Sikkim, Part 2 (Getting There)

The 45 minute flight from Guwahati to Bagdogra was peppered with a packet of roasted peanuts, a couple of tasteless airline drinks and a huge sense of relief at having scraped through a potential catastrophe, virtually unscathed.

After all, when it involved me, it wasn’t very often that mother nature let one slip by. In fact, if I was allowed to squint my eyes beyond the fact that the plan had undergone some ‘minor’ alterations, I could have even allowed myself a tiny bit of pride at how I had heroically turned around the situation in such a short time. Which is why, as we deplaned in Bagdogra, I assumed I could afford a couple of contented smiles at the missus. These positive vibes were of course promptly sent back with a melancholic, middle-distant gaze from her, which indicated that she’d slipped into her Smita Patel stupor, wherein she’d endlessly sulk and ponder over how she will ‘have to learn to live with my 7 year old conjugal error in judgment’. This also meant that everything that went wrong from now on would be my sole responsibility, and would serve to further reinforce her suspicion that I was missing a vital part of my brain. And off chance that things went well, she’d always find a way to link it to something she said or did. Married folks will acknowledge this is a naturally evolving, well-tested approach to dealing with uncertainties, fine-tuned over years and years of marital life.

One of the chief reasons common folk like me are taking to flying so frequently has got nothing to do with the flying experience itself – it’s all about the airport. While you will never catch me admitting it publicly, there is something regal in the way taxi drivers virtually mob you when you step out of an airport. Where else would I be allowed to have an annoyed-celebrity expression on my face, as I wade through a sea of strangers, all hankering for my attention? In fact, smaller the airport, bigger the mob. And since one’s usual itinerary seldom features something smaller than Bagdogra, some paparazzi fun was to be expected. The drive from Bagdogra to Ganktok was 4 hours long; so having a few options wasn’t a bad thing either..

Which is why it was kind of disconcerting when, after collecting our unending string of check-in baggage (I had cleverly asked the missus if she was sure she hadn’t packed the refrigerator as well by mistake, but the wit was lost on her), we stepped out of the airport and were met by a huge crowd of…nothing. No one. Absolutely. Well, there was this security guard who had apparently just read Arindam Chaudhuri, and had decided upon his nose as the chosen extraction point for the diamond inside him, but other than that, there was no one at all.

I walked up to the guard and asked him where all the taxis were. With one finger still up his nose, he lazily pointed in the general direction of the airport gate, about 300 feet away. And sure enough, there was a crowd of very angry looking taxi drivers there, held back by the closed airport gate. I thanked the security guard, and began walking toward the gate, with a suitcase in both hands, and another bag flung around my neck. The heat was killing. We definitely needed an AC taxi, I told myself.

‘Jabe na (won’t go)’, shouted the security guy.

‘As in?”

‘Strike.’

‘What strike?’

‘Hartaal. Strike. They won’t take passengers,’ he said, in pristine Pranab Mukherjee English.

‘How can they do that? Aren’t they supposed to be part of the pre-paid stand?’

‘Sir, this is West Bengal,’ he said, and decided the issue should be amply clear now.

I glanced at my wife. She now had this ‘but, of course’ expression on her face. But I’d had enough already. I didn’t come all the way to Bagdogra to go back now (an option, that I realized later, didn’t really exist, as the next flight was 8 hours away) and live through umpteen retellings to her friends of how ‘Rishi messed up our plans…yet again’. I decided to walk over to that gate, and talk some reason. Everyone responds to reason, when mixed with the right amount of groveling.

‘They won’t go,’ I found myself telling the missus after ten minutes. While I was trying my charm on the Bagdogra Taxi Drivers Association, she had walked in the opposite direction over to a café and settled into one of the chairs under a tree. This move was aimed as much to escape the scorching heat as to make a statement on how confident she was about my chances of success. The missus is very clever that way. ‘They just won’t. Apparently, some security guy bashed up one of the drivers about half an hour ago. They are now demanding an apology. No taxis till that time.’

Silence. Cigarettes. Packet of chips. Sweat. Silence. Sip. Cigarettes. One bloody hour.

‘Bhai Saab, where do you want to go?’ asked a 40sh looking man, He was dressed in an off-color Safari suit, with his sunglasses over his forehead, and a cell-phone hanging over his belt.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘I own this coffee shop,’ he said, and not sensing any excitement at this revelation, added, ‘and also drive a taxi.’

‘Gangtok.’

‘8000 bucks.’

‘2000 bucks,’ I said authoritatively. I had read up on this thing on the net, and I knew the right fare. I was in no mood to be pushed around, taxi-strike or no taxi-strike.

‘8000 bucks.’

‘Done.’

‘Good, wait here for a while,’ he said. ‘I can’t take you right now. The drivers are on strike, and they will not let us through. Let them cool down a little, and we can sneak out.’

‘How long?’

‘Half hour.’

‘Okay,’ I said, cleverly resisting the urge to throw myself at his feet and weep.

After an hour, when there was no sign of the driver, I had lost all patience and 70% of my body fluid. I decided to go and check at the airport terminal again – they couldn’t just stand and watch at this impossible situation.

Spice Jet said a lot of things, which in summary, meant ‘Fuck off. Our only guarantee is that we won’t throw you off our flights. Provided you don’t bitch about us on the feedback form. In which case, we might consider that as well.’ I don’t remember my exact response except that it had words like ‘spice’ and ‘alimentary canal’ and a lot of allusions to the ground-staff’s family members. This didn’t seem to help the situation.

The AAI (Airports Authority of India) office was empty, barring for a person playing Minesweeper on the computer. I knocked on the glass window, but he said something back in Bengali which didn’t sound like ‘May I help you?’ I banged some more. I think one of his mines might have exploded, for he looked very, very annoyed as he just stood up and walked off.

Walking back to the café and ‘guessing if the missus’ expression was indeed a half-smile, and if so, was it to make fun of my incompetence’ wasn’t a game I was in the right frame of mind for. So I decided to walk around making faces at the Spice Jet crew instead.

The driver finally re-appeared at 6 and signaled us to follow him to his car in the parking lot.

‘If someone asks,’ he whispered, ’this is a taxi and I am your driver’

The missus and I exchanged puzzled glances. As soon as we had walked out of the airport and past the other drivers, our savior decided it was time for some friendly chat.

‘So, where are you from, Sir?’

‘Chennai.’

‘Funny, you don’t look like you’re from there.’

‘I am actually from Assam. We stay in Chennai now,’ trying my best to choose words that would discourage further conversation.

‘Oh, Assam, eh?’ he said, and fell silent for a while. ‘You must have heard <First Name> Khan, then?’

The name seemed vaguely familiar. ‘Yes, I think so.’

‘<First Name> Phukan?’

‘Yes, of course. I’ve heard that name.’

‘…and Ms. <First Name> Barua?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I wasn’t being polite. I had heard all the names some time or the other, but I couldn’t recall the context. So, I decided to Google them on my phone. The first result went somewhat like this:

‘Times of India (Jul 2, 2009) The prime accused in the car-theft syndicate, Mr. <First Name> Khan, Mr. <First Name> Phukan and Ms. <First Name> Barua…have been remanded to judicial custody today.’

Scrolling down, the news report threw some more light on the names:

‘Mr. <First Name> Khan, Mr. <First Name> Phukan and Ms. <First Name> Barua had surrendered from ULFA on January 1, 2007 as part of a…’

I gulped, nudged the missus and showed her the news-clipping as we settled into the backseats of a white Bolero, with dark tinted windows.

‘You can call me Khan since you’re from Assam. People here know me just as ‘Ram bhai’. Heh…after the Jorabat incident, I kind of had to get out of there for a while you know. Things had heated up to much…’

‘Hah. Yes…er….’

‘Have things cooled down there? Do you think it would be wise to go back now?’

‘Er…yes, considerably…,’ I said, and suddenly realized that I was giving career advice to an ex-militant, ex-car thief syndicate owner, and current absconder from justice.

The missus was now clasping my right arm and looking straight at me, her eyes the size of the Bagdogra airport. For the next half an hour or so, as we made our way through the crowded streets of the city and onto the highway to Gangtok, Mr. Khan kept talking incessantly. The throbbing heart, now near my tonsils, made it very difficult to follow exactly what he was saying, but a few words seemed to leap out, italicize themselves, and linger on.

‘The traffic here at this time is KILLING…will take a short CUT…the heat at this time of the year is DEADLY…, etc.’

A couple of hours later, when no grenades or AK 47s had been flung out, I had begun to relax, the missus had dozed off on my shoulder and blood circulation had restarted to my right arm.

‘Which hotel are you booked into?’ asked Mr. Khan, aka Ram-bhai.

‘Huh, yes. I’ll let you know when we get there,’ I said, trying to sound as calm as I could, while frantically waving my phone around for a GPRS signal.

Why the fuck can’t these hotels book themselves?!

(to be continued…)

Next: Sikkim, Part II (Getting There)

Read Sikkim, Part I

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