MAIDEN VOYAGE

India is indeed progressing. Its not that I have harboured any doubts regarding its immense growth potential, its just that the proof that I got kind of over whelmed me. Maybe a decade or more back, a TV per 25 houses was the norm, especially in villages. I remember the times when as a child, vacationing in my grannys house in a remote village of kerala, our living room would be transformed into a mini theater of sorts for most of the village. A huge gathering would be assembeled at the house from morning to watch Ramayan till evening when the occasional Malayalam movie would be screened on national TV (cable was not available then). Now to find a hutment without a TV would be more difficult than finding water in the desert.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that both the terminals of Mumbai domestic airport are now as crowded or more so than CST station at peak hours, thanks to the variety of low cost airlines, rock bottom air fares, and the upwardly mobile middle class of the society with their ever increasing spending power.

On a day no different than any in Mumbai I was at Terminal 1A of the Mumbai domestic airport to catch a GoAir to Coimbatore. I saw that the airport is not just crowded like a railway station, its just as chaotic and messy. Waiting to board my flight I see a couple of foreigners in their tweed jackets and khakis, a stylish Sindhi woman in her typically sindhi clothes yakking away to glory on a Nokia N-series, a group of IT Yuppies with their haggard looks and their ever present laptops hanging from their shoulders and then I see him – Senthil Senthalvarayan of CNBC TV 18 fame. As I contemplated my esteemed company I reached my seat 17C. I was shocked and surprised and for once I was lost on words (for those who know me personally – that’s pretty rare!!!). My co-passengers are a couple of people who look as if they have just got up from the pavement and have been given seats on the plane! Before you decide to crucify me as judgmental, narrow-minded etc. pray, hear me out. These people clearly belonged to the lower strata of the society and uneducated – a young guy and his mother. They were clean and dressed as they would have on any other day. Cheap sari, plastic chappal, no frills pants and shirt. The woman was so slight, surely not a result of diets and gyms, but a lot of unrelenting hardships of life and hardwork, that she was lost in the seat. I helped her buckle the seat belt. She was mortally frightened when the plane took off. I was scared that she might throw up all over me. But none of that happened. She was quite brave and other than covering her head with the pallu of her sari and screwing her eyes shut as tightly as humanly possible there was no reaction from her. I helped them buy biscuits from the flight attendants who obviously spoke only English. The rest of the flight was uneventful as I was quite busy shutting out the screeching whine of 5 year old I the row ahead of ours and penning my thoughts as they came.

I think that moment when I put my eyes on my co-passengers that fateful evening was one of the moments that I could declare to the world “Hello there, India has arrived on the global scene”! But strange is my country. When on one hand I rejoice at the thought of air travel (once the domain of the rich and bitchy) being available to the commonest of common man, on the other hand I am disgusted at the on going talks for increasing reservation quotas in various sectors of our society!

Where exactly are we moving? For every step we keep forward, how do we manage to keep jumping 2 steps back?