A doglover`s lament ! Can I get my bag back, please? Some of us are destined to get our bags last on the baggage carousel at airport. It does not matter whether you check in first, last, in the middle, try any math you want, check with your astrologer, your bag will, like Napoleon’s troops, bring up the rear. There is no lonelier feeling than watching other folks trot off happily while you are waiting to be re-united with your piece of luggage. It is like your girlfriend has ditched you. Total betrayal. All too often it does not come at all and the belt grinds to a sad halt. Instead of Delhi it is now cheerfully whizzing its way to Dusseldorf and there is nothing you can do about it. arabnews/sites/default/files/images/bikcartoon_web.jpg Except make a complaint and that is a major human endeavor like going to Antarctica or clearing a path through the Amazon. For normal folks trying to explain what it looks like is hazardous. All bags are brownish-bluish-blackish and have a blue ribbon, a red string or a half torn sticker that is supposed to separate them from the fifty other identical bags rolling merrily down the track. The fact is that they also have different ribbons, string and stickers and life is but a dream as you have everyone hopping about at the carousel, bumping shins, stamping toes, bending down and peering myopically at each of their similar type of bags, often getting it all wrong. Sometimes it goes around three times before you display the courage to check it is yours, and, voila, it is. Lucky day. Is it any surprise therefore that you pick up someone else’s suitcase and push off with it? A friend of mine reached home and found his piece of strangely shaped metal key would not enter the hi-tech slit that now passes for a keyhole. That did not disturb him very much since most of us are incapable of opening these newfangled systems. Half an hour later it struck him that his grey suitcase had a scar on the left side and this one did not have it. Since it was unlikely that it healed in-flight, he smartly concluded this was not his suitcase. So back to the airport he went and he approached Customs and told them this was not his bag and had someone else been along with a similar dull grayish blackish soft case, no special features item of baggage! The customs chap was ecstatic. Did you open it, he asked, besides himself with glee. No, I could not get it to open. So you tried. Of course, I tried, I thought it was mine. You just said it was not yours. I did not know that then, I believed it was my suitcase. So who told you it wasn’t? No one told me, I found no scar on the left side of the suitcase. You damaged the bag? No, I did not damage the bag, I was trying to open the flipping thing. Are you raising your voice, Sir? No, I am not, I am only trying to reconcile with my bag. Why would you open something that was not yours? Because I thought it was mine. But you just said it wasn’t yours. And so on and so on and so on. I am not even sure if he got his luggage back. I think those people who took it drove off to the Shimla hills somewhere and may not have opened (tried to) it until the next day. You can see similar confusion a dozen times a day. One lady last week picked up someone else’s bag off the IGI belt 12 as I waited for my ribboned, stickered, stringed bag and realized a few seconds later it wasn’t hers. She saw an identical bag with another lady and after staring at each other suspiciously like they were going to duel at dawn they did a little pantomime with their hands, finally approaching each other. Mix-up, says the first lady. Yes, says, second lady, but please wait, I must check my bag first. You must what!! Check my bag, you see the zips are easy to open. I look like a thief to you? I don’t know how a thief looks, I don’t know you, I will still check, so please wait.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 22:42:39 +0000
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