All that I craved for after the long queue and being exposed to the trivial conversations was a window seat and if possible all alone. But India is one such place where solitude is an expensive thing except on top of a mountain or perhaps in a safe forest. Mine was along the aisle beside the couple. Soon much to my satisfaction a young flight attendant walked to me to ask if I could take a window seat across the aisle. The couple was also given a proposal for unknown reason and they complied with it. With the clouds all around and the knowing that I would soon be there I began going through a list of things that I thought I should do.
The flight landed in Agartala for a while and another horde of passengers, not a tribal looking person among them, streamed in. They stood in the aisle and began disturbing verbal altercation with the crews. One among the staff came to me to check my boarding pass and then with a frown on her face she said “ this isn’t your place!” Of course it wasn’t but I was asked to take this place. She suggested I get up from there and go to the printed seat number. I couldn’t bear the brunt of being humiliated when I was in a position to be courted. So I demanded the person who had requested me to sit here to be sent for. She reappeared and stood with a questioning look as though she had no recollection. I said she was the one who had asked me to sit here and now I didn’t want the staff to move me around as they would easily do with a doll. They left me alone and now went up to the couple to say what they had said to me. This time they also easily complied without a word.
The plane was packed now but the excitement that it would soon touch the runway over the home soil rendered the feeling of being suffocated insignificant. The view below of Lotak Lake and that of the sprawling green paddy fields and dots of hills over them ringed by the ranges of mist-veiled mountains stirred one’s mind and if one hadn’t experienced anything like that then he must have been someone who was forcibly put on the plane. It was raining outside and that had given the place a clean look. When the plane had stopped right in front of the airport building with its façade bearing the hastily-painted name of it in three languages we found ourselves among the jumpy looking security personnel. No one smiled and there was no need for smiles, instead there was the suspicion and the fear which had ingrained in the minds of almost everyone. If I had wanted to move around without any interference I would have to be escorted by a dozen of those jumpy-looking men armed with bazookas and Kalashnikovs.
There were no arrests, there were only fear and impression that anything dreadful could fall upon the place anytime and that wasn’t only within the vicinity of the airport. Outside the airport were the mangled-looking auto rickshaws with torn roofs and splattered with red earth as though the earth was bleeding and they had been riding over it. Nobody would talk about a fair fare, one would have to haggle over it over and over again. A young man who had been made look much older by life agreed to take me to my village.
After half a kilometre on the wide and somewhat clean airport road he got into the narrow road leading towards Mongsangeih, although the road run skirting around the airport the whole length of the road was dotted with deep potholes. While the driver was attempting to avoid them I was sent from one side to another at the back and sometime my head virtually went up through one among the large holes in the roof. Surprisingly Leewaeh Road was empty and the ride was smooth, then it went around the fortified university campus and came out on Singjamei-Lilong Road.
To be continued....
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