My travel ordeals
A 30 hour flight doesn’t leave you with best of moods. Nothing could therefore be more annoying than having to wait at the airport immigration counter at Kochi for an hour. Yes, I was back in India, the unmistakeable inefficiency evident. Trying to explain to the guy at the Xray machines that an iPad isn’t a laptop was a task unto itself. Thank god I didn’t utter tablet or I’d have been booked for drug trafficking. I do look like a professional smuggler don’t I? But at the end of the day I reached in time for the engagement.
Talking about bureaucratic incompetence is easily one of the major talking points across friend and family circles across dinner tables and bar counters.
Yes, the Kochi episode still fresh in mind I reached the Thiruvananthapuram airport. Boy, have I ever been surprised before. If COK was a madhouse then TRV is where they got this insanity. The airport hands down would win the title of the worst airport in the world, or at least in India. You’d be forgiven for asking yourself if it’s an airport at all. There are several check-in counters (6 to be precise) with elegant non-working digital displays or were they merely for show. The counters were staffed by pretty 60 somethings in faded sarees and grey hair. The guys who lift the suitcases could be coolies at Ernakulam South but less healthier. And don’t let me start about the cleanliness. Evidently many parts of the airport have not seen a broom in the last decade.
The half bald, fully mad guy at the immigration counter stole a precious 15 minutes of my life with his useless questions. WTF man, I’ve flown more over the last year than you have in the 65 years of your damned existence. I don’t need to tell you that I didn’t eat breakfast or that you smell like Armani Code (if they had a scent for incompetent sweaty paper-pushers). No thank you , Kerala police!
There’s a waiting area and a blink-and-you’ll-miss duty free shop. I bet they haven’t sold anything since they’ve been there.
People complain about the stringent security checks at airports world over. They really don’t know how good they have it. TRV is a traveler’s nightmare. The security staff don’t speak English and I won’t speak Hindi. Way to go. Those CISF nincompoops gave me a torrid time. But yes, I swore at their past and future generations and verbally abused the pricks to my hearts content earning the ire of fellow passengers. You tend to do it if these faggots don’t follow a queue system or make you wait for half an hour to check your bag and then tell you it’s all good. Funny story: Ugly middle aged woman is forced to empty her half gallon water bottle, and only option, she has to drink it. Yeah, they made a lot of people do that. Another funny speaking woman tries to use her ‘influence’ to speed up the process. She’s like “Your big boss stays at my place when he lands in TRV” to the security staff. Your guess is as good as mine as to the reason. Damn, woman, your husband’s standing right there, totally emasculated.
Oh yeah and they send me back to get a tag for the cabin baggage.
I hear there’s a new airport terminal coming up in a few weeks. But it’s going to be the same people who run the ship. And you get to pay Rs750 for the inconvenience you are forced to bear.
Now I’m beginning to like COK a lot more.
P.S. TRV is Thiruvananthapuram and COK is Kochi airports.
Caution: Do not fly to TRV!
