In Transit

"Madam cheita geley kintu khobor asey": Basically, hell hath no fury than the VIP wife scorned.
The luggage belt just rolled once, while the loader walked off the belt with only two suitcases marked: VIP reading on a Biman tag.
The rest of the passengers like us just stared at the delivery of the VIP luggage and the halted belt with no signs of our bags coming.
To make things worse, there were five people in uniform walking off with those two VIP cases. We stared in disbelief. Well. I stared. Unable to control my anger, I blurted out: Who matters more: the boss or the wife? Do the bosses or the real VIPs know that these "side" VIPs including their wives, their children, their neighbours, friends and the rest of their enlightened world use or misuse their worth? Do they know that it may have taken them a full blast of BCS excellence to be where they are, but it was taking seconds for their cadre glory to evaporate…just because they hadn't educated their families better?
It would not be a bad idea to start a poll checking responses to a proposal I would like to put forward to our leaders and readers: Bangladesh needs a humbling experience and therefore no one, except for the honourable prime minister, the opposition leader and the cabinet may kindly enjoy the VIP status. In our country, we have had success with defining CIP status. Why should that not be applied to the VIPs? Before awarding or revoking a VIP status, shouldn't all be subjected to a microscopic evaluation in order to be eligible? And most of all, shouldn't the VIP privileges be non transferable, especially to the immediate family units? I also propose that, following the Happiness index of Bhutan, we too should introduce Gross National Humility. Since we are running low on this count, maybe this is a quality this nation could seriously invest in.
It was BG008 from London to Dhaka. My seat number was 14K on the 21st of October, this year. Let me share a few basic Biman facts with you lest you haven't ridden one in recent times. The new 777-200 Extended Range is a treasure for a lot of us simply because it gives us a better fare and it flies directly to a popular destination like London. For years, my children have made exceptions to disagree with my humble point of view of preferring Biman to the rest of the other foreign careers. I have been amply forewarned and threatened about the various travel advisories of various governments having on their staff against flying Biman. My logic is simple: one, it's mine; two, it's mine; three: it's mine. My country good or bad, my mother drunk or sober and my Biman: lokkor or jhokkor (rotten in other words). I feel ashamed to take other flights to same destinations especially when I see an Indian's preference to fly his/her airline, a Pakistani wanting to fly PIA. How may Biman be worse? I defend: as a race, we have a habit of easily letting go of what is ours…just like we've given up on Biman. Wrecked by scandals and accusations and counter accusations of plotting disaster, bribe and inefficiency, the airline has made the headlines in the recent past and we've all enjoyed reading them. Question: how many of us are actually taking Biman? Not many, I fear. Once upon a time, I used to love taking BG just because it had a full audio channel with recitations from the Quran.
37000 feet above the ground, people like me often turn to become devout Muslims and have spiritual revelations. I have always belonged to that group. A born sufferer of aerophobia, I refuse to listen to the logic of air safety. High up in the air, I want the assurance of being doubly comfortable knowing that I'm dying amongst my own people or rather going down with them. I often say this out aloud, risking probably a justified dose of ridicule from all who hear me out. It's fine. I don't care as long as the Bangladeshi pilot is in control of the bird. I trust these faces. It's only lately Biman has had to hire foreign pilots as ours apparently are not trained to fly new planes. What a pity! It's also equally pathetic to see Atlantic crew supervising our familiar achar-serving team and the paan khawa stewards selling duty free… disappointingly taking orders from them, the foreigners. But they are. Apparently they are teaching our crew service and efficiency. Well, I am about to share a story on the degree of service in Biman that I just experienced less than 24 hours ago.
I am a fast learner when it comes to previous experience. I know better not to be expecting entertainment system to be satisfying in Biman. The last time I took the flight to London only a month and a half back, they had Kris Flyer, or rather the Singapore Airlines package running in the channels with only one English movie: The Time Traveller's Wife, which I tricked myself into watching twice. So this time around, I was better equipped with books and magazines. And that was fine as this time; I was travelling London to Dhaka. I reached my seat, briefly happy that the seat next to me was empty and then to frustratingly watch a young man in late '30s confidently settling down to the seat next to mine and hogging the window view. And then came trouble. First, he pressed the buzzer on the remote control device to call the crew. It didn't work. Then he tried switching his overhead light on, it didn't work. Finally he tried clicking on all the channels up to 21, and the screen was blank following which he requested me to do the same drill and confirm that mine was working. I confirmed that nothing on my seat worked as well. By this time, the seats behind us were also occupied by Biman officials in uniforms. The cabin crew, specially the female staff was running around attending to them, serving them before they served anything to the passengers, showering them with all the attention that they seemed to be in need of. This did it. My fellow passenger in his perfect British accent which bore no hint of Sylhet clapped his hands and had managed to gather the crew. "Excuse me, but I need to know if both of us (meaning him and I) may switch seats with them", he said, pointing towards the two Biman officials seated behind us. The stewardess looked at him with absolute dismay and said: "No sir, these are crew seats; they cannot be given to you." "But we are paying customers", he argued and eventually lost to the staff's insistence. Truth is that 15J and 15K were, by no means seats reserved for the crew. Crew seats are usually 'jump seats' and not ones which are given to regular passengers. But I knew better not to disagree with the staff. After all, it was my Biman, wasn't it? Throughout the flight none of us could read even a page, or watch anything. Half the time, we were playing guessing games trying to figure out whether we were flying over Teheran or Russia. The clouds told us that they looked like Chandigarh ones and the skies hinted to the borders below. Neither of us was accurate but it was a game of irony that we had indulged in. The nine hour long journey offered none of us any comfort or consolation. To top it all, the rush at the airport arrival scene of officials rushing to receive sirs' wives and families of politicians are painstakingly ridiculous. Little do we realise that these practices have given those in power immense gratification of having the feeling of the Ultimate.
A humbler reminder: Those who are entrusted with powers of the state, serve the state and the people living within its lines. I want to be humbly heard: The regular people are running out of tolerance of watching queues being broken and standing second to the lines of VIPs, "side" VIPs and their extended families being serviced in public locations. If, as a citizen I decide to stand aside and allow a VIP to take my place in the queue, or give a privilege up, I will. No one has the right to award that privilege on my behalf. I vote, I decide and therefore I promise that every time I watch the lines of propriety being crossed in public places, I will block the wrong and write about it. After all, as a nation, we seem to have run out of everything but the ink.
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Rubana Huq is Managing Director, Mohammadi Group; CEO, TV Southasia and a PhD candidate at Jadavpur University, Kolkata