Back with a Bong!


This one is one from the archives...but given that we love to hate this tiny neighbouring country that we created (esp after what they did to us in the World Cup), here's a piece from my mail archives on a rather unsavoury experience that I had on board the Bangla national airline (yes it does exist and yes it also flies)


well for starters, i was booked on a biman- which for the uninitiated happens to be bangladesh's national airline.....now we know where half of their GDP goes, its in maintaining a fleet of two or maybe three aircraft....



well i entered dubai airport at 10pm for a 12.30 am flight.....hoping to have a real comfortable flight back home where i could catch at least thirty five winks if not forty....



after a detailed search on google and every other search engine possible, including some hostile Arabs, i discovered where the check-in line for Biman was....thank god....well i said it too early...



it took me an hour and 45 minutes to get that piece of cardboard called a boarding pass- well what went wrong? everything that possibly could..........to give you a background biman offers more luggage capacity- 50 kg which obviously is 40+10 or 30+20.....the prob is the bongs from the other side aren't as smart as their brethren from india....they think the whole house fits into 50kg. So one could make out people like shapes behind huge mounds of luggage in queue.....for a moment i thought was i headed for a cargo plane....(my weight comes close u see)



so all hell was breaking loose time and again when people's luggages were getting rejected....and that happened for everyone....and i mean everyone....



the other problem of course is that our neighbours also don't believe in queues or maybe they do- just that queues come from all directions and everyone believes that the queuestarts off from whereever they are.....so u can imagine......a planeload of insane bongs all trying to be first.....or 'pharst' as the rosogolla accent might utter....



halfway down the queue or the P or R or S, i discovered that the flight was scheduled to take off only at 2am- obviously.....i quickly double checked to ascertain whether it was the same night or the next night.....



2 am dubai time and the flight to nowhere was exactly that....nowhere in sight..... 2.30 am and all of us were herded into buses that took so much time to get to the aircraft that i suspect, i really do that we eventually took off from Sharjah or from some unused old airport in the outskirts of Dubai....



On board, the first olfactory sense that I got was that I had entered a tin of mustard oil..... was dimly lit with yellow lighting and airhostesses who were behaving as overbearing aunties...(we all know how bong women can be!)



hardly slept on the flight....not with mustard oil air freshner around....and was thanking my lucky stars to be back in Mumbai in one piece.....



It wasn't over yet....no sir....the check in luggage was let loose simultaneously on two conveyor belts or was it three and you had passengers scrambling to gather their suticases before they disappered into yet another merry go round.....



The ground staff looked like they were grounded cos none of them were around.....well after all that one had gone through you really didn't expect one did you?



Biman finally took off I think for Dhaka not before half a planeload of Mumbai passengers exclaimed in unison- "Good riddance!"

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