Mumbai Airport A gateway to Shame. Mumbai the gateway of India is the city with the largest international traffic coming into India. In olden days the gateway of India was built in this city for the commercial value this city has for India and the international trade that this city brought to India.
The commercial capital of this populous country which is developing on its new pillars like Information technology services and other service industries is still there. The most populous metropolitan of the country where people not only come to build their careers but also for education of elite level in institutes like IIT and also to try their luck in the entertainment industry in Bollywood which stands next to only Hollywood in revenue and is much bigger than Hollywood in terms of output of movies.
So with all these praises why do I have to put such a shameful heading to what I am writing here? This is how it all started, I land in the Mumbai international airport stepping into India after 2 years and my first ever trip to Mumbai, and there starts a series of incidents that has put an imprint on my mind that would never ever be erased until probably every person ever related to Mumbai airport is changed.
So here I land on the airport and which is though the international airport of this commercial capital of this so called shining India. Did I see the shine? Well I did see the glitter of the water puddle that had formed in most areas of the baggage claim as a result of dripping from the AC ducts which were obviously uncovered through out the ceiling, after escaping through the dripping water I reached the baggage claim where the luggage belt was revolving at its own pace, nothing wrong with it except the belt was so small to hold like 50 bags at one time and a flight carrying 220 people had just unloaded the luggage on it.
After waiting a long wait I noticed porters taking bags of foreigners and loading them to carts and carrying them until the customs. I searched with my eyes to find a porter myself and asked one of them about where I can find some one, though I was surprised how the foreigners with their limited Indian language skills were able to find one and many other Indians were standing there lugging their luggage and staring at them the way I was…Once I asked no reply, twice I asked no reply, third time I asked the man replies “Sir no porter, take bag yourself to customs”. Utterly surprised at a porter refusing extra business, I enquired to other passengers and through some veteran Mumbai arriving passengers I came to know later that these were employees of the airport customs and were loading only foreigners (well read it as white skins, sorry I dint meant to make a racial distinction here but that’s how it was happening) luggage… I was so frustrated that I wanted to yell at them but as the jet lag was drilling down on me and fearing some other reason behind this I left it at it
I walked to the customs with my bags in a trolley and joined the queue, a constable comes and picks all the foreigners (same meaning as above) and points them to the exit (without baggage check) by speaking politely in English “You can go sir”. The foreigners were taken aback but were happy not to stand in the big queue and not to have a baggage customs check. As I waited for my queue another constable comes and picks people with little luggage to a different queue and asks them to leave without scanning their luggage and then other passengers with a carry and check in luggage both were asked to scan their bags.
While I pushed my baggage into the scanner I noticed passengers arguing on dollars to be paid to the constable and the supervisor standing beside giving head shake signals to accept or reject the offer. I cleared my luggage as I did not have any article requiring custom payment, totally dismayed and trying to find a string with which I could hold my belief in the greatness of India but dint find any.
I can type in quite a few dirty words defining what this kind of shameful behavior is called!! But I will let you readers decide what kind of a country we are living in and what kind of a system is governing us. Some passengers talked about letting the white people go and not destroying the countries prestige in front of them, but what I saw was the pathetic slavery to white skin by these brown skinned so called Indians.
I was proud to talk about India to people from other countries for past years which I had been out of India. But believe me I with clear conscience cannot talk anything good about India from now on. As I described my decision to some of my co-passengers, they said “well because of a few bunch of idiots don’t think India is bad” I shook my head and said “Yes India is not bad, but people in this great country are”.
If you found this review interesting also read my other reviews from the below link
https://mouthshut.com/pathetic_colleges/reviews