VISA FREE TRAVEL

There are only two things that Indians do not take permission for :- one, to be born and two, to die. For the rest we need permission. From “higher authorities”. It is a DNA thing for us Indians.

The Indian government’s propensity to issue visas to each and every individual who comes to India from abroad is a reflection of this mentality. Visas, being bilateral fly-swatters, are therefore issued to any Indian going to any country, by all the countries of the world.

Nepal, which prides on eating buffaloes, is an exception – but then Nepal does not give one the “feel” of being in a “foreign country”. Their roads and infrastructure are just as bad as ours and perhaps, that is why we do not need visas – they do eat buffaloes, but that does not count, I guess.

The passport of the average Indian traveler therefore gets filled up with visas; then booklets have to be added, till the passport roughly resembles the British encyclopedia. Frequent travelers from India have been known to look for a cart for their passports. Visa-free travel is a novel experience for Indians. All Indians. Including me.

Now, as luck would have it, I had to go to Philippines. Checked out all places on the internet for the visa requirements. Some travel agency sites said we could get visa on arrival (VOA), some said we need to get the visa stamped from the Philippine Embassy at N. Delhi. The Embassy’s web-site said that if the Indian passport had any valid visa from US, Canada, Singapore, Schengen, and some other countries, then no visa would be needed to enter Philippines. Pretty odd, I thought for a country to ride piggy-back on others in this fashion, but in absence of any other information and the presence of the confusing items of information all over the place, I downloaded and printed the PDF document. It had nothing on it to say that it was from the Embassy.

Armed with that document and the fact that my friend & I did have valid visas from those listed countries, we set sail – or rather set afloat in the skies. Our trip plan was to go to Manila from Jakarta.

The thought at the back of the mind, like swishing tail of the cow, kept hovering around the thought that we might not be able to make it to those P-islands. But travel plans being what they are, we landed at Jakarta airport at about ten-thirty on the planned night to take the night-long flight out to Manila. There was a young kid at the airline counter, possibly his first job and most likely in the first month itself.  We told him we did not have a Philippine visa. He checked our passports and said, “No problem, Sir.” He then checked us in, gave our boarding passes while our baggage lumbered on into the black hole behind him. We heaved a sigh of relief. Went to a shop to buy water. Our throats were parched.

Within a few minutes, he called us. “Excuse me Sir, can I have your passports, please ?” We did as he asked. Drank some more water. He went over to the flight supervisor sitting at another counter. We slowly walked over.

“Any problem ?”

“No Sir… but you do not have Filipino visa.”

I fished out the downloaded document and gave it to him. He read it with interest and then asked, “But where does this prove that it is from the Filipino Embassy ?” I agreed with him that it did not.

I said,” Why don’t you go to the website ? You can see it.”

He was not interested. Asked the young counter fellow to photocopy our passports and the relevant visas. While he was gone, the supervisor explained, “You see Sir, I am not sure. Two weeks ago we had four Indians deported from Manila Immigration back to Jakarta. I had to stay back at the airport all night to send them back to India.”

“So ? Can we go or not ?”

“Please go Sir, but try your luck”, came the reply. Small comfort, that. The young fellow came back with an armful of photocopies. He had apparently made copies of all the pages of each of the passports. Gave it back to us and said, “You may proceed to the immigration counter.”

“Step 1 completed”, we thought as we cleared Indonesian immigration. We boarded the plane and the thought of what awaited us at the Philippine Immigration at Manila kept nagging us. The swishing tail got furious. Dozed off to sleep after two large glasses of wine.

We landed in Manila at day break. Had to walk almost a kilometer from the aircraft to immigration counters. “This is it”, we thought as we queued up. My friend asked me to go first.

A pretty stern-looking lady officer was at the counter. She looked at my passport of five volumes, flipped thought the pages, and asked ,”Where is your Filipino visa ?”

“I do not have one. But I have a Canadian visa. Please check the second booklet.”

She asked me to dig it out. I did, and handed the passport to her. She studied it for an agonizing while, then held it under the different lights she had around her, then scanned it.

I was sweating. Deportation was not an activity I was familiar with. It did not fall into the group of activities I normally seek permission for.

The officer quietly put a little red stamp on the passport and said, “OK, go.” I looked at the stamp carefully. It was a stay permit for thirty days. “Phew !!”

My friend had a smile on his face. After he cleared immigration he said that the moment he saw my passport being stamped, a weight lifted off his mind.

Before we picked up the baggage from the belt, we went to pee. Had to. Visa-free travel makes you do that. No permission from “higher authorities” is the cause.

***

Jolted in Jakarta

I have been travelling in and around South-east Asia for close to twenty years now, and have a fair idea of what to expect in each of the cities I keep visiting. Nevertheless, life sometimes takes unexpected twists and turns leaving you in stupefied silence with your jaws apart, like a fish on a slab of ice. This is one such incident.

As a normal practice, I book my hotel at the airport of the city I am visiting – a practice that has stayed with me from the days before the internet changed everything. (I am actually a dinosaur when it comes to technology).  This time too, I booked my hotel at Jakarta Airport before proceeding to the city. The agent asked me to pay the full amount for the three days to him and gave me a slip to be presented to the hotel.

I happily took the slip and went off into the wonderful city of Jakarta, with its wide, tree-lined boulevards and glitzy high-rise buildings, and the stop now – start now traffic that can try the patience of even the magnificent statues you find at every major crossing.

The hotel was wonderful – I gave the slip at the reception and asked if I could extend my stay if needed. They said that the tariff would be thirty per cent higher for the extension period as the rate I had got, could be had from an agent only. Interesting, I thought.

Well I decided to move to another hotel after the third day. Got it booked over the internet. On day three, went down to the reception to check out. They returned the deposit I had made and said, “Thank you, Sir”.

“What ? A checkout bill for the three days ?” was my startled query.

“Sorry, Sir, we cannot give you a bill for that rate. You need to get the bill from the agent.” To say I was stunned, would be an understatement. This had never happened before.

The agent had given me his business card. I called him up. He heard the story and said, “No problem. You can collect a receipt from my counter at the airport.”

“How long will you be at the counter ?” I asked. “Three p.m.”, he said. It was already twelve-thirty.

Had a quick lunch at a restaurant, packed my bags into a taxi, went to the next hotel, dropped off the bags with the concierge there, and headed out for the airport. It took us more than an hour through the trundling pace of Jakarta traffic and was past two-thirty when we reached there.

Then came the most challenging part. The taxi had dropped me off at the departure area, saying he did not have permission to go to the arrival area. Waited for a while, then walked through an automatic no-entry door as people were coming out. Asked an airport employee the way to the arrival area. He showed a staircase to go down.

Went down to the international arrival area, then walked out. The Agent’s counter was in the domestic arrival area. Walked the hundred meters or so to that part and then again walked through an automatic no-entry door as people were coming out. 

The agent’s counter at last.

Found two different people sitting there. Showed one of them the card I had been given and asked about him – the fellow who had done my booking. “He will come at three p.m., his duty starts then”, came the reply.  Talk about language barriers !!!

I braced myself for the worst. Slowly I explained everything to these two gentlemen and my need for a receipt. Showed them the passport, gave them the name of the hotel and relevant dates. They peered into their computer for an agonizing while. Then came the smile. It could mean anything – experience has taught me that.

One of them said, “OK Sir, we have it.” A few minutes later I had the receipt in my hands.

Phew !!! Heaved a sigh of relief. And noted that it was one more lesson learnt.

On the way back was enjoying the latest cars on Jakarta roads…

***

Of doctors and medical exams…

I am not sure about you readers, but I am really afraid of doctors. Really. And mortally. If they are private practitioners, they have this something about their smiles as you enter their chambers, that immediately rings alarm bells in your brain. No - that’s old-fashioned, these alarm bells… My brain goes “Gunka – bleep”, “Gunka–bleep”…. like my son’s toy flying saucer.

And if they are in a government hospital, their bored expressions (Sh** !! Yet another patient !!!) and their “one-prescription-fits-all” approach can make you lose faith, among other things, in God…. (I assume you lost faith in the government too long ago to matter…)

I have this habit of visiting my dentist with clockwork regularity every fifteen years or so. The last time I had a terrible toothache and could barely eat, was also the last time my wife dragged me to the fellow in pretty much the same way my mom had dragged me to kindergarten many years earlier. I was bawling on both occasions…

This guy stuck a steel prop into my mouth and looked around. I could see his eyes positively begin to shine at the thought of all that lucre in there, waiting to be excavated… He gave me an injection on the gums, then said “Excuse me,” and walked away to make a call… I could not hear the conversation, but I am dead sure he was calling his wife to tell her, “Darling, I can now buy all the sarees you wanted for this Puja and the next.”

In the meantime there I sat, my steel-strutted mouth wide open, with saliva slowly starting to drool out as I gradually became jaw-less … Then he returned, the smile on his face was a wide grin now, as he extracted two of my teeth…. The medication followed, and the pain went away….

He had asked me to return two weeks later for the other set of teeth.  But like you all, I do love my teeth, and his wife does not need all those sarees any way…..

Then take the case of this medical check-up I had to undergo a couple of decades ago when I once qualified for a government job by mistake. There were fifteen of us who were hired, then sent off to this government hospital for the medicals. They took all our available body fluids for examination, asking us to deliver the solids the next day. They then told us to return on the third day. There they took each one of us to separate rooms, stripped us down to our birthday suits, and poked and prodded more than my mother ever did since I was this high….

The last doctor had a frown, and I asked, “Is everything alright ?” He looked at me and said, “You guys are all job applicants, right ?” To my nod, he said, “Yes, everything is alright.”

“And what if I do not take the job ?” I asked again, and regretted it immediately, looking at the deeper frown on his face. “Then too, you are fine !!” was his retort, as he muttered to himself, “Why do they keep sending these healthy young fellows to me ?”

Today I sympathise with him – he would not have had much of a medical practice, if all he got to see were healthy young fellows….

Last winter I went to my local physician for a check-up and there was this lovely young thing in the waiting hall. I got to observe her for quite a while before the doctor called me in. He checked me up, commented on my racing heartbeat, and recommended an ECG, which of course, came out all normal because the PYT was no longer in sight and the technician was a tall moustached fellow with the build of a wilted asparagus. There is a thing about these pretty young things, you know, particularly as one approaches middle age….

The most terrible of these physical examinations was the one I had undergo to obtain a work permit for another country…. In addition to all those things mentioned before, I had a separate session with the proctologist, who, though very professional, stuck a fibre-optic cable based torch and camera into you-know-where and displayed the results on a large TV screen for all the lady nurses behind the partition to see…. (I guess he was taking a class at the same time…)

Oh !!! I could have died a thousand deaths if only that TV went kaput…. It did not. All I did was blush, lying there, while he went about it with the gusto of an archaeologist looking for the Dead Sea scrolls.

***

Doctors, like lawyers, call their vocation a “practice”. 

I understand “practice” being a valid description for lawyers because they relieve you of your money without any tangible output, with practiced ease. But doctors ? They are supposed to “practise” on you ??? And are their waiting halls an integral part of their “practice” ? Delayed appointments and unending waits are all part of a grand design by these fellows so that you end up being as resistant to suggestions as a sponge…

What would happen if engineers “practised” too ? Imagine a bridge or a dam being built as a “practice”……. The entire civilisation would be up in arms over it. No, no, that would never do.

Engineers are required to be precise – even if they are wrong. Unlike doctors – right ?

***

75 minutes

Our son, all of fifteen years, wanted to watch a cricket match live, at the Eden Gardens Stadium, Kolkata. He said all of his friends had been there at least once, while he was yet to start. We initially said no, but had to give in to his persuasion. He organised the ticket, a couple of his friends, and decided to go. He wanted to carry a cell-phone, to which we said “no” again, and he relented, thinking it was the lesser of the battles. The other two boys who went with him were perhaps, a couple of years older, and both had cell-phones.

About an hour after he left home that Saturday afternoon, the skies darkened and let loose a violent rain-and-thunder squall. We were worried that he would reach Eden Gardens drenched to the skin. We sat down to watch the match on TV. The match started more than an hour late, after the rain had stopped and the field had been mopped up.

We kept watching the match on TV in the fervent hope that we would be able to see our son during one of the many camera sweeps of the crowd, but that was not to be. Around the middle of second innings, the rain came down with renewed vigour causing the match to be abandoned altogether and forcing a decision based on the now famous Duckworth-Lewis rule….

We could see the crowd slowly making its way towards the exits, when suddenly the channel switched over to the other match in Mumbai, which was just starting. That was when my wife called up one of the friends who were with our son. He said, “Auntie, we are now on our way out of the stadium, but I cannot find him, we got separated in the crowd.” I could hear my wife’s voice rising hysterically as she asked for clarifications – when did they get separated, where were they now, how did this happen, et al…. I guess she got disconnected shortly thereafter because the conversation ended abruptly.

I tried to pacify her, asked to give them some more time to come out of the stadium and try to re-group. She bit her lip and sat dumb-founded. Our daughter tried to ring up someone she knew who was a regular visitor to Eden Gardens, but that fellow had not gone for this match. Then my wife started contemplating taking a taxi and going there – an idea that was as crazy as the rapid developments that were taking place.

We called up his friends again after about twenty minutes – they said they were waiting for him at one of the gates and it was still raining heavily. Some relief there. Some twenty minutes later the fellow called up to say that our son had still not joined them and that they would be leaving for home as their parents would now start getting worried.

I always had faith that at fifteen, our son would be able to find his way around, although we had come to know that he had already spent whatever money we had given him on cold drinks and snacks and was left with only ten rupees. It was the lack of money that worried me. And it was the lack of information that made his mother almost sick.

She suddenly remembered an acquaintance who was a big shot in the management of the Eden Gardens Stadium. She called him up. He said that the stadium was empty now except for the players, and then said not to worry, he would inform the police. He called back a few minutes later to say that the police control room had been informed and they had spread the message across to all the policemen on duty to identify a fifteen year-old boy wearing the jersey of one of the teams, if he was found wandering and lost…

The rain had stopped. I was contemplating my next course of action, when the phone rang. It was from the Maidan Control Room of Kolkata Police. They took the full details and description of my son and said that they would be on the lookout.

The phone rang again. It was my son’s friends enquiring if we had heard anything. We said no, and they said they were on a bus returning home, and there was a possibility that he too had taken a bus. Then the gentleman who had informed the police, called up. He said that if our son did not return home within the next half-hour or so, we should lodge a formal diary with the police. We agreed, but deep in our hearts, there was that sinking feeling.

It is at times like these that one tends to think of the most ludicrous possibilities, and when sanity returns, think of some logical steps, only to go back to worrying about absurd things once more. For the better part of the following hour, we swung like a pendulum between a deep, gnawing regret at not having given him that cell-phone and a fervent hope that he would be intelligent enough to find his way home..

I was sitting out on the balcony, observing the rain-washed streets and the people who were passing by, thinking about the next steps, while his mother paced up and down, her cell phone clutched tightly in her hands.

The three street dogs who live in front of our house suddenly jumped up and rushed forward, and I heard my son’s voice talking to them. “He’s home”, I screamed.

He walked up the stairs and into the arms of his mother…. “I have realised today that one does not need a cell phone to survive,” was his first comment.

He then explained how, after being separated from his friends, he waited at the spot outside the stadium gates where they had planned to meet, and then, when his friends did not show up, walked up to the Esplanade Metro station, asking all the policemen on duty there, the way. At the station he asked a senior police officer for a detailed step-by-step direction to take the Metro, get off at Tollygunge station, and find his way home. The police officer was more than helpful, and thus he came home.

We called up the Maidan Control Room to inform them that the wait was over and our son was home. They said, “OK, thank you.”

I looked at the watch – we had gone through roughly seventy-five minutes of ordeal – not knowing where he was, how would he come home since he did not have enough money on him, what would he do if he was lost, since this was the first time he had gone out alone in the city, and what would we do in case he was lost….  Our son too, was shaken by the experience of trying to find his way home through that crowd. We realised it would be some considerable amount of time before he got over it, when he said that it was much better and more comfortable to watch cricket matches in the comfort of a living room, on TV.

75 minutes. We would remember that for a very long time indeed. 

THE MAID

(Note : This story was first published privately to my alumni group circa Aug. 2006.... Posting here for the first time..)

THE MAID

She was only nineteen when it happened. She met the man from her dreams, at a small nightclub on the outskirts of Manila. He said he was twenty-four, but looked slightly older. The first meeting, a second one the following week, and then she was caught in a whirlwind…. They met every evening, spent hours moving around the shopping malls, parks, holding hands, talking, caught in a time warp of their own, while the city whizzed by - a bubble-like ethereal existence, where eyes met eyes, hearts kept pounding so hard, it was difficult to breathe…

The first night together, in a small hotel room on the beach, was even more beautiful…. The moonlight streaming into the dark room, covering the satin bed-sheets with a gentle glow, the deep kiss, so deep that she gasped for breath, and then she was transformed into a woman, leaving her girlhood behind forever…. It was both painful and exhilarating, an extremely passionate moment, extremely fulfilling, something to be remembered for life.

Dreams brought more dreams with them, breaking apart and melting into each other, like billowing clouds on a windy afternoon. Or the unmindful strokes of a master painter’s brush. Everything around was so pleasant and beautiful to look at.

Then three months later, he was gone. Just that. Gone. No inkling of the impending separation, no forwarding address, no numbers to call. It tore her tender heart apart. She was pregnant.

A numbing pain only served to steel her resolve to go ahead and have the baby. It would be something to live for, something to look forward to. The economics could be taken care of later.

Her parents struggled to run the family with earnings from a small road-side restaurant with four rickety tables and a dozen aluminium chairs. They were god-fearing Roman Catholics, steeped in tradition, trying to bring up their four daughters the Catholic way. Money and food were always limited, although the place was never short of customers throughout the day. She was the eldest daughter.

Her parents were shocked, but supportive. They were always with her throughout her confinement, and very practical about things. Money was important, if the child was to be brought up properly. The desire to provide a good life to her baby and start dreaming again, helped her through the repeated waves of despondency during the long months of her wait.

One year later, she was in Brunei on a job contract, having left her three-month old baby back home in her mother’s care. She would be there for two years before she could return home for a month’s break. She had been hired to take care of a young couple’s three-month-old baby. Both had the same smile. They took to each other as if they were related. She did all the chores for the baby lovingly and dreamt her mother was doing the same for hers.

The couple was just two years into their marriage. Whenever they were at home, they would get lost in each other – a gentle caress, a soft kiss, exchanging smiles, cooking together, quite unmindful that there was someone else in the house. Someone with feelings, as well. Then there were those muted shrieks of passion from the bedroom at night. Her sleep would be disturbed.

She felt a searing pain in her chest sometimes, a few uncontrolled tears would lighten the burden. The baby was always there beside her. She hugged it and felt pacified, and then it would come back like a sledgehammer – this one was her job, she had left half her heart back home.

No man had ever touched her since that fateful day. The anger, the revulsion against the betrayal, had begun to mellow over time. She was still very young, and started to long for a man once again. Afraid to move forward, she was reluctant to hold back. Sometimes, on a lonely night, on a lonely bed, she would hug the pillow, imagining it to be the man she wanted to love. The image, always, had no face. The searing pain and the tears would return. She would fall back to sleep.

They held parties, there were many single young men around, but she was always busy with the baby. His smile made her smile, his cry made her desperate, he demanded complete attention. Always. At fourteen months, she taught the baby its first word, and wept…. She asked for permission to call home. She did. Her Mom answered. Her baby, she was informed, had already learnt quite a few words. But she could not speak to him. He was not interested.

Yet again, on a single, windswept, rainy day, her world changed. Her employer would have to return to his country, his visa had not been renewed. The baby was more comfortable with her than with its own mother. They would have to part.

***

The body wracking sobs woke her up. In the dim night-light of the room, this little baby girl was sleeping peacefully beside her. Her new employers were quite gentle – but she would have to wait another two months before she could go home to see her two-year old boy. Her pillow was wet with her tears, and she was sweating. The dream had drained her completely.

Would it always be like this ? Another household, another baby to take care of, with people leading normal lives and she lurking in the background, with a smile on her face and suppressed emotions, fractured dreams ? The past continuously fading into a hazy chiaroscuro of shapeless images ? She wanted to cry again, but the tears refused to come.

The baby woke up with a start as babies always do, and began crying. She picked her up, held her close with the intent to sing the soft tune she always had for moments like this. No sound came from her. She felt her heart, like a lump, choking her throat.

The baby fell back to sleep in her embrace. She put her gently back in her cot, and moved to the window. It was a quiet night, with the pale glow of a sinking half-moon over the horizon. In the distance, the odd car silently whizzed by on the highway. The trees outside, an ageless assembly of sentient beings, were waiting, she felt, to hear her voice. All she could do was gulp.

Two months later, she would have to start all over again to get close to her child – her own flesh and blood. She would have to laugh and sing and cry with him. And she would have only one month to do it.

She looked out of the window again. It was pitch-dark now. It was the hour before dawn.

***

RELATIONSHIPS ARE LIKE TREES..

I had gone to this party hosted at one of my friends’ house; he was celebrating a major business win… It was real stag party; none of the fellows present had brought along their wives or girlfriends or kids….

As many expats know – it was that time of the year when the schools close for a five-week break and the wives rush back to their homes in India along with the kids leaving the hubby alone…. And I will let you in on a secret – many hubbies look forward to this break… They actually find so much work to do in office that they cannot accompany their families.

And in that group there were some who had a different story to tell…. The most effervescent among them was going through a difficult divorce…. Another friend, who had already made a pile with his contracting business and football betting, was an abandoned husband – his wife had left him for “higher studies” and moved to Australia with the kid – he was on a sort of two-year notice to give up his gambling and betting habits, and drinking…. A third fellow had just come back from India; his bride-to-be had eloped with her lover the day before the marriage was to take place… While there were quite a few like me who had left their families back in India for the sake of the children’s education….

The fellow who was hosting the party was a classic case – he was from Sri Lanka, purchased property and settled in New Zealand, and had married an Australian lady; one of his daughters was doing her post graduate studies in Canada while the younger one was in college in Australia and his wife spent her time shuttling between three countries and had no time to visit him. The last time they met was at Singapore’s Changi airport, two weeks before this party – she was flying east across the Pacific to Canada; he was flying west across the Bay of Bengal to Sri Lanka.

There was one poor fellow from Bangladesh whose newly wedded wife simply refused to leave her country and accompany him…. These were the “hardcore bachelors” of that expat community – always viewed with suspicion by the wives at the regular parties ….

The exotic addition to that party was crocodile meat… Crocodile, being an endangered species, is protected in most countries that do not have a crocodile farm, and in some countries their meat is simply banned…. And yet some unfortunate crocodiles get entangled in fishermen’s nets… the fishermen sometimes do have to kill them to protect their catch and the nets; and then they sell the meat clandestinely when they come ashore… It was through one of these channels that some crocodile meat landed up on our party table….

We had barbecued crocodile with whisky, then crocodile “nuggets” with whisky and finally crocodile curry (jhol !) with steamed rice, and of course, with no one frowning in the background, whisky kept flowing freely…

The conversation as usual was loud and covered a wide range of topics from how that particular friend had bet on a football club in some European league and won a handsome seventeen thousand dollars sitting halfway across the world and how he had followed that club for four seasons before hitting his “jackpot”, to how women in India no longer cared about expat husbands any more and were more interested in marrying IT fellows back home…

After a few rounds of whisky and crocodile meat, some became philosophical…we talked about how unfair life was for the crocodile that ended up on our table….. and something should be done about it, that being an endangered species and stuff – a conversation that was adequately stopped by more barbecued crocodile and one more round of whisky…

Then people started saying their goodbyes and leaving – they wanted to get home while they could still drive, finally leaving the stage for the five of us… we gathered together with one more round of whisky and barbecued crocodile…. And started talking about life….

And then one of them said, “Life is actually like a tree; you need to decide what kind of tree you want to become as you grow old…..” He went on to expand, “You can be a coconut tree or a casuarina tree or a banyan tree… the choice is yours…”

“If you are a coconut tree then you can be noticed from far but are not only of no use to people near you; you can be dangerous… If you are a casuarina, then you are definitely beautiful and do provide some shade to people, but the grass does not grow near your feet and many creatures shun you… Whereas if you are a banyan tree, you can touch the lives of those around you and make it beautiful for them…..”

As I drove home that night sozzled to the gills, those words rankled in my mind….. I tried putting it against the backdrop of some of the relationships that my group of friends had…. Trees ? Yes, some of those relationships were like winter trees without leaves casting scrawny, spiny shadows in moonlight, like a chiaroscuro of life that had gone awry….

But that is life, isn’t it, with its infinitely varied forms…

***

There have been many years and many parties between that one and today – but those words still haunt me as I search for my model tree….

***** 

Somoy Nei (No time !!)

Kolkata to Dhaka is a thirty-five minute flight. My ticket had been booked for the late afternoon, on a 48-seater, twin-propeller aircraft. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it was overtaken in mid-flight by a flock of geese, also presumably flying to Dhaka. The disgusting part was that the geese not only overtook us, they flew above us …. One of those fellows perhaps even cocked a head to look back at us…. but I will discount that piece…

On board we were greeted by 1.582 air-hostesses – the decimals attributable to the thinnest lady I have ever seen in my life – almost a sari-clad fountain pen, and taller than me. A gentleman is not supposed to discuss a lady’s vital statistics in civil conversation, but there are always exceptions - in this case the numbers should read 25-25-25 – if my eyesight has not forsaken me….. She was ideally suited for that kind of aircraft, with its narrow aisle.

As the plane started to rumble on the tarmac, she came along with a cardboard tray; I asked what she had and she said supari and toffees and that I should hurry up with my choice – “somoy nei.” Then, after the obligatory pantomime on safety measures, we took off. Within minutes, the captain’s voice could be heard telling us that we would be flying at 13,000 feet and “Inshallah” we would be landing at Dhaka in about twenty-seven minutes. “Inshallah ? Whatever happened to navigation instruments, GPS and the ATC network ?” I began wondering.

The air-hostesses began serving refreshments, and I asked what it was, and the thin one said non-veg and I should hurry up because, “somoy nei”. Half-way through my samosa she cleared my tray with a casual “May I?” but I was not looking at her, the geese overhead, by this time, had my attention – what with bird hits being the “in thing” these days…….

Then began the short descent – with the ground kind of rushing upwards, the other air-hostess spoke over the PA system that we were due to land “Inshallah” at Dhaka’s Zia International airport. “Inshallah ? When the ground is rushing up to meet you at over two hundred kilometres an hour ?” I bit my lip.

In all my travels before, I have never seen aircraft wheels actually make contact with the runway while landing – now I did, and, believe me, it was scary – a fear multiplied many times over by the captain and crew’s constant “Inshallah” refrain. We reached Dhaka forty-five minutes behind schedule. And she was saying, “Somoy nei.”

I was braver on the return flight, now that I sort of knew what to expect. I met her tray half-way and picked up the toffee with alacrity, and when they served the food, tore the sandwich with both hands to gulp it, dropped the samosa to the floor in the process, pocketed the chocolate bar for my kids – in short, managed to clean up my tray before they yanked it away. Superman could not have done it faster. Did not give her the chance to say, “Somoy nei.”

We reached Kolkata – a thirty-five-minute flight, seventy-five minutes late….. Cannot write much more about a 35-minute flight…. Oto somoy nei….

Next time I’ll take a jet to reach Dhaka. And beat the geese to it. 

Inshallah.