The VIPs are back

FEBRUARY 2000 - Whoever designed, though calling it designed would be a gross exaggeration, the Lahore Airport deserves some kind of punishment but of course no such thing will ever happen. In fact, the architect of this busy travel center, would be impossible to trace and since follies have more than one author, it is quite likely the airport was the masterpiece of many pickled sponges disguised as brains. Whatever, the airport defies all logic and common sense.

Things like Cat2 or whatever is the name of the gizmo which guides planes through mist, fog, rain and smog to land safely, are naturally beyond the range of the wizards of the CAA into whose clutches the airports of Pakistan are placed. An organization that cannot organize rubbish bins or keep public toilets clean can hardly be expected to find and install high tech equipment other countries have been using since Lindberg saw the Atlantic Ocean from twenty feet high. Instead of truly becoming better day by day, they have regressed at a remarkable manner. The checking of motorists at entry points remains one of the CAA’s most accomplished performances beaten only by the Keystone Cops chasing bank robbers in a 1928 Ford with two wheels missing. What that mindless ‘search’ activity accomplishes will remain one of the CAA’s closely guarded secrets. In many years of tramping to the airport, I have yet to see this senile operation conducted with anything bordering close to the intelligence that Polly the Parrot demonstrates while firing the small cannon. If you are able to escape detection at the hands of the sleuths who stand under a ramshackle tin tent and who display the same sharp instinct that logs of wood are famous for, there are more morons in attendance at various points. At the gates leading into departures which are always wedged between millions of smelly and utterly bored people, who seem to have descended at the airport along with their entire extended clans, stand pairs of more of the CAA’s bright lights. These men who can’t read ABC or XYZ for that matter, insist on examining air tickets, usually succeeding in opening them from the wrong side or on their better days, upside down. We all know what PK 407 will read seen from the other side. Not that it matters really, because they are simply performing a banal exercise, the meaning of which has never entered the mass that passes for a head and is usually seen to reside tilted to one side between the shoulders. If passengers or PAX as they are referred to when classified by air people, survive the upside down, back-to-front examination of their tickets, they are let in and after mote obstacle courses, might even find themselves face to face with a woman who obviously gets out of bed the wrong side every day. Amazing talent. If the PIA computers are not ‘down’ – though I think depressed would be a far better word, you might even get a seat and on very rare occasions, the one you want. From there on, you criss cross across the airport, stamped again and again by any amount of people who seem obsessed with rubber stamps of indecipherable text. Since it is humanly impossible to have all the tags facing the same way and at the same height for the stampers to indulge in their favourite pastime, you have no choice but to perform some of the most intricate moves known to man since fire and dance were discovered and invented at the same time. By the time you have had your baggage scanned a second time, got all your edges and tags stamped, been frisked (a friend of mine who actually enjoyed the experience asked the man if he would do it again), you are technically cleared to exit from the airport, but not so fast. More people now seem to have a larger than life interest in your boarding card, which having been stamped at most places is now cut into stubs which keep getting shorter in direct proportion to the distance to the aircraft. An amazing accomplishment perfected here in Pakistan. Perhaps British Airways might be induced to learn how we do it so well.

Last week, while making a brave attempt to arrive at the airport, I was amused (again) to realize that the wider lane in front of the lounges remains free of traffic, while the narrowest lane probably designed for bicyclists and rickshaws or perhaps joggers, is the one assigned to those who are only interested in dropping their passengers and leave. Not surprisingly, while the broad lane remains placidly empty, the thin one is choked with motorists and passengers trying to disembark within 20 seconds with all their baggage. Bond can I suppose do it with Q’s help, but most of us are neither as gifted as he is nor do we have the agility to pull out suitcases, papers and briefcases without tripping over the narrow sidewalls or getting run over by those behind and in just as much a hurry. This farce too exists because the entire airport is a farce, may be a consoling theory, but it does nothing for the agro to subside. However, enlightenment was at hand when on arrival a day later, I was happy to see the whole wide lane playing host to an impressive galaxy of army limos and jeeps in battle green splendour. There were more stars on show than the Lahore sky that night and figures in starched uniforms strutted about waiting impatiently for their uniformed masters to alight from the plane.

So, the VIPs are back and with vengeance, except they are in uniforms. What I cannot understand, being a bit thick in the upstairs department, is that if the Chief Executive is stopping at traffic lights and even the President, who has survived a close call and is now happily issuing oaths by the gross to any judge going by, also does the same, who are the gentlemen who now want VIP parking at the Lahore airport ? I know this is a trivial matter because much larger issues haunt the nation, but I don’t think three months ago the armed forces would have displayed such intentions. Now, with the judiciary having had their few healthy molars removed, perhaps the long stay is on and good old VIP culture is back to haunt us.