Counters

I finally moved up to the front of the line at the passport check at the airport.

I could feel the pressure within now that I was the next person to be called.  It was not a pressure about the documentation.  But, a kind of pressure that I feel only in India.

It is a kind of feeling one gets when playing whack-a-mole, in which you need to be on high alert with your eyes constantly roving from the left to the right in order to watch out for a mole popping up.  Here, at the front of the long serpentine line behind me, I had to keep an eye out for the counter that would open up and to then rush to that officer.  A momentary delay would invite quite a few behind me to vocalize their feelings that I was holding them back. There's also a worry that if I did not watch out, then somebody from somewhere might beat me to that open counter.  The damn colonizers could have at least done one good thing by forcing a culture of queuing!

I whacked the mole.

I handed my passport.  I looked at the camera as instructed.

The officer flipped through the pages.  Without looking up, he asked, "what improvements have you noticed?"

That was a leading question.  He wants me to talk only about the improvements.  Yes, there have been wonderful improvements in India since I left the old country in 1987.  For one, at least in the part of India that I go to, there are no beggars, which is simply incredible to people of my age or older.  Women young and old are rushing around in two-wheelers, which is an improvement whose value can be appreciated only by those whose growing up experiences were practically in a male-only public space and women were rarely seen out and about by themselves, unless they were poor workers or beggars.  The list of improvements is long.

But then there are also losses in plenty.  Like the loss of appreciation of history and historical leaders who delivered us from the colonizers and made possible the measurable and intangible improvements that we now see in India.  Like the loss of religious tolerance in daily life and politics.  Like the deepening social caste divisions. 

The passport control counter at the airport was not where I was going to be a prematurely retired academic.  Even when I was teaching, I knew the limits to which anybody paid any attention to what I had to say.  Here at the airport, I was merely yet another traveler.

"Yes, plenty of changes" is all I said. 

Without looking up, the officer laughed when he heard my reply.  "I asked about improvements and you merely say there are changes."

He handed back my passport and I was off to the security check.

It occurred to me when I was waiting for the boarding to begin that I could have said something to make the officer happy and moved on.  I could have said, for instance, that the airport itself was a huge improvement from the old one.  But, I am what I am, and this is how I have often ended up in trouble, and burnt bridges with people and ended friendships.

Hours and hours later, I was walking towards the passport check in America.  I heard somebody call out, "sir, ..."  I looked at where the sound came from, which I now can do now ever since my ear was fixed and I don't have problems triangulating the location of the source of the noise.

"This way" the security officer guided me.  He wanted me to cut across because there was no crowd.  In no time it was my turn at an officer's window.

I handed the passport.

He placed it on a scanner.  "Where are you coming from?"

"India."

"Any money or food?"

"No."

"Welcome back." 

"Thanks"

I was home.