Plane speaking

My love of travel is exceeded only by my hatred of airports and airplanes

I don't know about you but I have stopped taking flights while wearing boots, no matter how cold the climate. I have learnt the hard way that boots and airport security does not go well together. After being humiliated time and again in the security queue -- struggling to take off my boots while impatient passengers tut-tut behind me and then struggling to put them on after they have journeyed through the X-ray machine -- I shifted to ballet flats while navigating airports. So, I would sail through smugly while other people wobbled from one foot to another to take off their shoes.

But, as the saying goes, pride comes before a fall. And this time, transiting through Heathrow, I got my comeuppance. No, I wasn't asked to put my shoes through the X-ray machine. But as I went past the security scanner, the lady at the other end indicated that I should place my feet on a small stool so that she could swab my shoes. She then took the swab and ran it through a curious contraption placed on the side. I looked closer and was horrified to read the words "Explosives scanner" written on it.

Never have a few seconds passed so slowly. I gazed anxiously at the machine, willing it to hurry up. And finally, there it was: a negative test result.

Phew!

I don't what it is about security queues at airports but you can't help feeling a bit guilty even if you haven't done anything wrong.

But the authorities weren't done with me as yet. As I walked up to collect my cabin baggage, I realized that it had been pulled aside as well. The gentlemen at security asked if I could open it. I dutifully did so, he rummaged though it. I thought I had passed and went to pick it up. But no, wait, he needed a run an "Explosives check" on my bag as well.

By now I was probably looking as guilty as I felt -- these damn security queues will do that to me every single time -- but this test came up "Negative" as well.

So, I calmed my beating heart, collected my stuff and scuttled off wondering what exactly had triggered this completely 'random' check. Was it the colour of my skin? Was it my Middle-Eastern eyebrows? Was it the long black overcoat that could pass off as an abaya? Or was it just 'random' bad luck?

I don't really know what it was this particular time but I have lost count of the number of body searches I have been subjected to at airports across the world. Some of them are so thorough that they could pass off as full body Swedish massages (in fact, I am often sorely tempted to tip the security agent a few dollars for doing such a good job). And some have been so 'intimate' that they have to be conducted in tiny airless rooms on the side, far away from prying eyes to preserve my modesty.

Is it any wonder then that I am becoming increasingly disenchanted by this whole business of flying? Quite honestly, if I could indulge my love for travel in any other way I would give up on airports and airplanes altogether.

Because the torture doesn't end the moment you board your flight, does it? On the contrary, it starts all over again, and this time it can last for anything from two to 12 hours.

I know this is the moment when you expect me to start moaning about all those incessantly crying children, the toddlers running up and down the aisles, and the kids who spend their entire timekicking the back of your seat.

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint but those are not the (or at least, not the only) things that get my goat. It's the behavior of the adults -- who really should know better -- that gets me all worked up. Here's just a random sampling of grown-up bad behavior that I have gritted my teeth through on some recent flights.

There was the lady seated in front of me who inclined her seat all the way down even before we took off and refused to straighten it during the meal service making it impossible for me to eat lunch. When the stewardess explained the situation to her, she grudgingly took her seat up, but the moment the tray was served, down went the seat again, sending my glass of water flying. Charming.

There was the couple who conducted a long, loud, convoluted marital argument at the top of their voices on a night flight, completely oblivious of the fact that the rest of us were trying to catch some shut-eye. When some passengers remonstrated, they were met with implacable rudeness. And when the cabin in-charge tried to intervene, a full-blown row erupted, waking up everyone who had managed to fall asleep despite the noise.

But the ones I hate the most are those who spring up from their seats even before the plane has come to a complete standstill and rush to get their bags out of the overhead bins, invariably dropping them on the heads of the passengers seated below. Every time I see one of these people in action I hope and pray that they get picked out for a 'random' check at security at the next airport they transit through.

If anyone deserves a full-on body massage, they do.

Hear no evil; see no evil

The tragic death of Pallavi Purkayastha is a chilling commentary on urban life today

It’s a nightmare scenario that every woman replays ever so often in the dark corners of her brain – along with the fevered prayer that it never comes true. But for Pallavi Purkayastha, that nightmare became all too real when she was attacked and killed in her Mumbai apartment by a building watchman, Sajjad Ahmed Mughal, who had become obsessed with her.

It was sometime after midnight when the lights went out in her flat; she called the building’s maintenance to complain. The electricians came upstairs to repair the fault, accompanied by the watchman. When the electricians had departed, the watchman saw his opportunity. He stole the house keys, waited for a while and then let himself in to attack Pallavi, who was by then asleep in her bedroom.

He tried to rape her, she resisted; he attacked her with a knife, she fought back. He slashed her wrists and throat. Bleeding profusely, she ran out of her flat and rang her neighbours’ bell (there are four other flats on the floor; she is believed to have rung the bells outside at least two). Nobody responded. Her assailant dragged her back into her flat and continued to attack her. He then left Pallavi Purkayastha, a 25 year old lawyer with a bright and glittering future ahead of her, to bleed quietly to death. Her murder was reported only at 5.30 am when her partner, Avik Sengupta, came back home and found her lying in a pool of blood.

I can only marvel at the bravery of this young woman who fought so doggedly against a man who was holding a knife to her throat. I can only salute the courage that led her to escape his clutches long enough to run out for help. And I can’t even begin to imagine the horror of fear and desperation her last moments must have been when nobody came to her rescue.

And while we all mourn for Pallavi Purkayastha today, her death is much more than a personal tragedy for her parents, her soon-to-be husband, family and friends. It is also a chilling commentary on urban life today.

It doesn’t matter how hard you try to stay safe. You can live in a gated community, you can have private security, you can install CCTV all around, you can have intercoms to summon help. But in the end, you are on your own. You can’t rely on the security guards who are supposed to safeguard you. And you certainly can’t hope for any help from the people next door.

It has become something of a cliché now to complain about how neighbourly ties are breaking down in our metro cities, and how people are becoming increasingly anti-social. There is certainly no denying that everyone increasingly lives in isolated silos, not caring to even know the name of the person next door. We revel in the anonymity that city life affords us, allowing us to do our own thing. And while we all have stories about neighbours from hell (whose children deface our walls with graffiti; who throw garbage over their walls into our backyards; who lure our staff away; who play loud music late into the night) our choicest abuse is reserved for those who are perceived as being ‘nosey’ – as in taking an interest in your life.

I have to confess that like most people of my generation, I have always been leery about neighbours who try to pry into my business. But today, as I sit down to write this, I can’t help but wish that Pallavi Purkayastha had been blessed by such ‘nosey’ neighbours, people who were curious enough to peep out when the bell rang late at night, and who would then take the trouble to investigate if anything was amiss.

Instead, the people living on Pallavi’s floor seem to be part of the ‘let’s not get involved’ fraternity, who turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the goings-on next door, on the grounds that it is none of their business. But even so, I imagine it takes a special sort of indifference to not respond to a blood-splattered woman ringing your doorbell in the early hours of the morning; to turn away and go back to sleep even though the landing outside is soaked with blood; to not even pick up the phone and call the police control room or emergency services.

We do not know whether Pallavi’s life could have been saved if her neighbours had intervened – if not personally than by summoning help – but at least she would have died knowing that she was not alone. The knowledge that there were people out there who cared enough to come to her rescue may have been of some comfort to her as life bled slowly out of her.

And at the very least, if her neighbours had been vigilant enough – leave alone caring enough – they could have helped apprehend her attacker who dumped the murder weapon and fled the scene. It was a stroke of good luck that the police caught up with him at the train station before he boarded the train to Kashmir. But he could just as easily have gotten away – and that really does not bear thinking about.

I can only hope and pray that those people who claim to have not heard the bell ringing in the dead of night never find themselves – or their children – in trouble. And that if they ever do, they are not met with the same indifference with which they treated that desperate, frightened young woman.