I stood motionless looking at the airline groundstaff woman incredulously, not knowing how to react to the words I had just heard from her. There was a faint smile on her face, a small hint of arrogance or disrespect that she and I could have done without. Her eyes, I thought, reeked of bigotry which was saying something since she was undoubtedly of Mexican descent and would have nothing, but narrow-mindedness towards her own race, as a slice of history.
“I want to speak to the manager,” I said in futility as no other words seemed occur in my mind.
“Sure,” she said picking up her walkie talkie and calling for a person named Almirah.
The bag in my hand suddenly let me know that it carried some mass and my arm started to hurt. I walked a couple of steps backwards towards the seats in the waiting lounge and dropped it with a thud. I immediately cursed myself since it also carried my laptop. To say that my mind was in turmoil was an understatement. From the corner of my eye, I spotted the aircraft I would have been sitting in, comfortably sipping my orange juice and digging into some magazine, if only …..if only I had reached the gate counter a minute earlier.
*** Half and hour earlier ***
The excursion to Ruby Falls had been great and we had driven down from there to Atlanta airport well in time, an hour before scheduled departure. On arrival, I had without any delay, got my boarding pass printed out. Mr. Accounts and I then decided to transfer all photos from his camera into my laptop. Since his camera settings are always to the maximum, each photo was around 3 MB in size and it took a good amount of time before all vivid details of my our last three days were safely packed away somewhere on my lappy’s hard drive.
We told our final
saynora(s) but not before Mr. Accounts laid out his personal appreciation in a manner which was reminiscent of young actors showering praises on veterans who are way past their expiry date
“Oh I am so glad , you could make it,” he said gleefully
“Yeah, I am glad too,” I joined in
“And, what a wonderful time it was. Wish we could have more of such trips." He said explaining how it provided a great excuse for not talking to his chatterbox aunt for three days.
“Hmmm.” I said aware of his aunt's reputation who could bombard any person in talking range with more gossip than a sleazy film magazine.
And then suddenly without warning Mr Accounts hugged me.
“Oh gosh, we sound so gay,” I said half trying to push him away
“Relax man,” he said giving me a virtuous smile. “This is brotherly love, besides we are not in a state that legalizes same sex marriages.”
"That's what worries me most," I said looking around to see if someone was showing more than a passing interest in us.
I chuckled a bit and thought to myself, that I would surely miss him. After all he was one of my closest friends and in a socially inept country like the United States, I was fortunate to have him as a pal. But as always, old habits die hard and as if someone had brutally poked a pin through a high soaring balloon, Mr. Accounts once again reminded me of his erudition in the field of numbers
“Oh, and yes, as soon as you reach New Jersey, don’t forget to transfer the money for all the entrance fees, I have been paying for you at the parks,”
“I thought we were brothers,” I retorted before I hurriedly made my way into the crowd waiting to get frisked by Homeland Security. Useless chap that Mr. Accounts.
The queue was a long one, not surprising that the weekend was coming to an end and people were rushing to get back home. I, though wasn’t unduly worried. I reached the X-Ray machine.One by one everything came off, the shoes, the belt, the wallet, the phone etc. Thankfully the clothes remained. After clearance, I wasted another 5 minutes in putting everything back again.
Atlanta airport is not an airport, it is a city mistakenly categorized as an airport, for a train or to put it more precisely, an automated people mover moves below each terminal and concourse. That is the bloody size of this sprawling edifice. To get to your gate, you have to be a fit person, not a sluggish moron like me.
My flight was to board at Gate 13 on concourse 4. If not for the automated people mover, I would have reached my gate after the next presidential election. That’s how relaxed I was. As it was, it took me 20 minutes to reach my concourse including the security check. I glanced at my watch because I was getting this instinctive feeling that something wasn’t right. 6:56 pm , the time read.
“Oh shit,” I exclaimed as I made a dash for the gate as fast as I could go. I passed numerous signs telling me that the gate was ahead but it was proving to be a mirage. And then I made it to the departure gate finally.
“Here you go,” I said forwarding my boarding pass to the lady behind the counter still panting.
She looked at me as if I was a small child handing out my birthday invitation to her. And then she pulled out a birthday surprise of her own.
“Are you enquiring about the 7:15 flight?” she asked
“Well…..yes,” I said stating the obvious
“You have missed that Sir. You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes before departure,”
I looked at my watch again. It said 7:01.
“But, yeah it is hardly a minute over. I got delayed at the security check,”
“No, not possible now,” she shook her head
“But why? The aircraft is standing outside. The door is barely closed. Let me in. I have a job to report tomorrow,”
In the most eloquent of terms, she made it clear to me once it for all…
“No, Sir, sorry Sir, can’t let you fly Sir, I have assigned the seat to someone else…Sir”
***Back to the present***“
Are you the one looking for me?” a voice disturbed me from my thoughts. It was the manager, neatly dressed in the continental blue uniform, her white shirt neatly tucked under her orderly ironed skirt. Her name tag hung from her neck. Almirah turned out to be an African-American woman(yes I know I am being politically correct). I repeated the same story to her but her reaction to it was one of indolence.
“Can’t you arrange something?” I asked
“I am helpless,” Almirah said and moved towards the computer behind the desk. After typing something hastily she came up with two receipts.
“Here, we have already put you on the next flight to Newark. You should be fine,”
I looked at the time on the receipt and just sighed. 7:10 am, exactly 12 hours from now. There was nothing much I could do. I had already argued enough with the feisty Mexican and did not have the energy to argue anymore, so I went and sat down back again on the lounge chairs. I called Mr. Accounts explaining what happened. He suggested to me that I take the MARTA(Atlanta Metro) and go back to his place. I refused his invitation since that would have required me to wake up again early next morning and catch the first train to come back to the airport. I wanted to risk no more. I was going nowhere. I wanted to stay as close as possible to the boarding gate.
“My roommate will drop you at the airport in the morning,” Mr Accounts tried convincing me one more time.
“Why would he be so generous?” I asked
“He is not generous or anything. Nothing is free in the US. He will charge you around $40 for the service. He always charges me too, whenever I have to go out to buy groceries or go to the temple”
“Huh,” I said mildly shocked by the things people do, the lengths they will go to get that last penny. “I thought 'you' were Mr. Accounts,” I reminded my good friend
“For every Mr. Accounts, there is a Mr. Auditor,” he said feebly as opposed to the calculating genius he is in front of me.
I declined his idea once again and decided to spend the night at the airport. The first thing I did was to buy a book to read. I got myself A Time to Kill by John Grisham. (No, this is not going to turn into a book review. Besides I haven’t even finished reading it) I returned to the main terminal’s atrium, an intersection between the north and the south terminal and took my place on one of the various couches that were scattered haphazardly along the floor. Adjacent to it was a food court with the same American crappy fast food chains that had thrown the population of this country into the gutter of corpulence. I decided not to wander into that area for my food.
As the night set in, the number of passengers dwindled but there was still a fair number of people idlng or waiting for their departure. Some people worked furiously on their laptops glued to their screens while some others had headphones the size of two tennis balls over their heads lost in their world of music lip synching to their favorite tunes. Some young couples had found bliss in each other’s arms and were not afraid to display their love in public. And certain other souls talked incessantly on their mobile phones.
I lay on my sofa, shuddering from the full blast of the air-conditioner. Even while turning the pages of the book, my main worry was to find a place to sleep. I contemplated whether I should leave the airport and rent a hotel for the night but decided against it. I glanced at my watch every fifteen minutes hoping time would forward itself but it just crept along with the poise of a tortoise.
*** 10:00 pm ***
It must have been two hours after I had started reading that I felt famished. I looked around for something to eat. The disappointing food court somehow looked more inviting now. I walked straight to the Dominos stand and ordered a veggie pizza. The pizza came soon enough. On opening it though, I was amused. The only veggie on the pizza was mushrooms which technically speaking is not even vegetarian. But with the rats in my stomach competing for an Olympic gold medal in a 100m dash, contemplating the taxonomy of all things vegetarian was the last thing on my mind. I gobbled it up, like an impoverished beggar and returned to my couch. Another one hour of reading followed before I fell asleep.
At 2:00 am, I decided to take a walk just to get that good old red liquid to flow again especially in my legs which had gone to sleep with the satisfaction of a businessman who had just sold a hundred elephants in an animal auction. After taking an uneventful stroll, I went back to sleep again for another two hours.
***4:00 am***
“Excuse me, excuse me,” a hand shook me violently
“Huh,” I said trying to open my eyes
“Are you a passenger Sir, waiting for your flight?”
It was a policeman conducting his round of airport inspection. The face was kind but the words he uttered and his demeanor was unyielding.
“Yes,” I replied without hesitation.
“Oh, alright , Sir,” he kind of backed off. He seemed satisfied and left without another word. I wondered what was that about but felt it was a good measure as many people who had no business to be there loitered around merrily on the airport floor.
***9:30 am*** Fast Forward
I have never been so pleased to see the skyline of New York city, like I was now. For the first time, it felt that I had reached home and boy was I glad to be back. The air journey had passed in a jiffy. I had been the first passenger this time for boarding the 7:10 flight and had grabbed my seat like an animal had made a prize catch. I reached my apartment safely and also attended office for half a day. I also managed to arouse some sympathetic looks from the management. Good people, the guys in my department.
That night, after dinner I put in a call to Mr. Accounts again.
“Good thing you are safe and sound. You Jersey people tend to be a careless lot,” he loves taking digs at me
“Bitch,” I said . “It was all because of you,”“
"Why me?” he asked
“It was you who wasted time discussing Atlanta, your job issues, your uncle, aunty and numerous other relatives. And the biggest delay of them all. Your camera, set to take the pictures in the highest resolution. Three…..three f***** MB every picture, are you nuts?. That took the most amount of time and I got delayed”
“Ha…wait till you get an aunty like mine. And talking about the pictures, those pictures have great clarity. You can also see the amount of nikhaar I have in my skin nicely, so no compromise on that. And what have I told you about purchasing a new laptop. Your laptop's slow processor and inadequate RAM were chiefly responsible for the delay."
I wondered if he had turned into a computer expert overnight but I thought too soon.
"And you didn’t forget the money, did you now? Get that done first thing in the morning , otherwise I might have to start charging you interest. Hahahaha. Goodbye” he said signing off with his trademark sinister laughter.
And that is the end of not the most troubling event in my life but a sobering experience nonetheless. Take care people, don’t be lazy and carefree like me. Until the next session of obstinate boredom, ciao….!
En route we stopped at downtown Atlanta for checking out the CNN headquarters. At $13 a tour it was worth it as we were taken systematically albeit briefly through all their programming procedures. We also saw a live news broadcast. I have to say it was pretty exciting. The room was filled with TV screens in each and every space. And in the spaces where they could not fit a TV, they had lights or other electronics. Not the workplace, many of us outside the media like to imagine. Pretty serious stuff. Other things in downtown Atlanta were not so interesting and nowhere close to the northern cities of New York and Boston. The south of US is a very sleepy face unless ofcourse you are a duck and are liable to be shot by a farmer or harassed by tourists for no fault of yours.
