Running through the airport
A biopsychosocial analysis of the daunting airport experience
Flight-time. It’s time to take a flight. Time to leave 3 hours early and still be late. Time to walk through the hellscape that some people call an airport.
You wake up early. You get your luggage together, which is basically one bag that is so damaged it looks like it’s a souvenir from World War I and another shoulder bag that you got from a campus placement drive- because you get so many cool goodies at those places. So many cool things except a job.
Excluding the 15 kgs of bhujia that your mom asked you to carry for relatives, you’re well within the luggage limit. Packed and ready to go, you book a cab. The app says 10 mins. Fine. You wait for 10 minutes and call the driver, only to hear him say that yeah, he’s almost there, he just needs like 12 more minutes. Hearing the silent FU hidden somewhere in his words, you cancel the shit out of the cab, permanently delete the app and decide to take an auto.
Caked in sweat and dust thanks to the pleasant city weather, you finally reach the airport and struggle for a few seconds, trying to decipher which gate you should enter from. It’s a useless decision to spend time on, but like in most other trivial life events, you love doing some computational psychoanalysis to arrive at a game-theoretically informed decision. Gate 3 you decide, even though not a single living organism in the universe gives a flying shit about your choice.
You head there, only to encounter a queue that doesn’t seem to have any order. You start a different line and are confident of getting in soon until a middle-aged woman blasts you with a don’t-you-have-any-manners speech that reduces your self-esteem to sawdust. Insulted, you take a mile-long walk to the end of the line, being the subject of numerous death stares and even an Insta Reel that’s already going viral because of the brutal beatdown.
After what seems like a millennium, you finally reach the entrance. You show your boarding pass, and the guard is pissed. They want to see your identity proof. Seeing how nervous and fidgety you are, some more documents are requested. You’re asked to show your Aadhar card, PAN Card, Aadhar-PAN linkage proof, triple-vaccination document, sperm count certificate, and numerous other papers that are already fossilized somewhere on the planet. Naturally, these things send you on a digital wild goose chase which frustrates the passengers behind you, who are all about to miss their goddamn flights. A riot breaks out and the officer is forced to let you in.
Fumbling with a hundred things, you rush to check in your luggage and realize that the queue is longer than the one you experienced at Tirupati. It’s easily going to be a few hours before you can get the boarding pass. You start praying to God for things to move faster, going to the extent of making fake promises like “If I am able to board this flight, I’ll quit drinking”. Those appeals to supernatural forces seem to be working, as a new queue opens and up and suddenly hundreds of people ahead of you rush there, creating a stampede + civil war of American proportions.
Seeing a lucky opening due to the intensifying battle, you rush ahead and are finally able to get your stuff checked in. The attendant feels sorry to see your grandfather-era bag and even offers a 100 rupee note for some repair work with the local mochi. Offended, you leave right away and rush to the security check area, ignoring all the seductive premium credit card pitches with legendary self-control.
The people density in the security check area shocks you. The last time you’d seen so many humans in a single patch of land was at Kurla station when you’d gone to complain about your stolen Nokia. Of course, the complaint was never registered because the time-cost of doing so was more than the phone price itself. It takes ages for you to send your hand luggage through. But when your turn for the check arrives, you’re sent back. You forgot to send a lot of crucial stuff through the scanner. You take off your laptop, belt, shoes, shirt, underwear, armpit hair, and any other thing that’s left on your body just to ensure you aren’t rudely sent back again. This time there are no issues, even though it’d have been better if you’d removed some more stuff, like your liver and gall bladder, just to be on the safe side.
The security check official then touches every part of your body, thereby becoming the first person in history to ever attempt anything like that. You’re asked to turn around because who knows- considering the amount of back fat you have, a lot could be hidden underneath. But the metal detector reveals the total absence of any explosive or useful stuff within your body. Confident that none of your pockets or shoelaces contain a neutron bomb, your flight ticket becomes one of the only things in life to receive an external stamp of approval.
Phew, you made it past the security point with ample time left. It really didn’t seem possible when you reached the airport and you feel proud. You feel like celebrating this win…because it’s the only win you’ve had in God knows how long. Suppressing all thoughts of how such trivial shit shouldn’t ever be celebrated, you decide to treat yourself to a pleasant, little visit to the lounge. But the moment you reach there, you get Deja Vu. Petrifying flashbacks of your Dadar station bullfights come to mind. You then hear angry voices- people arguing, yelling, and asking the staff why their Jayantilal Bank Platinum Card won’t work, why they can’t take 7 people with 1 swipe, and all other sorts of valid arguments.
Not interested in duking it out with aunties to grab a few pieces of chilly potato in the 3-week-old buffet, you decide to leave and have something in one of the QSRs instead. You walk to a fast-food chain and watch your jaw hit the floor and stay there. The price of a plain-ass burger wrecks the idea of treating yourself to nugget-shaped shreds. In a bid to protect your credit score, you walk away, thinking that you’ll buy food at the airport some other time when fears of a recession don’t abound.
You finally reach your boarding gate. That walk felt longer than the Dandi March and you feel proud of burning 28 calories, your personal best in the entire year’s workout log. Bad news though. The gate has changed- and the boarding has already started. Panic takes over your senses and you start running. Finally, you reach the correct gate, panting like an 18-year-old dog who has just taken two rounds of the entire society and urinated on every electric post there is to urinate on. That’s when realization dawns- the boarding hasn’t even started. In fact, it has been delayed by another 120 minutes.
All seats are taken and there’s nowhere to place your heavy backside on. You finally find a place to sit and wonder why is it that you keep chasing things in life that don’t want you. In the course of those philosophical reflections, you make some deep intellectual breakthroughs that could become the subject of a bestselling book…until a guy yells “LAST CALL FOR FLIGHT TO BANGALORE” in your face and snaps you out of your stupid reverie. You find yourself panicking, getting up and running once again- running like you always do at all those goddamned airports.
Hahaha.... full-on cheeks hurting piece of reading. 100% relatable.