I have had a mixed bag of experiences when travelling via the aerial route (as Mr. Ravi Shastri likes to subtly put it). Take for instance this beautiful sunset I have had the fortune of witnessing:
Beautiful sunset
Unfortunately, I have also had the misfortune of being on a plane from Paris to Mumbai on which one of these was a co-passenger:
Yes, the entire flight long (7023 km)
However, most people often face the worst when they are at the airport. I have written about this in an old post : A lesson in plain jacking. Today’s discourse is about checking in for flights. According to some of my ancestors (well, they are over 40 years old) there was a time when checking in for a flight used to take less time than the actual flight itself. Imagine! Compare that to the present situation where to travel from Mumbai to Bangalore (45 min) you have to check in an hour before departure and wait another 30 min for your luggage to arrive. Of course, the ancestors also mention that flying those days was ridiculously expensive and sickening, what with the turbo-props constantly threatening to reveal their true nature – of being props! 
Anyway, coming back to checking in. You will wonder how effortlessly I drift away from the topic at hand and you the reader seldom realize till the time I point it out. My pointing out is a moot point because by not pointing out, I stand to gain the advantage of knowing that I have filled in random words, thereby increasing the word count of my post, but not actually writing anything worthwhile. By the time you read this line, you will have realized that I have written yet another paragraph that has nothing to do with the post whatsoever.
Nevertheless, checking in can be quite a pain for the average Joe. There are so many rules to follow and so less time in which to complete all the formalities:
Security EXecutive (Nodal Officer) [SEXNO] {The SEXNO made his first appearance here: Convocation Day }: Sir, you have a polymer bottle containing unclear fluid and some amorphous substances in your bag.
Average Joe [AvJo, pronounced aauujo like the Gujju word]: What?
SEXNO: It seems like milk made from skimmed milk powder in a plastic bottle
AvJo: Yes. That is for the infant that is with me.
SEXNO: I am sorry, Sir. Airline rules prohibit the carrying of liquid items in bottles. We cannot permit this on the flight.
AvJo: Oh well, the wailing child is going to be someone else’s problem then. Anything else?
SEXNO: Sir, there is a Swiss Army Knife with rather sharp tools of cutting and shearing.
AvJo: Well, that’s alright. I am a soldier of the Swiss Army.
SEXNO: OK. You are cleared to board the flight. Have a safe flight.
It does not need a genius to figure out that skimmed milk is a potentially dangerous weapon, give that the person might feed it to the Pilot, then burp him to sleep and then who will fly the goddamn plane? A Swiss army knife however can only be used to hold people hostage, slice open jugular veins and also cut airline omelets. Who would want to hold people hostage that have had airline food? The mere thought of a few hundred people scared to shit after having eaten airline food is enough to put any potential hijacker off his plans.
Another hassle that people face when clearing security at the airport is of being groped by security personnel under the pretext of being checked for carrying dangerous goods. This is a particularly invasive procedure in which flexible glass fibres are inserted through the rectum into the body… oh wait, that procedure is endoscopy. At the airport, there is no such high tech device available and the security personnel make do with their bare hands. Quite what sadistic pleasure they derive is beyond my limited thinking ability and I choose not to dwell much on that.
A nice segue to this article will be one on the merriment of being transported from the airport to the airplane. But that will have to wait for another day. For now, I have to go meet the SEXNO for obtaining clearance to carry colourless life sustaining liquid in pre-packaged polymer containers*.
/R
*PS. I mean bottled water.
