SpeakOut#11 - Peculiar people I saw at the Airport

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

So three days back, I was unloading myself and my bags from an auto early at 5 in the morning, the sun still away from the horizons of Trivandrum. Yet the people were awake and living around the city. The airport looked busier than it usually did during the day and so I guessed that it was probably the prime time for the airport.

I was excited about going to Abu Dhabi finally after a year and that made me anxious about how I fare through the airport procedures without having a problem. Due to that cautiousness, I noticed how the people, the crowds around me that walked in general turned to peculiar characters in the flight to Sharjah which I was going to board.

There was a man who struggles to speak English and yet asks the lady at the airport cafe in English while she replies nicely in Malayalam. He stuck to talking English still and made her reply struggling too. She speaks better yet the whole thing looked awkward. In the end he inquired of every price there and bought cheap thinking he did good  but still managed to wipe out his budget.

There was a lady around her 50s who did not know to speak a word or write other than from Malayalam. She got around the whole way by talking and it seemed like it was all she did. Everything that she found hard to do, she accomplished it by complaining or shouting around the passengers who would then oblige to do it for her. It was evident by this that where she was going, it was for household work and I wondered if she would get her work done there by talking alone too.

Keralites, as we ourselves have noticed, are people who mostly find it hard to do certain jobs because it doesn't stand upto their statuses yet go abroad to find themselves work for all those things they didn't like to go for at their native place.

Another person I noticed was a man who with his wife and 3 children was stopped at the last scanning area before the boarding gate because he had 3 huge family size bottles of water in his bagpack. It is against rules to carry liquid above 100ml and here this guy had 3 huge bottles. The guy reasoned by saying it was for his young daughter. The security then allowed them to carry a bottle however the man still persisted on wanting to carry 3 bottles! He finally took a bottle and left after the security repeated his offer several times even when he didn't need to.

That man even after being given a good offer although he was the one in violation still couldn't accept it when he was the one doing the wrong.

Don't pass me as judgemental. This is how we can notice things around and at times we can see bits of ourselves around through these things and even probably keep such incidents as reminders and mend ourselves. It was quite amusing to watch them too as I had nothing else to do other than passing off the airport procedures which was not much work.