Leaving a bag behind and landing in trouble.
BLOG: Across the Border
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: As I was escorted from the plane back to the boarding lounge of the JFK Airport, the way was packed with police officers and agents in uniform, who stared at me. The young woman escorting me was smartly dressed in a suit, had a veil on her head. She made cryptic comments into her two-way phone: “I’m bringing him,” “be there in a minute.” She turned to me, and said: “you should have told the aircraft crew immediately.” I said I did, but was told to wait.
When we reached the lounge area, from where some 20 minutes ago I had boarded the Air India plane to New Delhi, there were more police officers, some with assault weapons, surrounding a backpack, blue in color, inclined on a seat, in the middle of an empty row of seats. The woman asked me: “is that yours?” I said yes, and asked her if she wanted me to identify anything inside it. She looked at me, and said, “No, take it.” She escorted me back past security, the officers in uniform, the aircraft crew, to my seat in the plane, and left. To my big relief, even more than getting my bag back — which carried my laptop, iPad, an expensive camera, and voice recording machines — the airport had not been shut down. I had visions of being interrogated in a room at the airport, while my family left for our vacation, without me.
A few hours earlier, the drive with my family from home in Connecticut to the airport was fine. The traffic was light, the much feared long lines at security didn’t exist; there were only a few people ahead of us. I had last gone to India more than two years ago. This time around, the first line of security was on the ground level, a much needed measure which has finally been implemented. Earlier, even visitors could wander through the airport, go a level below, eat at the restaurants, stroll through the duty free shops. Not anymore.
A couple of months ago, I had gone to San Antonio. On my return flight from there, I forgot to take my wallet out from the back pocket of my jeans, as well as remove a couple of credit and debit cards which I usually keep in the front pocket when I travel, at the security checkpoint. I didn’t have any trouble at LaGuardia Airport in New York from where I boarded the flight to San Antonio, but the sophisticated scanner at the San Antonio International Airport caught my wallet and the plastic cards. I was taken aside and given a full body pat. The last time I was given a body pat at an airport was in 2008, in Colorado, when I had gone to report the Democratic National Convention.
At the San Antonio airport, an officer asked me to remove the plastic cards from my front pocket. Another officer took it for a scan, while my hand which had handled those cards and wallet, were given a swab test, which I was told was to detect any chemicals or illegal substance. It was a mild nuisance, a few extra minutes wasted, but I was impressed with the airport’s thoroughness, safety precautions.
This time around in New York, I didn’t want to take a chance, and emptied my pockets into the plastic tray, my wallet, plastic cards, cash, along with my cellphone, wrist watch and change. I didn’t get a body pat. My two sons, ages 6 and 3, were mercifully acting their best, and had stopped momentarily their constant clarion calls of war against each other, which included both the aggressive and the subterfuge kind. My wife and I had a good lunch. We went to the boarding lounge, which had too many people, few seats to accommodate everybody. Some other air carriers’ lounge had no seats at all, and lines were stretched down the corridor.
My two sons finally decided to call off their amicable peace of the last hour or so. They started their usual fashion of exploring a place by running around everywhere, with the older one hounding the other, the younger one screaming for mercy. They usually have role reversals of the same game every 15 minutes or so. There was some peace when my older son found another boy of his own age, played a video game, with my younger son trying hard to distract them with his antics. When the call to board the aircraft came, and we reached for our baggage, my younger son decided the time was right for him to break free, make a run for it towards the far side of the lounge. I got my daily workout, chased him down. Finally, we boarded the aircraft, my wife and I holding firmly a child and a bag in each of our hands. The backpack was left behind.
As the aircraft took off, my wife admonished me, “if I had done that, left a bag behind, you would have not let me hear the end of it.” I looked at her, and then away at the window. The aircraft was swerving in the air, the houses and cars on the ground looked like miniature toys. Fourteen hours later, we would be at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.