Loo hearings

I left Hawaii to come back to Delhi a day later than my husband. He took the Pacific route and me the Atlantic. Now for next 48 hours we would not be in contact. So I was a little low. They put me and my suitcases through an agriculture test. ‘All baggage bound from Hawaii to the U. S. Mainland (in my case it would be a long halt at the Newark Airport) is subject to pre-flight inspection by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. This is to prevent the spread of fruit flies and other hazardous plant insects and diseases.’, they claim.

I had to swipe my passport on these automated machines for the boarding pass. Never done that, so I asked someone for instructions. Realised it was simple. It scans the last two lines on the front inside cover (the one with lot of ‘<’ signs). I hear they have new biometric passports too. Mine was later fed in manually as the machine couldn’t read it :)

Then they tested my hands with some talcum powder kind of a thing. They say they were checking if I have handled explosives in the recent past. Ummm I wonder how this works during Diwali times.

I wasn’t in any mood to do any shopping. The dollar conversion makes me sick. More so when within one week of you having bought it at `48, it falls down to 45.

Everything was nice but I guess when one has decided to be unhappy, no one can do anything about it. I was simply sulking around. I think I was missing home, husband and dal chawal.

I kept my backpack down and was washing my face when I heard a familiar accent from behind one of the closed toilet doors. And then loud and clear ‘अरे चड्डी पहनो चड्डी ’.A mother was shouting at her child in Hindi, who refused to put the underpants back on.

I smiled. It cured me of the sad curve. In fact so much so that I laughed out loud :)

I had a good flight back to the mainland.