Recently, after a long and tiring vacation, I was transiting through Kolkata airport on my way back to Aamchi Mumbai. My friends and I landed at Kolkata airport in the afternoon, and we had a few hours to kill before catching the flight back home. We collected our luggage, found somewhere to sit and settled down to wait. All the excitement that we felt while waiting at the airport during our onward journey to Bagdogra airport was absent and in its place was lethargy and a blankness of mind in which the minutes sank slushily. To kill time, I sampled some ‘sandesh’ from the Bengali sweet shop; on our onward journey 10 days ago, it had been fresh, soft and sweet, now it was flat and a bit stale – mirroring the change in our mood.
After reading a few pages of the novel I was carrying with me, I got up to get myself a cup of coffee. When I returned, I found my place occupied by an airport employee - my friends were either too sleepy to notice or too tired to object to his presence. Being too tired to endure a lengthy argument myself, I just sighed and squeezed myself into the tiny wedge of space between this man and the girl seated next to him, thus cutting myself off from even the occasional spurt of conversation between my friends.
As I lazily sipped my coffee, I glanced around at those seated next to me. To my right sat the airport employee in a blue uniform, scruffy shoes and scaly hands that could use dollops of moisturiser. To my left, sat a young girl attired in jeans, blue-green printed blouse and Maazaa coloured open-toed sandals. She had a slender build, wheatish complexion, long straight hair and an oval face with smooth, blemish-free skin. To her left sat a young burly man earnestly typing away at his laptop.
As if my observation disturbed her somehow (the act of observation changes either the position or the momentum of the object being observed, intoned the Ghost of Uncle Heisenberg), she got up abruptly from her seat. She half-smiled at me, glanced towards a luggage trolley kept nearby, muttered something that I assumed was a request to mind that no one steals anything and then left. To the snack counter, I assumed initially, but she walked right past it. Hmm, must be headed towards the loo, she’ll be back soon and I’ll be relieved of this boring chowkidari. But more than a few minutes ticked by and there was no sign of her. I wondered where she could be – hoping that she was not unwell in the loo and I wouldn’t have to play the Good Samaritan rescuing her. I hopefully scanned the row of phone booths nearby in case she was inside one, but drew a blank there.
A few more minutes slowly passed and then a new worry entered my head. What if she was a terrorist and one of the suitcases had a bomb inside ? Her trolley was piled high with luggage - two big suitcases and a few smaller bags, any of which might conceal a bomb. I was the closest to her luggage; I would definitely be blown to smithereens. I wondered how a bomb kills one – whether it is the shrapnel piercing one’s vital organs that is fatal or the heat wave, but figured the latter would be applicable only in the case of an atom bomb. Having established the process to my satisfaction, I then wondered if, after ripping through me, the shrapnel would have enough momentum to continue and rip through the person sitting next to me ? What would the radius of destruction be – both for direct hits by shrapnel and for indirect hits ? With this morbid line of thought, I swiveled my eyes to make a note of all those within a radius of a few metres from the luggage trolley and mentally sympathized with them about their impending doom.
Among these I noticed a trio of aged comrades – easily recognizable from being regularly featured in the news - slowly shuffling towards the Reserved Lounge. The trolley lay almost directly in their path to the lounge. The bomb must have been meant for them – just my bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the comrades slowly shuffled closer, I noticed that they had no retinue flocking about them, no garlands around their necks etc. And I remembered a news article that I had read a few years ago which listed all the candidates contesting elections and their declared assets, the comrades’ in general had the lowest wealth and assets compared to other politicians. My respect for them increased as I watched their no-airs, quiet walk to the reserved lounge. A few minutes after they entered the reserved lounge, one of them shuffled out again, stood in queue at the snacks counter and waited his turn patiently before buying the sandwiches he wanted – no flunk sent running to get what sahib wanted, no elbowing aside others in the queue on grounds of self-importance. Rather impressive behaviour – pity about Nandigram though.
Watching the comrades and wondering about the contrast between their behaviour in small trios and large groups (mobs?) distracted me sufficiently that I did not notice time slipping by. With a start, I noticed that the girl had returned bearing soft drink and snacks and was giving the same to the burly young man sitting next to her. He in turn, was passing the laptop to her so that she could check her mail.
Is it just me or are we all in a heightened sense of awareness regarding security ? So much so that at times the most mundane happenings give rise to fear and paranoia ?
By,
Zenobia D. Driver
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