So yesterday I travelled alone on a flight for the first time... yes I guess shocking when I'm 19 (a friend of mine was 6 when she travelled alone on a flight for the first time). Anyway it was an exhilirating feeling. I don't think it was about flying per se... it was more about the solitude and the 'alone' time. Some time ago I had been scared about being 'alone'... now I think I value the away time. Yesterday was a fun day! I window shopped at the airport (BIAL should get more shops in my opinion), had a sinful delight (a chocolate ice cream milk shake :D I'm not supposed to have milk, especially cold milk), sat at the terminal and read a book after the longest time (Atonement, by Ian McEwan, nice :)), watched Friends on the flight (Kingfisher! Ok i usually go home either by IndiGo or Spice, but this time this was the only flight at the convenient time :P), watched bits of Pardes and Shahrukh singing 'Yeh Dil...Deewana' (sigh), and ate chocolate cake (another forbidden fruit!), the rest of the food sucked. I loved it. There are so many million trillion zillion things one can do when one's alone, it's beautiful. I like things to be the way I want them to be, obviously. However when X and Y are also involved in whatever you're doing, you have to be nice and sensitive and mindful of what they think or what they want ... or you're being 'watched'! When one is alone one can do whatever one wants...... you're literally creating your own world, and hence you are responsible for whatever you do... it's a nice feeling :) I love being around people, some people... but I love my own private space too, behind closed doors, oblivious to the world.
Ok now for the other disconnected observations.
1. At BIAL (basically B'lore airport), when one is being frisked (the word has a certain criminal connotation to it, I agree) before one enters the check in area, there is only one entrance for women but some three for men. End result - women have to wait in the single queue for AGES while the men get in way faster. I think I've mentioned this somewhere else too, I'm not a hard core feminist (I don't know what I mean exactly by that... but still!).. however how blatantly gender biased can one get?! So the BIAL admin thinks that women don't travel?! SO weird! So that's the second suggestion for change on my part - make the no. of frisking counters equal for men and women!
2. Ok so I was frisked...and I cleared it, but my purse didn't. I was worried. I had kept a metal chain inside (the one with which one locks their luggage in a train), had forgotten to remove it, so it got confiscated. In the process however, the checking lady emptied the entire contents of my purse. I was SO embarrassed. It was as if a part of me was being exposed to the world - little slips of paper of great meaning, tiny trinkets which were gifts from friends, a comb, a hair band, two diaries and lots of other things which I wouldn't mention here, EVERYTHING was taken out! There's this saying - the eyes are the windows to one's soul. Well I would say, so is a woman's purse for her! I have this habit of collecting and keeping stuff (as a kid I was a like a little magpie, everything which seemed precious to my five year old self would go into my 'magic' box... so whenever my parents or brother lost something, they would never forget to check my box.. no I am not a thief now!).. I'm trying to discard things now, but it's slow process... so now my purse often replaces my magic box :)
3. The totally disconnected observation. Our Minority Affairs Min, Antulay is, to use a law school term, quite a 'prick'. By flouting conspiracy theories about the awesome cop Karkare's death, he's made a smooth move for himself. However it's jeopardising our anti-terrorism campaign and how. The Times of India has a column called 'The Pak Express' or some such thing - it basically chronicles news reports from Pakisatani newspapers like Dawn. So today I read the column - and these newspapers are questioning India's locus standi vis-a-vis pointing fingers at Pak for its failure to ban the terrorist outfits in their backyard. There's this one newspaper which is questioning India's 'secular' credentials (the conspiracy theory is that Karkare - who was investigating the Malegaon blasts, allegedly carried out by Hindutva organisations - was deliberately taken to the wrong hospital or some such thing, and this was rigged by the aforementioned orgs). I agree that India is not the most secular state - the Godhra riots are the biggest testimony to that. Nonetheless, there is always a time for saying some things. In my opinion, given the gravity of the Mumbai blasts (horrific, depressing, devastating... words are not enough to describe them) India needs to adopt a hardline stance towards curbing terrorism. Given this, when a Union Min comes forth and says that not Pak but an Indian outfit is responsible for the super cop's death, it's a clear breach of the idea of collective responsibility. Yes the theory needs to be investigated, but it can be done discreetly initially. And it's not as if the man really cares for the minorities. As MJ Akbar's written in this artice in the Sunday Times, the man has the unique distinction of being the first Union Min Affairs min who has done nothing for minorities. For Antulay, it's about pure vote bank politics and self aggrandisation. He's himself said in an interview that before this he was nothing, and now he's all important. Congress has to think twice before they can remove hm because he claims that the minorities love him. It's a well planned move. Smart, slick and sick.
