by Shreya Ramachandran
[box]A scene unfolds in the Delhi international airport on an unexpectedly hot winter afternoon, and different people see it differently. Shreya Ramachandran transmits the thoughts for us in her story.[/box]The line at the SpiceJet check-in counter was long and moved slowly. The air-conditioning had broken down, and though it was December in Delhi, it was sticky and hot. Women were dressed for the wedding season: red saris, bangles from their wrists to their elbows, bejeweled clips holding their hair up, golden high heels, artfully applied make-up. The men were dressed in their staple: checked shirts and jeans that endure through all seasons and occasions. Crowds of people spread out from the longest queue, until the small enclosure was filled. The scene resembled Egmore Train Station more than Indira Gandhi International Airport: cardboard boxes wrapped with coir, dark blue canvas suitcases, boxes from sari stores and those duffel bags one always seems to acquire from various places: OneTrack Insulin Solutions. Bank of Baroda. FGC Pharmaceuticals.
At the end of the queue before it stretched to the right, a college student nudged her father, who was bitterly e-mailing his secretary to Kindly make sure business class seats are available next time – and tele-check me in.
“Pa, look…Look at that woman.”
He looked up from his phone, happening to catch the attention of the couple behind him: the husband, who was insistent on keeping his luggage trolley at a lovingly intimate distance from the father’s ankles, and the wife, who was trying to find the house key (she was sure she had packed it into the front zip of her bag). All of them looked up.
She was a thin woman in her forties, with a blue sweater on top of her kurta and her hair neatly tied into a plait that was now coming loose. Two of her fingers were heavily bandaged with white gauze, and she was talking on the cell phone while trying to zip up her suitcase.
“Pa, her fingers…”
The husband and wife were murmuring their speculations.
She’s going for a wedding. Maybe it’s her son’s, and she’s scared she won’t reach in time.
I think it’s a funeral. That’s why she looks so tense.
Maybe her husband hits her. See, her are fingers bandaged up.
She could have burnt her fingers. That happened to me once.
The woman climbed onto the suitcase, still managing to remain talking on her cell phone, and tried to weigh it down to close it. The zip would not close.
She was shaking now; her arms were unsteady and she was crying. She threw the suitcase open and lifted two plastic packets out from the top compartment and kept them in the bottom compartment. She pulled out three salwar kameez sets and kept them on the floor. She closed the suitcase again and tried to zip it up. She tried and tried again but the zip refused to close.
“Pa, she’s not able to – Pa, look.”
The poor woman, how will she close it by herself?
How much she has packed inside that suitcase!
Just by sitting on it, she can’t close it, someone tell her.
What happened to make her so upset? It can’t be just the suitcase.
“Pa, something else must have happened to make her this upset.”
A Spice Jet ground staff official came up to her with a large roll of red tape. She nodded and picked up the suitcase. The official wrapped the suitcase once, twice, diagonally, repeatedly around the zip track, and once all over again. She began crying once again, and the official looked away and picked the suitcase up to place on the conveyor belt.
“Pa, they’ve managed to close it. Isn’t that sweet of him?”
“It’s his job, kanna.”
“I know, but I think he helped her…”
It’s done! It’s closed. See, you can stop crying. Now help me with this-
I’m not crying. It’s just that she was alone.
The suitcase had been sent away, and now the woman collapsed onto the floor. The official came up to her again, giving her two baggage tags and a boarding pass. She took them, shook her head and sobbed. The official picked up her salwar kameez sets and kept them in her carry-bag. He knelt down and told her something the other passengers could not hear. He might have been assuring her that the ground staff at her destination would make sure her suitcase reached her, or that SpiceJet had a very strict policy on baggage safety. He could have been telling her that if she did not move, she would miss the boarding of her flight. She stood up, in any case, and picked up her two bags.
This is what happens when you don’t pack properly, Shwetha!
I packed properly. Your father asked me to make breakfast, how much was I supposed to do?
You’re complaining about giving an old man food? You-
“This is what happens when a middle-class woman can suddenly afford a plane ticket,” the father said. “This is what happens with low-cost airlines.”
The college student looked to the distant right. A crumpled piece of red tape lay on the floor next to SpiceJet Counter 5. The late afternoon
sun was pouring in through the windows and the student was sweating in her jacket. The father gripped the handle of his suitcase; the husband moved a lock of hair out of his wife’s eyes and kissed her forehead; the airport speakers announced boarding calls for flights to Kochi, Goa, Jaipur, Kolkata; the crowds began to disperse and the queue moved forward.
Shreya Ramachandran is a 19-year-old writer, student and world traveller from Madras.
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