Deport Me

Last week, by the time we landed in Hyderabad it was late. The kids finally fell asleep during the last few minutes of the Bangkok-Hyderabad flight. When we landed, we carried the snoozing kids out of the aircraft and asked for our gate-checked stroller.

This is always an adventure at Hyderabad airport. People act like they have never heard of strollers or gate-check before. Last time they told us that the strollers were "just there". "Where?" I asked - "On the jetway, inside the terminal, at baggage?" They only repeated "just there". Till a fellow showed up with a red stroller and asked if that was ours. I politely said no. Then he got someone's attention down below on the apron beside the aircraft and mimed out "baby" and "stroller" (by rocking an imaginary baby in his arms and then pushing a stroller around). I waited wondering if I should get his contact information in case we pull together a game of charades. Then he reappeared with the red stroller and asked if I was sure that it wasn't ours. A good bit later our stroller showed up.

This time everyone we asked told us that the stroller would be sent down to baggage. Gate-check be damned. So we took the long walk through the terminal to immigration with two snoozing kids but without the stroller. Before letting us join the immigration line we had to show our boarding passes to an official. We had four sets of passports and four sets of PIO cards and four sets of disembarkation forms filled out and ready but the boarding passes were buried in our hand luggage somewhere. By now Vivian felt like she weighed a ton. Then we waited in line at immigration. There was a "Ladies with children" section that was empty but I didn't want to walk down to the end and be sent back by a flunky. Finally we went up to an available counter. And found the slowest immigration clerk ever. He stared at each of the 12 documents in turn as if it were a piece of alien paraphernalia. Each time, amazement, surprise, and eventually due to the passage of time, more wrinkles appeared on his face. My arms were burning and I had semi-propped a still sleeping Vivian up on a slippery handrail at the immigration counter. We finally finished, thanked him, and walked four steps away to only reached another official who must have the most redundant job at the airport. He re-checked our documents, making the previous guy look like Einstein on speed.

That's when I heard Jo mutter under her breath "Oh, please deport me".