An introduction by a chronic digressionist
The worst thing about going on a long vacation is - you have to come back. Flooded inboxes, overflowing in-trays, forgotten passwords. People coming back after a vacation should be given time to overcome the trauma that is experienced in those first few days back at work. (I spent my entire first day pretending I was still on holiday. I wore casuals and sneakers and flitted in and out of cubicles regaling friends with holiday stories…the favourite one having to do with a naked man on a pristine beach in Orissa).
I had a fascinating return trip thanks to some imaginative scheduling by the national carrier. We took off from Cochin airport and transited through Madras, Bombay and Delhi before landing in Dubai 16 hours later(considering a normal Cochin-dubai flight would have taken inside of 4 hours, I think its understandable why some of my co passengers totally lost it at Delhi). I could say something about each of these airports having spent at least 2 hours at each of them in one single day, but I’ve just remembered this review is about Bombay airport.
The whole experience…..
was not very memorable. Sahar being the international airport of Bombay, India’s biggest city and its commercial capital would most definitely be one of the busiest airports in the country. I had last been through Sahar five years ago and I had imagined it would now be bigger, brighter and busier. However there is nothing at Sahar to make you feel that you are in one of India’s premier airports. I am speaking from the point of view of a consumer – an extremely dissatisfied one at that.
On my way in, landing at about nine past Indian time, the airport was deserted. It was almost like I had walked into an abandoned building- apart from the odd policemen slumped in their chairs gazing at the passengers with expressions that spoke of extreme levels of boredom. As for the airport itself, the first thing that occurred to me was how ‘grey’ it was. This probably had more to do with the dull lighting and the drab décor than the old grey marble floors.
The man at customs was straight outta a bollywood film. Slick oily haired , paan chewing man who was needlessly scrutinizing my passport. He peered at my photograph from different angles before grinning at me. Then he pointed to my first passport book with a picture of me as a three year old and commented along the lines of me looking as if I’d been quite a naughty child. I must have given him a pretty incredulous stare cos he hastily changed the topic. Now he wanted to know if I was a nurse???? Taken aback as I was I still managed to nod in disagreement. He added that he had seen, in my passport that my address in India was a Kerala one and that women from kerala who worked abroad were nurses!!!!
I made my way to the baggage claim area where the only things moving were 2 lil boys dressed in Spiderman Tshirts running up and down the un moving belt until they were soundly ticked off by a policeman. It was two and a half hours before the conveyor belts creakingly came alive and finally more than three hours after landing I was free to go.
I was back ten days later, on my way to Cochin this time. Checking in took absolutely ages, this time because there was some system failure. All along I was being lectured at by a grandmotherly lady behind me in the queue who having been fleeced by the Bombay cabbies had made it her mission to warn her fellow passengers about them.
When I finally got to the counter I was in for another surprise. They had something that looked like a webcam on the counter and we were being photographed ! I was so fascinated by the whole idea, that I actually spent a whole five minutes there talking to the lady at the counter who was quite amused and more than willing to explain to me that they had a digital camera and pictures of each ‘domestic’ passenger passing through the international airport (the logic escapes me why pics of outbound passengers needn’t be taken) are taken and stored on the data base after being transposed onto the boarding pass! Quite an advancement in airport security I thought. A pretty neat boarding pass too, with me barely visible over the counter and that of the grandmother looming large over my shoulder.
After check in, there’s only one booth where you can make international or inter-state calls and quite naturally it always has a queue of about ten strong! There’s also nothing by way of bookshops or gift shops (unless u want to buy liquor from the duty free). In short there’s nothing to do for an hour or so, until you’re called for boarding. There is a bookshop outside the check in area, but considering passengers are always hard pressed for time until the last check, it would be a better idea to have them inside the customs area.
The prices at the lone restaurant in the security lounge were astronomical. A small bar of Kit Kat was priced at Rs.60. Curious, I proceeded to enquire the prices of most of the items on display, and learnt that a pack of Lay’s chips would set me Rs.75 short, a can of Pepsi came at Rs.90, and if I could afford it, I could have a vegetable sandwich for only Rs.150. I didn’t buy anything having not been hungry in the first place but the vendor wasn’t too happy about the whole affair and didn’t make a secret of it either.
Other Indian airports….
This is all quite inadequate in comparison with other airports in India. Chennai for instance had a lovely lil bookshop with a real good collection of books (I picked up a very interesting book on creative writing by Stephen King among others) and an unbelievably good restaurant with sandwiches that didn’t have phenomenally high prices. It also had a very nice coffee stall with passably good cappuchino, manned by an eager and friendly young teen. Cochin though small, is extremely pretty and very well maintained and Delhi is… well, no comments.
In conclusion…
It’s all very fine to say that, this is our country and we must not criticize, and we must understand out limitations, be it monetary or otherwise. But I do not think anything the Airports Authority of India says can justify the situation.
Why for instance, does the state of Kerala, which accounts for just about 1 % of the land mass of India, have 3 international airports !! It may have one of the highest proportion of Non residents but I find it difficult to understand why a state needs international airports at every 300 kms !!!
Wouldn’t the investment have been better utilised in developing the existing major airports and trying to increase the air traffic at these bigger centres? Apparently not. So now we have three ‘international’ airports in kerala , all making huge losses. All while the country’s premier airport languishes in an apparent state of neglect.
Its about time the AAI woke up to the need to provide truly world class airports in our country. And what better place to start than the most ‘happening’ city in India- Bombay.