Landing in India

<Written in 2019, pre-pandemic> 

Arriving in India, your mood can swing wildly depending upon the queue at passport control, at baggage collection and at the exit. If you are lucky, your flight has dodged the rush hour, and you will get through passport control in a couple of minutes. But if you happen to land along with two or three other flights, then you have had it - you need to be prepared for 30 minutes or more, waiting in queue.

These days, of course, Indian airports are expected to be far more efficient than any American or British airport - it is a huge change from 30 years ago when “third world” airports like Mumbai were considered hell-holes by  visiting foreigners compared to the beautiful airports in their home countries. Singapore and Middle Eastern airports are still a little way ahead of India today, but Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore are all world-class in every respect.
While our airport infrastructure has improved dramatically and offers a standard, global-standards experience, our culture remains uniquely Indian - and two experiences I had around 2009/2010.

One experience was very negative while the other one was the polar opposite and brings a smile to my face even today.

Let me start with the negative experience.

I was living in the UK then, and travelled frequently to India for work. The IPad had just been launched and I had purchased one. In my rucksack, I was carrying my work laptop as well as brand-new IPad.  The flight landed in Mumbai around 10 am. While I was going through the final baggage X-Ray just before exit, a white-uniformed customs officer called me aside. A Mumbai police constable was with him - a nice brotherhood in corruption between the union government and the state government! 

The customs officer told me that it was not allowed to bring two laptops into the country (The Ipad was a new product and probably was genuinely considered a laptop.) He asked me who the Ipad was for. I said truthfully (and in retrospect, maybe foolishly) that I was not sure. I would gift it to my father if he liked it, or I will use it myself. The customs officer saw his opportunity. He said I should either get into a queue and pay Rs. 10,000 in customs duty at the State Bank of India counter, or “settle with him directly”!

I looked at the customs officer. He was a North Indian, tall and smart-looking in a crisp white uniform with epaulettes. He was in his thirties, about the same age as me. Would such a person have entered government service a crook, calculating from the very beginning how he could make money on the side? Or, had the system slowly turned an idealistic officer into a corrupt one, where he thought he was forced to take bribes to fit in? And what thick-skinned shamelessness this officer had developed, to demand a bribe in a crowded airport, in broad daylight! 

Meanwhile, the elderly Mumbai police constable stood by, senior in years but clearly the junior accomplice in this double act. I was reminded of an eager dog waiting by the dining table, for the master to throw some scraps.

My reverie would probably have lasted a few seconds. The customs officer brought me back to the present and rudely asked “So what have you thought? What do you want to do?”

I was feeling really tired after a long economy-class flight. Once again, I said the first thing that came to my mind - I blurted out, “I just want to go home.” And to put off the bribe demand I said “My father is a government officer; and he would be really unhappy if he comes to know I did anything underhand”
Unwittingly I had uttered the magic mantra. “Government officer” meant to the bent customs official, someone who could potentially trace him out within the system and government network, and cause him unwanted trouble. 

There was an immediate change in the officer's demeanor. He now said - with significantly more respect than earlier - “Sir, all I need is an assurance from you that you will take this extra laptop with you when you depart India.” In response, I said “Yes, I assure you” or words to that effect, and I was allowed to leave without any further ado.

I’ve thought of this incident several times in the years since. It is a fact that many Indians are crooks. We don’t trust the system, and we dislike rules, so we try to find ways around them. And the people who are responsible for the system being maintained are fellow Indians, some of whom will naturally sniff out the opportunities to be corrupt. 

That morning in Mumbai, I was small fry. Maybe the officer realised that every minute he wasted with me, he was losing out on opportunities to locate genuine offenders who could be shaken down for a bigger bribe!

Thankfully, I have had just one such experience in 20 years of international travel to and from India.

Many Indians may be crooks, but many other Indians are genuinely warm and friendly- and one of my favorite airport memories is from the same Mumbai airport, a few months after the IPad experience.

I had arrived around 11 am after a long, sleepless flight. This one was memorably bad - while I had managed to get an exit row seat (more leg room), I had managed to seat myself  right next to two  babies - both of whom had howled non-stop throughout the flight!  

The queue at passport control was not very long, and as I came up to the counter I smelt Masala chai. The officers were being served tea on the job, someone was going from counter to counter pouring out steaming tea into small paper cups! The fragrance was delicious.  Handing over my passport for stamping, I said to the officer “ The first thing I am going to do when I go out, is get a cup of masala chai! You don’t get such nice tea in London!” 

And the officer smiled at me and said, “Why wait till you go out?” - he passed me the cup he had just been served himself, while the tea-boy poured him another one. He stamped my passport and waved away any attempt by me to pay for the tea!

The tea was beautiful and hot, and more than the tea, it was the small gesture of friendship and humanity that charmed me. How much would the tea have cost? Maybe 5 or 10 Rupees. How long will I remember this gesture? For the rest of my life. So thank you Mr. Satarkar, wherever you are now, for restoring my spirits that day and making me remember that Indians are warm as well.