'Transit'

Most of the time, like most of the people, I find 'transit' periods awfully boring. Waiting for the results of an important exam (ask the 2007 CAT-takers :D), the duration between getting a job and leaving the college, the duration when you wait for your interview, the time when your preparation is mostly done and the examination seems to arrive too slowly, the time when train/flight gets late, the time when your work is done but you still have to wait in the office because its just too early to leave, traffic signals, long queues (for the movie, in the stores, bill payment, mess, etc), and many more.

Yet to think that the trip to home this Diwali had longer transit duration than the journey duration! The 'to' had a transit duration of 6 hours and the 'fro' had 9 hrs that makes a total of 15 hrs while total flight duration was at most 10 hrs. Both of these transit periods were spent in the Mumbai Airport. In the 6 hrs one, I had company so it was not at all irksome. But the 9 hrs were spent alone (mostly). The question however is 'was it then really tiresome?'. Well, not really.

I reached Mumbai at 9.30pm. Went on to the departure lounge and waited. For company I had phone, book and fm. Not bad. Once in a while some airport officer would come and ask if I was fine , tell me where I could find snacks/tea/coffee. The couple next to me had their flight at 5.30am. They left early but while they were there we had small chats about how bad the waiting lounge was, that Mumbai airport should have some kind of waiting room, and that it actually used to have. Other than this I was continuosly talking on phone (having arguments actually) during the early hours when it wasnt time to go to sleep for them. For the rest of the time I was busy probing into Orhan Pamuk's "My name is Red" and listening to the songs played on fm. (This finally discharged my cell and I had to stand and get it charged --> this too took some time :D)

Before long it was already time to get up and get going.
I didn't feel the passage of time. May be I didn't take it as a transit but rather as a part of the journey. Sitting there while I was observing the surroundings I thought it is stupid to think that our life stops during transits. Why, there was motion everywhere even in the 'waiting' of passengers, their loitering, reading, talking, and even dozing off.