The Terminal

The burning hot chai-in-matka on Platform no. 2 of Jharsuguda Railway station was soothing to the esophagus on this cold January evening. Unusually, there seemed to be more people on the platform than in the whole of Jharsuguda, all rearing to have a go at any train that would wade its way through the platform. I only hoped they were not waiting for mine. As luck would have it, my train Azad Hind Express from Pune was dot on time. But, the three of us were flabbergasted to find our seats occupied. As one can expect such abnormalities to happen in Odisha, we should not have been as shell-shocked as we were. It is way of life there. Survival of the fittest is bred since the time they are born and all they do is fight for rights which were rightfully theirs while exploited by others. I am no Maoisht (MB ishtyle) in voicing my opinion, but just one of those spineless citizens who adjusted himself to the presented hostility to move ahead. There were three of us – Mukundh, Monica and Tippu called the MMT trio who booked their tickets through MMT (makemytrip.com) as we shared the same traumatic experiences with rest of the Internet-enabled Indians in booking railways tickets. So, come what may, we would have to take the train to reach Calcutta the next day morning. In Azad Hind express, there was no Azadi to express anything. We got a small portion of our seats to ourselves and sat down dreading an awful night ahead.

One of the few things that I like about fellow Indians is their urgency to portray their machismo. The lady of the trio got her berth all to herself thanks to the growling from fellow passengers that they must atleast let a girl sleep comfortably although they tampered with the sleeping pattern of others. Somehow we reach Howrah. The truss balanced bridge, once known to be of Cantilever in design is the first thing that you see when you step out of Howrah station. And, of course the Yellow Ambassadors if you are not color blind. Although I am a pseudo-Bengali having spent four years in the second biggest city of Paschim Bengal, I have never been to Dum-Dum airport to take a flight for myself. I have been there to drop those filthy rich Muscatian friends (Yeah Sangeet, it’s you) or the diseased friends who needed immediate medical attention down south. So, here I was, to talk to the Bihari/Jharkhandi/UP cab drivers in broken Bengali, negotiate a rate and reach Dum-Dum as early as possible. If I was given an alternative, I would have optimized the route by taking a ferry to Babughat, strolled through the High Court lanes where you find more number of typists sitting on the platform than the cha-dukkans and reached Esplanade Metro Station. From Esplanade, I would have taken a Metro to Dum-Dum and then taken a shared cab to Airport entrance (and walked a kilometer to reach). The whole exercise in 2006 would have cost me Rs. 32.50, with the Rs. 2.50 for the matka chai. But, here I have to guide the MMT trio to Dum-Dum with as less dissonance as possible.

Our flight to Chennai was at 1140 hours and the sun had just risen at 0520 hours. Quite some time to kill. With the “kotho lagbe” and “taratari chalon”, we reached Dum-Dum at 0600 hours. Quite early for a 1140 flight! We thought of settling down at the Departure section, but found no place. Wading our way through the airport, we reached a virgin section of the airport where there were empty seats. To add to our joy, there were empty power sockets too. We had the over-priced breakfast, over-priced chai, but when it came to water, we were as chindi as possible by filling our empty Rail Neer water bottles. For some weird reasons, there were no announcements made. Hustle-bustle of crowds started. Very few were had chosen to sit; predominantly it was the floating crowd making much of the noise. It was getting very boring, when finally we decided to watch a movie. I had a copy of Kamal Haasan’s comedy riot, Panchathanthiram. We laughed and laughed and laughed. There is a not-so-common belief that too much laughter makes Karma bite us in the ass, but who cares about the pitfalls when the going is good. Finally, when the movie reached its half-way mark, we took a break to check on why there were no announcements made.

It was 1115 and yet, there were no announcements. Weird right? We repacked and, deciphering the undecipherable signs in the airport, we reached the Jet Airways desk. We showed our tickets and got a smirk from the other side of the counter. The smirk turned into a grin and then a smile. I smiled back. With her fake accent, the Jet Airways attendant told me that the flight was closed for boarding. I couldn’t get any clue of the technicalities. And when I told her that, she put it in lay man terms saying that we have missed our flight. With all guns blazing, I asked her a simple question, “How can I miss my flight when I am 20 minutes before departure?” The IRCTC guy in me crash opened my chest to come out with this logic. Things can get really embarrassing if you don’t read the fine print on the tickets. Like they say at the end of a Mutual Fund ad, “Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risk. Please read the offer document carefully before investing.” It holds true. “Report to the check-in counter minimum 50 minutes before the Departure time. Boarding closes 15 minutes prior to departure.” Adding insult to injury, the person sitting in the next Jet counter told us, “I saw you guys sitting in Arrival. I thought that you were waiting to receive someone.”

Ah. Now it dawned on us. We were watching the movie sitting in the Arrival area oblivious to our surrounding. And that was why there were no announcements. But, I still contend the logic of having heard no announcements of even those flights arriving in as well. Nevertheless, Jet agreed to pay to full refund as the flight was overbooked as they didn’t lose any revenue. We later booked an evening SpiceJet flight, for double of Jet’s price. Since our flight was in the evening, we continued with the movie, this time from Departure. With Panchathanthiram done, we went on to watch another movie - Tom Hanks’s starrer “The Terminal”. Frankly there was not much of a difference between the second movie and what we went through!