de grand malayalee reception wagon @ kerala's airports.....

de grand malayalee reception
wagon @ kerala's airports.....

Waiting here at the Cochin airport to recieve my dad for easter,im surrounded by a realm of adrenaline rushed crowd all ready to pound onto the airport barricades.Yeah, it is the malayalee reception wagon,an annual all family affair to recieve their loved ones.A sort of a pilgrimage or a holiday tour,negotiating it seems to the welcome drink for the foreign tourists squeezing their way into the 'Gods own country'.My 52 yr old dad is no exception to the suffering in the chaos and he seems to have mastered the art of exiting kerala's airports.My dad hugs and kisses me and i leave with intimidating thoughts in my mind.

In whole of my life i have rarely been to airports to recieve my dad.My dad never believed in this concept of wasting an entire day just to recieve or see off someone."If u can wait for 6 months,why not 6 more hours in travelling?"-the idea seems to have few takers.In a school with almost everyones dad working overseas,it was even an accepted norm to skip a day's class when your dad's leave is due.

If these reception wagons are a testimony to strong family relations in the eastern part of the world,they also stand for absense of a proper social mindset that couldnt invent itself with advancements as little as a international airport.Science can easily change the way you live,but not so easily change the way you think.In airports abroad, you see guests being received by chauffer driven cars leaving airports minimally crowded.That might be a long time ahead of us considering that a proper airport culture has not sinked into our psyches even after 60 yrs of independance.Indian passengers are rarely served liquour on board,thanks to our poor drinking culture neither do we enjoy free hand luggage clearance which is the normal norm elsewhere.That is well complimented by a hilariously unsocial reception crowd at the arrival . No wonder,indian airports seldom allow anyone other than passengers in their lounges .

A deserted arrival terminal is not what im trying to propose.What is needed is radical change in the way we treat airports as an all family destination.If we dont crowd our bus or railway stations, we dont need to crowd airports only on account of a greater magnitude of arrival.

Till then we ll see weekend markets less crowded than airports.