Airport Diaries

Every place has a pulse throbbing underneath.. a heart beating within..be it a hardcore stone hearted city like Delhi or a soft shy coy Elizabethan maiden like Barapani..once you feel the pulse.. you start vibrating with the same frequency out of habit may be and then.. if you dare ..you fall in love. May be with the beauty, may be you begin to touch the heart within and may be simply you have no other option..and things begin to work out just like an arranged Indian marriage does!! A stupid analogy may be..but then trying to make the best of what one has...or to lay contented with what destiny has offered..or to try to explore discover and if not anything else than grumble, sulk..all these somehow compares to one analogy..

Anyway in this land.. hope against hope is my new found ' friend' rather companion..almost a decade younger than me ( as per her statement) , my Malayali colleague struggling in the Khasi land with her language, with her food habits, struggling with the severe cold hitherto unknown to her, with her new job, with her stern bosses. Looking at her..I somehow doubt whether my company really have a HR policy where H stands for Human ( Please pardon me AAI.. with all due regards to everything you have given me till date)..a twenty three year old Malayali girl from Kottayam ,engineer by profession.. has her first posting in Barapani Airport..of all the places..and of all the directions  (southwest to north east)..Wonder how much travel allowance AAI has to pay her.. She is my companion for morning walks..( one walk a month..that,s a different story)..where we did yoga in the Runway(Hope higher authorities are not reading). Can't help mention just as we were into ' Balasan' ( our favourite one..lie on your stomach with knees curled up.. like a child) a flight hovered above and she stared at me for a moment before breathing ' Run' (:P)...Well, well a tried and tested air traffic controller like me was taken in by the ' Run'' before ATC sense poured in " This is an overflying aircraft.. it wont land...watch opens at 9:30" I convinced myself before convincing her as we watched the plane fly away..... and faces lighting with dismay replaced by laughter....

She turned out to be my saviour, tea biscuit breaks in office, long evening walks, long chats, our worlds were different..a Kerela village with hardworking mother and siblings in financial constraints..and my world in bits and parts..parents coming in sometimes, reminiscent of childhood days  only the child now replaced by my toddler, tussle between mother and maid.. and..the husband... alienated with his daughter and wife, but not sure whether to feel pity for him..as every weekend a new movie , or the same movie twice, a new restaurant..freedom I guess. And yes I am not disliking the freedom as well, books, net ( though service is very erratic), little bit of blogging, some diet of daily soaps with Ma, getting in touch with the sweet sounds of the languages I knew so well since childhood, the taste of childhood food and vegetables and the rains..incessant,nostalgic.

A dash of Kerela, a pinch of Delhi, bits of Guwahati..in the rain kissed hills of Barapani...while we count our days for the end of a year and the end of an exile.

Excerpts from my one year stay at an airport in a distant corner of the country...