If you’ve had the misfortune of having to run through Delhi airport at rush hour as I have, it is so big, once you’ve navigated 240 Bulgaris and 1,400 places called ‘Cafe Espresso‘ and get to your plane, you look slimmer and greyer, but not in a good way. In a way, that suggests you were let out of Tihar Jail that morning.
Kolkata airport, I have heard, is run by the Thai government, although there is no real sense of any Thai-ness (missing prawns, missing Buddhas), as it is bathed in a pale blue of moroseness, suggesting it is forced to participate in some consumerist march against its will. Which is apt to the city’s spirit. Catch any Cafe Coffee Day, WH Smith, Wow! Momo employees early in the morning and ask for the thing they are selling, and you’ll receive a well-deserved talking to, making you question the buyer-seller dynamic.
The only act of joy being a lively biryani counter, with takers of a double mutton biryani – at 7 a.m. Not something you’ll see at, say, Ahmedabad’s cool, clean, vegan, clinically beautiful steel-and-glass edifice named after the other great Indian Gujarati leader, built by the other great Gujarati businessman.
I can’t make fun of Mumbai airport because it often feels like the sky above it is busier than what’s going on in it. Sometimes, the waiting pattern to land at Mumbai airport is so long – longer than queues at most temples – that once you land, you want to kiss the flight controller for the opportunity. Most Indian business travellers can easily map out a detailed sketch of the mini hills north of Mumbai airport, having circled them for hours on end, like deranged birds, while the pilot kept announcing ‘Five minutes to landing’.
Airports have come a long way from passengers chasing Air India customer service to beat them up. And long gone are quasi-socialist, run-down prison-ish airport buildings that smelt of something similar to, but not, urine. At least 50 Indian cities, from Amritsar to Coimbatore, have a similar modern airport architecture – where it looks like someone gave a child some malleable glass Lego to fold into a weird-shaped building that lets in random sunlight.No matter how Singapore New India gets, though, old Indian habits will seep through. For example, various credit cards now give free access to exclusive lounges at airports. Which means if you find yourself in a lounge at any Indian metro airport, there are more people in the lounge than anywhere else at the airport, leading to a rush for the breakfast idli that makes ancient Roman circus look timid.Regardless of the boom in aviation and the millions racing to the skies, there will always be one uncle arguing with security about what he’s allowed to take on board, while another gent will slyly try to break the queue and get ahead. There will always be chaos at the security bag tray area, a 100-m sprint to run out of flights, and a group of cheats sitting in a golf buggy driven to baggage claim, when they can perfectly walk.
Yet, in all this pace, there are moments of genius. At Bangalore airport recently, I saw a lonely customer at a fancy airport bar at 6 a.m. He’d clearly had a few, and the sun was barely up. The bartender inquired what time the guy’s flight was. ‘I don’t care,’ he replied.