Kamala

Airports are like railway stations today, some are like bus terminals/stands. Airports you find, dressed up people, surrounded by brands of eateries, L/S products, etc and the smell of the eatery. They are all the same people, who once travelled by train or buses while their young ones I felt, some who never travelled on land! 

While I enjoy the comfort of air travel, I reminisce the time drawn train journeys and hopping in buses moving from district to districts with windows blowing wind on your face, the paradigm is similar maybe for the young today :) of my age then, of air travel today to them. 

Meanwhile we have the first time travelers from airports like Kamala, the whole sequence of entry to airport then to the platform of checks and to the plane and the aspect of flying 37k feet above and the instructions and the strange food and the stoic next seater and the feeling of not being part of fellow travelers who look like you btw and the amount spent for this new mode, I can just go on more about this new flying guest ! 

In this flow of writing I recalled another montage of memory. In Chennai once, I went to a big 5 floor super mall in T Nagar. I wanted to buy a white shirt, of a popular brand which was on the 5th floor. I walked in to the entry floor to the elevators. Waiting for the elevator, I noticed this young lady in her early 20s, in a synthetic printed saree, looking lost and in anxiety by the intimidating scale of the mall, she seemed a daily wage earner of her family. She didn’t know where to go, as in which floor. The lift attendant noticed her and in their conversation in Tamil, I heard her saying what she wanted to buy and the attendant said, go to the 1st floor. The mall had merchandise price vice on each floor.

I cannot forget her and her face even today. My heart sank forever, when she said, school uniforms for her two kids, and she I knew, is the daily earner at home and the whole world she is imagining ahead of her …., I went back to the hotel and cried that day. 

I still do when I think of her. 

Ravishankar, 11 Nov 2022 - Notepad