’s liver. I decided to have a closer look, and noticed how the air bubbles stuck to some underwater plant looked like silver beads. Then I noticed a fish trying to wrap itself in another structure (do not know whether it was plant or an animal or non-living, but it had long-ish tentacles and may have served as a blanket to the fish in question).

The interest kept me there for about 3-4 minutes when I suddenly felt a slight increase in the temperature of the air around me. Shifting my focus further deeper into the aquarium glass, I saw there were 5 people standing behind and around me, staring at the aquarium. Most, I could sense, came looking at others staring into the aquarium, and I was the seed. After the initial tide, some started giving a running commentary: “look at this shitty fish, it doesn’t wanna swim!” etc.

After a while I decided to go closer to the boarding counter. Surprisingly, without even an announcement, a huge queue formed behind where I and a couple of others were standing just like that. We all stood there for at least 20 minutes before an official boarding announcement was made.

Surprising? I do not know. I stood only because I did not find a place to sit closer to the boarding counter. The people forming the queue were sitting comfortably right next to the counter, and still chose to stand up in the queue for 20 minutes without an announcement! Fortunately there weren’t any to go and teach the airline staff not to make people stand in a queue like that, because they would have gotten shouted back at: “there has been no announcement, why are you here?”

On second thoughts, it would have been a good thing to have that question asked.

An Out of Turn Post

For those whom I have been telling that a couple of posts are in the pipeline, especially the priceless series, this is gonna be out of turn – it deserves to be.
For the simple reason that this incident starkly held itself out in the tide of hectic, ruthlessly meted out series of events over last about 2 weeks. The pinnacle was this: 3 take offs, just as many landings, origin airport entry at 1515 Bangladesh Standard Time (1345 IST), destination airport exit at 2310 IST.

All in the middle of what appeared to be a never-ending bout of cold and cough. The doctors at NSCB International Airport didn’t do much out of a youth conjuring up a mix of haughtiness and ignorance towards Bengali, in reality just trying not to speak much and make the cough evident, fearing being quarantined.
I already had a tiding about the excruciating pain the 2 flights (hopping to Pune) were going to inflict upon me, more so the landing part. The first flight had not been such a pain because it was just an ATR – this is a hindsight realization of course – since that is the only difference I found in the two flights.

It was true, even as I was wishing it wouldn’t be. I managed to scrape through the first landing, but quickly realized I was not in for another one, lest my ears should bleed or something. They were making weird noises within already.

Weighed the risk of me appearing as just another desperate guy trying to suck up to the air hostesses; but the pain took over the better of me. I could hardly hear what was happening around me, and I would rather have preferred to be pressed between two walls of thorns at 1000 Pa, than withstand that kinda pain in my ears.

What followed was a very genuine schedule of taking care of me, first by suggesting various mechanisms (blowing within, opening jaws wide) and then giving me some warm water and even chewing gum from their personal belongings.

This was probably professionally demanded of them. But what really was impressive was that I was being watched, and as I twitched in pain during altitude changes, contemplating summoning the cabin crew by pressing the button, she was already by me, asking me if it was still paining, ready with a cup of warm water. This happened so many times I was convinced I literally made her go the ‘extra mile’ trying to yank me out of pain.

Awesome it was, to see how chewing gum was handed over to me, nicely wrapped in tissue. Not one, not two but full four tablets of gum, which is exactly what I had to use to go through the extreme pain. The warm water was in a paper cup, which was in another paper cup, to make the grip more secure against the heat. I was also particularly instructed to hold it carefully as I took it from her.

Wondering if I was so impressed because I was helped in pain, or if it was such a good thing on the contrast of the badly knit fabric of the day, or just by the absolute virtue of the experience, or whatever – here it is – hats off to you, don’t know if you are reading this, nor do I know your name or anything.

Keep the good work up – it is much needed.
Cheers!