Kashmir Holiday

Kashmir Holiday A little story

June 2007 by Andree Pouliot

"Nikaldo saaman!"she barks. I am at a table in the Srinagar airport, enduring a purse examination, along with every other woman passenger. We have already had various machine guns pointed at us, from the first outer gate, by a young moon-faced rosy-cheeked beauty, nestled behind her sandbags, while passing through the "women's target range". The men pass through their own male target zone. We have had all our bags xrayed twice, been body searched twice, and are now approaching the departure "lounge" (lock-up). This is a routine flight, at the height of tourist season, and the airport is clogged with Indian families escaping the blasting heat of the plains, flights are buzzing day in and day out. We are all resigned to the menacing security arrangements. Kashmir has been a battleground since the late 1980's, and as "anything can happen", the Indian Army maintains an aggressive security approach. It crossed my mind that some company must be making a killing supplying razor wire, it is EVERYWHERE, great coils of it looped over walls, gates, seized homes and schools, and leftovers surround no parking zones, clot wildflowers and brambles along the canals, and fail to discourage merrily blooming roses in the flowerbeds of the elegant Mughal gardens. Nasty stuff.

There are four young security women on duty, outsiders from central India, trim in their khaki high-waist belted trousers and hair netted buns beneath natty khaki berets. None of them have a word of English. The officer at the table before me in the heaving scrum, is examining each and every object in a 6 year old travellers' backpack, and commenting on the toys. Every pencil in the suspicious pencil box extracted. Sweeping the piles of flotsam back across the table, she barks, "boarding pass!" and the kid looks nonplussed, as one would expect. Her mother is at the other end of the table, opening lipstick tubes, unwrapping folded hankies..a hubbub ensues,..where is the kid's boarding pass? Mother unpacks her purse, again.
Other women passengers surge against the table. Finally the officer abandons the family, who are now scrabbling in every pocket and shouting to the rest of the clan in search of the lost boarding pass. The little girl, calmly says," I'll repack my bag myself" and quickly collects her skittering toys and barrettes.

My turn. "saaman nikaldo!" A wave of irritation overcomes reason, and I pretend I don’t understand the Hindi order. She barks, I remove my water bottle. She barks louder. The next thing I do is inadvisable, but I did it anyway, I look her in the eye and say 'speak English?' She flaps her hands over my bag, so I pick it up and shake and DUMP all my stuff on the table, all the bits and pieces clattering and skidding about, there is a second of silence in the din. "There" I say "have a look". More hand flapping, dismissive gestures," ok ok!!", and another guard says "put it away". I repack and go find a corner to read.

The lock-up is hot, jam-packed, and swarming with flies. Might as well be in a barn.
Having been thru all-level security, we are trapped within, and here comes an announcement " passengers on Jet Air flight 605, may I have your kind attaantion, there is a deelay in departure of this flight.." an hour goes by. We are herded outside to identify our checked, twice xrayed bags, another tick on the boarding card. My boarding card is starting to look like a palimpsest, it has so many stamps and signatures. Later a security man approaches, "madam, you must have your hand bags checked and stamped" , and he leads me back to the ladies table, to an evidently superior officer. In deliberate Indian-English she asks me to take out everything from my bag. Ok… (regretting all the multitudindous little survival accoutrements I carry around, particularly needed as journeys can take much longer than expected). Now all the four lady-guards are watching, they are, after all, very curious. So are the row of women passengers seated right behind this fascinating examination table, most women would crane a bit to see the contents of another's purse, and here, they have a ringside view. One by one, starting with kleenex, hankie, water bottle, comb, pencil, the notebook is rifled, eyeglass case opened..then it gets interesting..she pries the back cover off my lipbalm and breaks it. A tube of sunscreen, I make a rubbing motion on the back of my hand. Advil, "high BP medication" I lie. And so on. The senior officer seizes on my camera, and is a bit disappointed; I have already removed the "cells" (batteries).

Then she finds a little plastic bag containing two tampons. Aha! They all move in closer to have a good look, take a pinch.."whoh kya hai?"
Searching her vocabulary, she utters " whaat izzit?" Now I have the chance to make my move, and I deliberately set out to embarrass them to end the curiosity show. Ok, it's a bit mean, but I do it anyway. "Oh my gawwwd!" I gesture, hands flying to my face," this is LADIES ITEM!, you know for PERIODS" they draw back slightly. " You know, LADIES item, for BLEEDING?"
"I am bleeding…we don't use big ones like you ladies do..fanning my hands below my waist..." "ok ok, put it away", I have managed, finally, to fluster the leader into stamping and signing my damn handbag tag. As I repack, I hear them chattering and giggling in hindi, .."itna chota, so small, how can it go!"
Back in my corner seat, fanning away flies that cluster on me as if I were a horse turd, I notice a scrum in one corner of the room. Our 2:45 flight is "estimated to arrive from Jammu at 4:00 , inconvenience is regretted". Jet Airways has sent over boxed sandwiches, and I join the heaving mob of parents who are flapping 5, or 7 boarding cards in the face of the hapless fresh-faced ground staff boy who is unpacking the boxes. He is also trying to pour out little plastic cups of coke, but the close jostling makes this difficult and slow. I perform my usual crabwise trick, skin in to the front by cutting around the sides of the mass, an essential survival trick in the absence of queues. I skip the drink. This lock-up has no water, no edibles, and the coffee machine kiosk closed an hour ago. I notice that the tables of five male and five female security officers are in a picnic mood, joking and lunging about to refill their plastic cups with bottles of hijacked Coke and Fanta. Good thing the lady officer let me keep my water bottle.

The toilets are vile, reeking of urine and made more eye-watering by heavy sloshings of phenoyl ammonia. The power shuts down several times, including once when I am locked in the pitch dark toilet. My mobile phone lights me out of there.
A massive thunder storm breaks, all over our double-xrayed luggage, marooned on trolleys out on the tarmac. " Due to bad weather, flight 605 has been delayed, incovenience is regretted"
Indian children, durable travelers, run about playing hide and seek, pestering each other instead of their parents. One rustic family are in possession of a boy of about 3, who continuously shrieks, a regular car alarm of howls, and I notice that the adults are baiting him and teasing him, then cuddling him, like a puppy. Nice little slaps upside the head, more piercing screams. A very tall bearded security officer approaches, picks the kid up off the floor, places him on a seat, and gestures finger to lips, the family says nothing, they smile indulgently. Boy children are sacred. The tormenting part I don't understand.

Flight tickets are very cheap in India now, and a large proportion of holidayers have never set foot on a plane before. This is hilarious, but aggrivating for the service staff. One hears of plane-loads of passengers all rushing from their seats in a mass to crowd into the "drivers cabin", to urge the pilot to stop circling and PARK! This leads to weight imbalance and emergency landings. An elderly hoary Sikh was seen (I have an eyewitness account) elbowing the pesky toilet doors apart, cursing, jetting his arc of pee towards the "latrine" from the corridor. One man was prevented from opening the door hatch, which he was attacking, because the plane was "stuffy".
Seatbelts are optional, and everyone surges up to open the overhead lockers at touchdown, aircraft still rolling on the runway. There is a gap between the essential firm training of first time air passengers, and the air hostess staff, who are young, wimpy, lacquered in make up, and dressed in sexy "modern" uniforms, short plaid skirts with cute matching headbands. I expect that after awhile the leering, groping and catcalls will harden them into learning to take the rowdy passengers in hand.

In the end our plane arrives, in driving rain, and middle aged gents are backslapping the young ground staff, crediting, "well done, my boy, you got the plane in", as they dash about with their walky talkies.
Before boarding we are herded into yet another search cabin on the tarmac (women must always be enclosed in a tiresome curtained cubicle, losing sight of one's belongings at the heaped xray belt is worrying) and we board our flight, three and a half hours late. I have had all my bags xrayed 3 times, had my breasts and hips caressed in a curtained cubicle 3 times, and the contents of my purse viewed by dozens of curious women.

But it was a lovely Kashmir holiday…

( in case you are wondering..no, I did not risk taking a single photo of the soldiers, bunkers, armed roadside guards posted at 8 yard intervals, army vehicles, sandbagged and razor-wired crossroads, or police, though all are very thick on the ground. I did not want my camera seized. You must imagine that part of the scene).