I spent 11 hours waiting for a health screening at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport. Approximately 3,000 passengers, including myself, were confined to a single waiting area. It was a painful irony: we were inviting the pandemic into our lives with open arms.
Immediately after disembarking the plane, the 400 people on my flight were told to wait for nearly an hour and a half before we were even allowed to leave the 10-by-20 metre area we were confined to.
At this point, we received two self-declaration forms which asked about symptoms of the virus. Eleven hours later, I was asked for that exact information, again, only this time it was a health worker who asked me the questions.
He held the declaration forms I had filled the previous night in his hand, while copying the information from it onto a blank piece of paper. That “chat” with the health worker did not qualify as a thorough health screening of any kind, since its only impact on me was an ugly purple stain on my hand which said “quarantine.” The stamp was gone before the end of the day.
There were three checkpoints to go through at IGI: a thermal scan, followed by immigration, and finally a short chat with a health worker.
The immigration area was filled to capacity because there was a delay at every stage of the process. What the Indian government could have done to organize this process better was simple: hire more doctors—there is no shortage of medical professionals in India—and combine the thermal scans with immigration.
In such turbulent times too, IGI was understaffed in the departments that most needed large workforces. The airport teemed with security forces, but health workers and immigration officers were scarce.
At every checkpoint, the air was thick with fear and anxiety because of the sheer volume of people packed into a small space for that many people.
This fear translated into a heightened awareness for discomfort and health hazards. A problem for millennials (yes, including me) was the lack of cellular reception and access to Wi-Fi. But my problems suddenly became small, almost non-existent, three hours into waiting for my final health screening.
My group’s security leader went on to tell us that he had been working for 18 hours without a break for food or water, and he hadn’t even had the chance to sit down. He said he was stuck in a whirlpool of unhappy people: his seniors, us passengers, and his coworkers.
Everyone was tired, and even though the security forces had no control over how long the wait lasted, they were the ones being blamed.
His colleague even told him people were so frustrated that they were snatching their passports from their security leaders and trying to escape from the exit which was least fortified. From that moment on, I didn’t complain again. It is, after all, a matter of privilege. Some are uncomfortable for a short while, and some are uncomfortable every day just to make a livelihood.
Awareness of that privilege is what made my wait worth the while. Upon leaving the airport, I was greeted by my father. Once I got home, I was greeted by my mother and my dogs, and my mother made sure I ate a hot meal. Someone working an 18-hour shift on minimum wage to make sure that COVID-19 didn’t spread probably doesn’t have the same privilege.
The governmental measures taken to screen people at the airport can definitely be better. But that aside, the lengthy, awfully boring, and mentally-taxing wait is worth it if you have a place to call home, and a family and friends you can elbow-bump during a pandemic.
Photo by Tim Austen.
