The Strangers that seemed

Waiting at an airport for a delayed flight, frantically worrying that I could miss the connecting flight, I had to force a deep breath for a moment of quiet. Before this I was alternating between listening for announcements, cribbing for the shoddy service at a cafe, checking my phone for msgs (which I wasn’t receiving, reading and looking around at the strange faces. In that one breath I realized how tired I was just by the weight of the worry.. And when i unloaded my shoulders, I chose to just observe people. Strangely, strangeness around started becoming familiarity. All the faces had stories.. Like mine.

I closed my eyes to let the sounds seep in. It heard like this: footsteps of the waitress, dangling fixtures of a store that was being moved, coffee mugs being tapped on tables, an old man snoring, regular announcements, trash can trolleys being towed, struggles of a child with a plastic bag of chips, people whispering, one couple fighting, a young girl singing.. A mother flipped over her baby’s pram. Thankfully they were fine.

I missed something.. I heard my breath too! Getting heavier and louder with each other sound recognition.
And then it became quiet! Not literally.. But it felt so! The voices became me! They seemed to be coming out of my head.. The announcements started to fade away! It was all settling down.

It was time to look around. I tried relating faces to the sounds in my memory. I am not sure but I feel I got them most right. Everything had almost paused dramatically.. Or atleast it did slow down.. There was an English woman (you can tell 😊) gold hair, black glasses, green bag and big headphones. She smiled and frowned at the same time.. I looked closely, she was also working on her tablet and phone at the same time!

I turned to the interesting couple that was fighting. Although they were talking in Chinese, you could tell they were fighting or had fought! Just the girl was talking.. Constantly asking questions while the guy seemed oblivious. He seemed to be watching a movie or reading a book. I couldn’t see! But the girl was getting angry and she didn’t bother where she was. She was loud and he seemed hard of hearing 😊. Then there was this group that entered. Gujarati speaking people 12-15 in all with 4-5 kinds and some women who looked like kids. They changed the pace of things again. Came like a storm, bustling with noise, carrying 2-3 polybags per person, two of them kept trying to keep the group together but in vain. They all had so much to talk about, waking almost everyone asleep, they sort of disturbed the peace of the now familiar waiting group of travellers. Within minutes, their flight boarding was announced I guess. They rushed out as fast as they came. Their noise lingered long after their bodies had moved on. And then things slowed down again.

There was an overall lull all around. Most flights were delayed. People had taken their comfy corners and were dozing off. Some Chinese women were playing cards. They were such a joyous bunch all of them that they all seemed to have been winning. There were plates and plates of ordered but not eaten food being taken back by the cafe staff – the food was atrocious. And then my attention went back to the slowly rising sound of the announcements. Such is the subconscious.. thankfully it chose to select the right sound and brought it to the foreground. My flight’s boarding had started. Gathering all my senses, I collected my stuff, picked the phone from the charging dock and bolted to the gate. All set and seated to take off, I switched on the video screen, this girl sitting next to me started to talk and sing simultaneously. I took off my head phones about 2-3 times thinking she was calling me. But funnily she was talking to herself in an animated manner. It was tough for me to pick one source of entertainment. Such elaborate was her self talk that by the end of the flight I knew she was half India half Philippino and was flying to Manila. She too had her connecting flight from HongKong and was so restless that even I started to worry more about her connecting flight than my own. I laughed at myself later when she made it in time for her flight while I missed mine back to Delhi and waited at the airport for 4 hours before being assured a solution for the next day.