Are you okay travelling in Air India? It was a tough question to answer especially when one has to spend 15 and a half hours in an Air India flight. But then I had never experienced 15.5 hours of travelling in Air India and had only heard of other's narrations about the experience. So, I said okay. I was in Bangalore and had to fly to Delhi to board this long-haul flight. From there the fifteen and a half hour flight was supposed to take off three hours later. A day prior to the travel data, I got an email from Air India informing me that the flight from Delhi was delayed by three hours. This meant that I reached my final destination at 10 pm instead of 6:40 pm. That did not sound good. I would have preferred to reach in the evening rather than the night, but the choice was made and die has rolled.
The six hours at the Delhi airport was spent in having lunch, coffee, visiting restrooms, editing the book and watching K drama. It went away like a breeze. At the security check, the security personnel asked the old woman standing beside me to open her bag for checking. Many food items including two bags of bitter gourd emerged from the bag. The man said, "I am looking for chillis". The woman said "There are no chillis. I have some paratha and pickles. Do you want some son?" He responded "No aunty, I brought lunch from home. Where are you going?" She responded, "To Oman, to meet my son".
Later, I walked towards a lounge. I showed the set of cards I had and asked, "Will any of this allow me entrance into this lounge?" She looked at each and commented "This can only be used in airports outside India. This one will require you to pay 3700 rupees for two hours. This one requires 3000 for two hours." I sighed in disappointment and said "Okay, I will pay 3000 rupees." She said, "Do you want to check the lounge because we don't refund once you pay for it?" I felt insulted but realized that it is better to be insulted than pay 3000 rupees for two hours. I said it is ok and walked off. I realized that even if I make a lot of money someday, I will never be rich. I said to myself in my head "You will never drive a BMW man." A passerby looked at me quizzically. I realized that I has used my voice and not my mind voice.
At 5 pm I walked into the cordoned area around the gate for boarding the flight and sat in a chair close to the gate. Within 5 minutes we were asked to leave the cordoned area because we can only enter that area after we went through a security check. Flights to US demanded multiple levels of security checking. So, everyone walked towards the entrance of the cordoned area. It was more like an amble than a walk. Most of the passengers on the flight were elderly who carried many pieces of luggage with them. So, it took them some time to get out of the cordoned are. Actually, they did not get out of the area at all. The line started outside but soon took a U turn and came right back into the cordoned area. The entrance of the area being narrow, everyone just stood there. Soon the security personnel came and shoed everyone outside.
The queue outside was not formed like a straight line either. It was rectangular in shape with the beginning and end of the queue barely differentiable. Right outside the entrance was a drinking water fountain that was controlled by IR light. As the people, in the queue stood close to the IR sensor, water started pouring out of the tap sporadically. A person standing ahead of me felt bothered by this and tried his best to stop the water flow by touching the various parts of the water fountain. But nothing worked. So, he gave up and looked sadly at the water flowing out. I had my headphones on and so was in no position to inform him the reason for the apparent malfunction.
Right in front of me was a young mother with her five year old son, who was handcuffed to her. By handcuff I don't mean the one used by the cops. There were two soft pads that were tied around the mother's and son's wrists. The two pads were attached to each other using a thick wire that was wound in loops. The boy only had the liberty to be in a radius of one and a half metres from the mother when he stretched the loops. But that was not enough for the boy he pulled the wire to free himself off it or drag his mother with him. But he was too small and could not achieve either. Finally, he screamed and shouted in frustration. After some time, his mother gave up and took off the handcuffs. As a result, he found himself free within the rectangular queue. But he was not satisfied by that for he wanted to break out of the rectangle. But a few people who had noticed the happenings did not let him out of the rectangle. Finally, when he managed to break out of it, one person ran behind him, caught him and brought him back to the mother who promptly handcuffed him again.
By this time, the queue started moving. The old people who occupied the queue had no idea what was to be done and there were too few security personnel to manage the confusion. People did not keep their mobiles inside the bags for scanning and so were sent back by the security person checking the people with a metal detector. Some kept the bag in the Xray machine but did not wait for body scanning. Some walked through the metal detector too early. Some came out of the area after security check to go to the restroom and tried going back without checking. The security personnel became frustrated and complained "What do I do? The people don't listen to anyone ".
Many minutes later I sat down in my seat. For the first time in many years, my age was lower than average age of the people who were around me. The person sitting behind me had a loud voice and was causing a lot of confusion. One of the members in his party was assigned the seat 49E but he wanted 51E. So, he walked up and down the aisle uttering 49E and some other words in Hindi loudly. Finally, when an old lady came to occupy 51E, he asked her to sit in 49E. The lady did not seem to understand what was happening but occupied the seat 49E anyway.
The flight was filled with parents of various ages visiting their children abroad. One couple proudly announced to another "Our son is in Berklee university. We are going for her graduation." Most of them were not clear about the requirements of flying and tended to walk around even when the seat belt sign was on. The flight attendants did their best to remind them to not walk around but at some point they gave up in frustration. I also got the feeling that the captains tended to forget to switch off the seat belt signs. They probably thought anyway no one would follow the sign, so might as well leave it on.
The lady sitting next to me was filled with curiosity. She and her husband tried charging their mobile phone but were unable to insert the adapter into the plug point. A few minutes later, I charged my phone using the USB point available for charging. She observed my actions keenly, then yanked the USB chord from the adapter that her husband held and went on to charge their phone in a similar manner. Later, when flight attendant came by pushing the drinks trolley, I saw a bottle of Teachers standing proudly at the front. It reminded me of my teaching days and so I got a quarter cup of it with 3 cubes of ice. The lady looked at me intently and asked, "What is it?" I felt stumped and did not know how to respond. I finally gave the worst possible response "Alcohol, Whiskey". She covered her nose with her blanket and looked away.
I usually love the entertainment system in these long flights and end up watching three or four movies during the fifteen and half hour flight. But the entertainment system in this flight was bad. The display was not great, and the user interface was not responsive at all. I had to click a button or swipe a few times before the interface reacted. I tended to apply to much force and was worried that the screen would break. Worse still was that they gave us a low quality ear plugs for audio rather than the over the ears headphones. The audio sounded terrible coming through it. Still, I decided to watch a movie; I can't remember which one now. As the title of the movie came up, the screen went blank. The flight had just started taxiing and system had rebooted. Soon, the phrases like "Starting system", "Starting Android", "Initialising application" appeared successively on the screen. Finally, the welcome screen appeared. Once again, I touched and swiped multiple times to restart the movie. But the screen went blank again. I gave up. I was reminded of a similar experience I had many years back. When the screen came back on, I decided to watch the flight path and details of the flight. Though there was an option to see this information, the application informed "Information not available". I switched the monitor off and took out my mobile. I started watching the two downloaded episodes of "Extraordinary Attorney Woo".
At some point during the flight I noticed the person sitting diagonally across the aisle, a fair old man, dressed in traditional north Indian attire. I noticed that he was looking through the movies available in the entertainment system. There was nothing odd with that except for the fact that all the information about the movies were written in Korean. I looked at him and wondered if he could be a Korean who had lived in India for many decades. It did not seem so. His attire and haircut were too desi for him to be anything but a desi. A little later I saw that an episode of the 'Big Bang Theory' was running on his screen but I was not sure if he was watching it or not.
Three hours into the flight, the two episodes that I had downloaded had been watched and dinner was consumed. I had nothing to do other than sleeping and listening to music. I am not sure how much I slept but it was more than usual though the sleep itself was not comfortable. Nearly 16 hours later after the flight landed, the lady sitting beside me asked "You have water?" When I said yes, she stretched out her hand. For a moment I was tempted to say 'No, that water is mine" but then I remembered that I was old and had to be benevolent. Besides I had another half a bottle of water. So handed over the full bottle of water to her. She grabbed the bottle from my hand and without thanking me handed it to her husband. I was not too bothered by her lack of courtesy. They had boarded the flight from Delhi and nothing better could be expected from her. I decided that I should avoid taking internation flights into and out of Delhi and started deboarding.
