Take Your Protein Pills and Strap Your Helmet On - Part 2
Much ado about.....Something
I went to India a month back and got a story even before I stepped off a plane. There are more India story posts here, here and here.
This is Part 2 of the story. You have to read Part 1 first for this to make sense.
🧑🤝🧑🧑🤝🧑14🧑🤝🧑🧑🤝🧑🧑🤝🧑Men🧑🤝🧑🧑🤝🧑
One symptom of living in a large country with a flair for drama is that crowds gather where there is action, almost as if by magic. If you want to know where chaos is rearing its ugly head, just watch where people flock.
As I stared out my window and the minutes ticked by, the crowd of men outside the plane kept growing. Five became ten, which became a majestic fourteen - enough to power a cricket team with substitutes. They just stood around, doing absolutely nothing. Not true: one of them apparently had a joke or two to tell because the others were laughing quite hard.
Incidentally, fourteen is also the minimum number of people who will peruse your tickets for secret messages before allowing you to board a flight in India.
But something was wrong.
Meanwhile, the uncles and aunties on the plane, having stood for more than 10 minutes in inspired Warrior Poses, started getting restless. Some gave up and sat back down.
Not the two guys who were originally sitting next to me in the middle and aisle seats. Having tied their pride to standing in the aisle, they tcch-ed and pcch-ed, thrust out their bellies, wiggled around and murmured in disappointment but kept standing.
Ten minutes turned to fifteen.
Outside, the fourteen men stood with an unwavering commitment to doing nothing. One of them was now telling some long-winded story, presumably about the other time a plane full of passengers had atrophied at the gate for three weeks.
And then, the familiar crackle of static from the speakers, and the pilot’s voice broke through.
👨🏼✈️ Pilot speaks
Now, I judge pilots. I consider someone a good pilot if, apart from landing me safely at my destination, they keep their enthusiasm to a minimum. Since they all absolutely have to speak to you in the middle of the flight for some reason (it’s part of the physics of keeping the plane floating), I demand morose boredom in such speeches.
I absolutely love a low-energy mumble from a Pilot who’d rather be doing anything else than speaking to a plane full of passengers. What I absolutely hate is an over-enthusiastic pilot who mistakes the plane for a podcast.
This one had been rather chirpy, with the voice of the type of uncle who’d egg you on to speak if you were sitting quietly at a family function. Midway through the flight, he’d given his usual spiel about flying at 800 km/hour at 30,000 ft, talked about the weather and the wind status, and bragged that we would land way ahead of schedule. Honestly, I wasn’t listening except to be annoyed that his over-caffeinated voice broke my sleepy spell, and it kept going for a while.
Anyway, it pleased me to note that his voice now sounded hassled and confused.
“Folks, err…um… we have some delay in deboarding because we have been given a gate where…mmm it seems….they cannot connect the aerobridge to the plane.”
There was a pause where the pilot was either drumming up anticipation or reflecting on his existential crisis.
He continued, “I don’t know why they gave us this gate if the aerobridge cannot be connected….”
His voice trailed off. I was beyond myself with happiness.
🦋 Butterfly Effect of Ineptness
One could speculate infinitely on the series of events that led to this happening – a planefull of passengers from another country stuck at a gate where you cannot connect the aerobridge to deboard. The butterfly effect of ineptitude spreads far and wide in India, with chai/kapi breaks:
It could be that the plane’s overzealous early arrival threw the gate-assigner who, so hassled, made a wrong assignment.
It could be that the gate assigner gave two hoots about which gate he assigned.
It could be that this gate should be able to connect to this plane but when they built this airport, the contractor fucked up, and they’ve lived with it since.
Maybe the assignment software had a bug (because the Infosys engineer who worked on it took a short cut) and no one bothered to fix.
Maybe there’s always a sticky note that says, “Avoid Gate 35 for international flights” and that sticky note flew away this fine day.
Maybe it was rahu kaala.
That’s the beauty of chaos—it infiltrates every dust and space in the country.
India runs on Jugaad not because we want to solve new problems but because otherwise, nothing would run at all.
⁇ What now?
Meanwhile, the pilot:
“So…now we are going to deboard via a ladder.”
Okay, cool.
We had a problem (albeit one that could have been entirely avoided, it looks like), and we’ve solved it. Good old Indian Jugaad to the rescue.
The pilot wasn’t done.
“Umm…since the ladder is on the other side of the airport, someone needs to bring it. It would take a while. Sorry about the inconvenience.”
He sounded so defeated. Come on, man, get a grip. Were you born here yesterday? Are you learning about India in real-time?
Since the ladder was taking the scenic route and the plane had now been standing for 20 minutes at the gate, many of the standing bums began to rekindle their affair with the seats earnestly.
Not the two men next to me. They were now in what I believe is called a Trikonasana, their stiff, big-bellied bodies inexplicably bent over the edge of the seat even as they still stood standing. Clearly, they were suffering but also men of honor, ever determined to stand even if the plane stood there for the rest of time.
As we waited for a ladder to arrive, action began unfolding outside.
⁉ What now??
A yellow jeep pulled up next to the plane, and a solitary person in a yellow vest got off it. It felt like a levelling-up in Minion-land because:
The Jeep looked very official.
He was coming to spruce up the 14-man army that couldn’t solve this problem (I believe they had already started a new WhatsApp group to share jokes and good morning messages).
Once he arrived, some of the men dispersed, and a smaller group merged around him. Thus, an instance of India’s favourite problem-solving solution was born - a huddle. It goes by many names—a committee, task force, special team, high-level meeting, council, etc.
Nothing gives Indians more pleasure than the belief that any problem, big or small, perceived or real, can be solved by a group of people (often men) talking.
Wasn’t the ladder coming now?
Since no information was forthcoming except the visuals I gathered by staring out of the plane, I could only speculate:
It could be that the ladder had mysteriously gone missing. It’s possible that right this moment it was serving as a scaffolding for a makeshift stage of a local rally somewhere outside.
There was no official employee whose job it was to get the ladder across 2 kms of tarmac to this plane.
The plane had been waiting at the gate for 25 minutes.
Despite the gathering material for this post, I was getting worried, too. I had a connecting flight in two hours, and I wanted to know how long this would go.
More importantly, things were getting uncomfortable for me inside the plane. Bored and needing a distraction, people inside the aircraft began to, well, live. They began speaking on their phones, videos started blaring, and soon, a familiar din filled the plane. A kid or two began to whine, a precursor, no doubt, to a new hell to be unleashed soon. Someone had sneakily let off a fart.
Outside, the Main Minion was now on the phone. Presumably, this problem of deboarding passengers was beyond his paycheck, and higher authorities were getting involved. And then, he finished his phone call, snapped something to the smaller huddle, got back into his taxi and left.
What. Was. Happening?
Are we now abandoned to be forever residents of a plane at this gate?
Future passengers in the airport would point and say, “Oh, they could never figure out how to deboard them so they started living inside. Passengers in row 12 opened a tea stall, and VCs have funded a unicorn in row 28. I hear they plan to make the plane a union territory.”
Thirty minutes since the plane reached the gate. We were now officially at the scheduled arrival time.
The pilot’s speaker crackled again.
Schrodinger's Deplaning
“Okkaay…sooo…the ground staff are talking to the ATC and customs. It turns out that the customs has forbidden passengers from being deplaned using a ladder because international passengers cannot be deplaned this way.”
There was a long pause. The world inched closer to solving nuclear fusion.
The unsaid question of “So, what now?” hung in the air.
Pilot came on again,
“So, they are going to push the plane back a bit and then connect the bridge.”
I frowned. Sighed. I turned up my head like a dog hearing a new word. Drank some water. Looked out of the window. Fiddled with my seatbelt. Frowned again. Shook my head. Drank water again. As if I could wash out the confusion.
Wait. What? How? Why? What’s the right question to sputter with?
WHY DIDN’T WE DO THIS 30 MINUTES BACK?
I chalked it up to yet another cosmic temporal mystery, like how I remember the names of people only when they leave after engaging in a five-minute back-and-forth, where I trapeze my way around ever having to say their name or anything specific to them I should know.
As we waited for whatever horse, human or divine power to push the plane back by several hundred inches, I saw a ladder arrive on the outside. A bus turned up too, presumably to fetch the passengers who’d deboard through the ladder.
What in Chaos’ name was happening?
A lone, forlorn-looking guy stood next to the ladder. He’d gone on a mission to bring the rolling Sajeevini, but no one seemed to want it now.
For the next five glorious minutes, we all existed in Schrodinger’s deplaning. Ladder or Bridge, which way would the cards of our fate fall?
And then our plane began to inch back. Hallelujah! I imagine they used those 14 men to push the plane back a bit.
I spotted the aerobridge moving, and on the edge of it stood a warrior, playing with the toggle that moved that damn thing. He was our Cooper. “It’s not possible,” they’d said. “It’s necessary,” he said as he connected the bridge to the plane.
Inside, uncles, aunties, kids, and the occasional elderly all leap in unison from their seats. Elbows met torsos. Pelvis met butts. Faces got scrunched under stinky armpits.
In another five minutes, I was out of the plane, ready for whatever came next.
India is not for beginners.
Could be Worse,
Tyag
I lost it at: "A lone, forlorn-looking guy stood next to the ladder. He’d gone on a mission to bring the rolling Sajeevini, but no one seemed to want it now."
I love your storytelling, Tyag. Very fun read.
This was fantastic to read (maybe not to experience?!)