In-flight Dinner

I love airports. They're like people. Could it be because they see so many...?

Everyone has a story. An airport is one those places that seems to hold everyone's story. Everyone who passes through them, that is. The businessman who's making his thrid trip to Hong Kong this month. The seven year-old who's taking his first flight back home on his own. His uncle, with whom he spent the summer, dropped him off two hours ago, after placing him under air hostess care. Now he'll take the short ride back home where his father will be waiting to receive him at another airport. The girfriend who can't wait to throw her arms around her man just like in the Lufthansa ad and the college student whose leaving home for a long time.

There are plenty others, like the parents visiting their married children who live abroad, the first time traveller who is petrified of flying and the happy family on another Raj Travel Tour. Whoever you are, the airport has a place for you.

The atmosphere is bursting with emotion. It's heavy and electric. All the farewells and teary eyes, the innumerable hugs and vehement promises to return soon. Or its the welcoming bunches of flowers from family/friends and air conditioned cars that they bring with them, whose doors they throw open to rescue the tired traveller.

And yet, none of this is permanent. Sure, nothing is. But at an airport, it's even more temporal. From the winding queues at immigration and customs to the walk on the aerobridge from the aircraft to the building when you drag your luggage-on-wheels behind you. The manicured meals that you're served as a passenger or the more-perfect-than-life duty-free shops in the departure lounge. The distances that are covered. You know that it will end soon. Sooner than expected. It's all in transit. Always.

Maybe that's exactly what makes it real and therefore more appealing. In an age of plastic and Botox, anything remotely real is welcome.

Speaking of real, although this is entirely unconnected, I had a realy good meal tonight. Beijing Bites round the corner served up a particularly fabulous dinner of Crispy Peking Chicken, Lemon and Basil Prawns (which were sooooo goood! Flattened seafood in herbal seasoning goodness. I'm still smacking my lips) and Butter Garlic Noodles. It was a traditional Indo-Chinese dinner. But it was simply divine. And I have to mention the Bhuna Gosht from nearby Shahi Kabab Centre. Spiced and garnished, for my tasting pleasure - splendid. One of those moments that genuinely make me feel proud to be a carnivore.