Had to
travel to Hyderabad the other day… Was shocked at the airport itself, trying to
enter. At the entrance they asked if I had the Digi Yatra app and I said no,
and they looked with pity at an old man. Then asked me to queue up “there”…
“There” was a melee, many folks, all confused, waiting for something. I too,
joined them. A young man asked me to step on a pair of shoes painted on the
floor, and then viola !! They took a mugshot. Gave me a small slip with a QR
code. Asked me to go to a hi-tech gate with Perspex leaves. Another young
fellow snatched the slip with the QR code, put it on the reader, and wow !!
Another mugshot !! The leaves opened and I was allowed to enter the hallowed
terminal. (I just wonder what could
happen, if I had decided to go home after those two mugshots… A red alert
across the city ?? I wonder…)
The rest
of the experience was routine – just like in the past. There is this budget
airline that always lectures us poor souls on the virtues of being on time but
is almost always late by more than fifteen to thirty minutes. This time they
had messaged that the flight would be leaving ten minutes early for “operational
reasons”, but took off about twenty minutes behind schedule – again for
“operational reasons”, I suppose.
Things
were OK, till we were in mid-air, when they served me the pre-ordered food. It
was supposed to be chicken paprika sandwich. Two bites, and I had molten lava
going down my system. They did not serve coffee or tea because of some
turbulence; had given me water only, which is not affected by turbulence.
I studied
the package. The sandwich contained chicken along with all the reputed spices
from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, mixed of course with a host of numbered chemicals.
The poor chicken which had given up its life to grace my sandwich never got a
chance to make its presence felt amidst that battalion of spices. The coffee
came quite a while later, when the pilot decided that we had had enough of
turbulence. By that time the chicken molten lava sandwich was almost finished,
and I had water running down my eyes and nose… Possibly ears, too – did not
check.
In all my
decades of air travel, airline food has always been bland, with some sauces
added to get a feel of taste. This was a commando operation by a budget airline.
Rajiv
Gandhi international Airport at Hyderabad airport is now all snazzy and
beautifully done, but designed to make all people passing through it, healthy.
Very healthy indeed, by forcing them to walk through its carefully designed
halls. We all walked for more than 15 minutes to reach the luggage carousel,
hoping that the luggage would have arrived by then, but no !! We had to wait
for another thirty minutes or so for that. I have decided to rename RGIA as the
EWEW airport (Endless Walk, Endless Wait).
The return
leg was not so bad. The security personnel at EWEW airport were much more
professional and elegantly graceful in handling an old fellow without the Digi
Yatra app.
