HOME COMING -- HARD LANDING

After our six months sojourn at Chicago, USA, we were homesick and eager to get back home (though we were going to miss our lovely grand daughter Sreeya badly). We landed at Hyderabad at 8am on Sunday, the first March’09. The last few hours preceding this were quite interesting and I now attempt to record them as they happened.

It was 11pm on Saturday night (28 Feb) when our KLM flight from Amsterdam reached Delhi skies. Even as I was telling my wife that we have made it before time the pilot announced that we are not yet cleared for landing due to traffic delays. The words traffic delays brought smiles to our faces. We finally landed at 11-30pm .

Even as the flight was taxing on the runway towards the gate, a guy around 30 years age sitting a couple of rows behind us got up, opened the overhead locker, picked up his bag and started off towards the door (as if to get off from a running bus !!!). He had to be literally chased back to his seat by the cabin crew !!!!!!!!. I suddenly started wondering why, some of us , can not follow simple instructions like not to open overhead lockers till seat belt signs are switched off and not to switch on your mobiles etc.

As law abiding senior citizens , we were one of the last off the aircraft. Naturally we were at the fag end of a long Q at one of the several immigration counters at the IGIA. There were several counters and there were long Qs at each counter. As we spent nearly an hour in the Q, two thoughts occurred to me. At Chicago , SFO and LA, I had seen that the US citizens had separate counters at the immigration and were out faster compared to the visitors. Doesn’t it make sense to do a similar thing at our Airports too? The second thought was, shouldn’t we have a separate counter or two for the senior citizens who would be pretty tired physically after long and tiring flights. May be we should put up a representation to the civil aviation minister.

Having cleared immigration, we went to the baggage collection area. Some one was kind enough to have taken our four pieces of baggage off the conveyor and put them all together at one place (thanks to Bharathi’s scheme of unique identification of tying a pink ribbon to each piece). I was looking around for trolleys when a porter walked up to me and offered to take them. When I asked him about his charges he said “sab , jo chahe de dijiye (give what ever you wish).

Now, I must admit something. This is one of those things I was missing—I mean the human interaction and human touch.

So there we were happily walking along these two guys pushing two trolleys , first taking us through the customs blue channel (no questions asked!!!!) and to the jet airways lounge. There they noted our ticket details and guided us to the Free Coach for transfer to the domestic terminal. The porters loaded our luggage on the coach and when I gave them a hundred rupee note saluted me and left. They were happy and so we were.

When the coach was full it started on it’s journey ,and , when it stopped for a few minutes waiting for an aircraft to go past us close by, I realized that we were taking a private road within the airport alongside the boundary wall and not the public road outside. I suddenly felt a chill when I realized how easy it would be for terrorists to get on to this bus, hijack it and go to one of the passenger aircrafts and take it over. Is there a wonder that we are so vulnerable???

When we reached terminal 1B, another guy helped us with the baggage . When we entered the terminal 1B lounge we got shocked. It was packed, all seats full and lots of people resting on the floor too (like the pre-Lalu railway stations). After waking around a few minutes with our loaded trolleys I decided it was time to play my cards. I walked up to a couple of policeman guarding the area and sought their help for a couple of seats. They promptly woke up a couple of guys (who were sleeping on several chairs) and got us two adjoining seats. That was quick action, and, believe me, they were embarrassed when I thanked them ( may be they do a mostly thankless job, I wonder). We had some cool mineral water and a some good coffee. After an hour or so I walked up to the security personnel who were standing on guard at the entrance to the check-in lounge and asked them if we could go in and relax. They told us to come back at 3-30am and we were allowed inside when we went back later. There were these guys with the Jet airways badges who took our luggage and put it through the security check and to the check-in counter.

At our counter, an young man checked our e-tickets and passports and printed the boarding passes. I thought it was pretty fast. Then he kept on trying , for the next five minutes, to get our baggage tags and failed. I asked him what the problem was and he said that the machine is printing the tags but not releasing them. I suggested to him that he should get our tags from the next counter and do his trials later on. For good measure, I added that we have been traveling for nearly twenty plus hours and pretty tired. That had the desired effect and our tags were given with no further delay !!!!!

We then went through the security check with our cabin baggage and found that there were separate Qs for ladies and gents. We both had to take our laptops out of their bags and put them back in after the check (but that is an international practice these days) and there was nothing to complain about.

We were very happy to find that we walked into more spacious , better maintained lounge with comfortable seats. Most important was the toilets were well maintained, had paper and operating flush!!!! And this was our first opportunity to get out of the thermals (for the record, it was -4C in Chicago when we left). We had more coffee ( I thought Rs 25/ for a small cup was pretty expensive).

When our flight was announced we walked to the gate but the security there stopped my wife because her strolley was not stamped. We had to go back and put it through the security check again and get it stamped again. What upset me a little was no body said sorry!!!!.

The Jet Airways flight was half empty and both of us were eagerly looking forward to a hearty breakfast (having skipped the last meal on AMS-Delhi leg). The flight took off on time and in no time the breakfast trolley appeared. When we said veg , the young lady offered us a choice of ‘south indian’ or ‘north indian’, we said ‘south’ hoping to get some vada or dosa. Next minute she checks up and says only north is available. When I said she shouldn’t have offered us a choice, she demurred and said sorry (rather sweetly). Anyway, we had a hearty breakfast and enjoyed it.

We landed at Shmashabad at 8am , a clear 20 minutes ahead (obviously no air traffic delays at Shamshbad and that may not be good news for GMR!!!!!). When we walked out of the aero bridge we were offered a ride on the cart (mercifully) and the guy dropped us right at the lift which took us one level down to the baggage area. There , we took our heavy bags off the conveyor (courtesy a fellow passenger) . We had another smiling porter help us with the trolley and our folks were waiting outside to receive us. Keep it up, Shamshabad!!!!!.

As we were driving home around 9am on a Sunday , the heat and dust hit us pretty badly (after six months of controlled atmosphere). As we passed by , it occurred to me that the PV Narasimha Rao Express Highway looked the same (not much progress!!!!!!).

As we neared home lines from an old song was ringing in my ears “ Aye mere pyare watan…….”

HEAT AND DUST ,
TRAFFIC AND NOISE,
PROBLEMS GALORE…….
BUT WE ARE HAPPY TO BE BACK HOME!!!!!!!!!!