BENGALURU: The recent reports of Electoral Bonds revealed the unhealthy but unsurprising mucky nexus between large corporations and political parties. But what was most interesting was that the information was revealed after pressure from the Supreme Court, based on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) by a lawyer. While we have clearly moved to a post-fact, post-truth world, it did spike an interest in me – to file my own PIL. I want to file a litigation against airline companies. My petition will not come from a place of truth-finding, but soul-searching. I am not trying to unearth a truth. I’m merely trying to find the reason behind this madness.
If you think about it, we are a generation that is always eating. We eat during movies, while watching sports; at weddings, birthdays and funerals. We eat when we leave the house, then eat in the airport. This habit again stems from our collective middle-class eating habits before a train journey. Tiffin carriers would be packed, snacks purchased, and water bottles would be filled at the station. Only after we had enough ration for a battle, did we proceed towards our destination. Today, we eat even though our journeys are an hour-long. We quickly gulp down expensive idlis before boarding. Once we are seated on the plane, food is served out again. And we lap it up. It’s the only time we are bending rules of nature. Our eating is not driven by hunger or taste – but from primal greed.
And airline companies know this about us. Which is why they guiltlessly serve us the food. There are two kinds of airlines – those that give everybody free food – and those that charge even for water. So if you’re getting a heart attack, you better have 50 rupees change ready! You raise your hand and accept the plane sandwiches – the kind of sandwiches that have evolved beyond the binaries of hot/cold, good/bad.
These sandwiches were eaten by Wright Brothers, and the recipe has remained unchanged. Upma is supposed to remind you of your mother. But airline upma reminds you of the cruel stepmother you never had. It’s neither warm, nor cold – a gooey alien mix that is served with lukewarm water. For the extreme sinners, there is biryani. A dish that raises the primary question – ‘Should that even be eaten on a flight?’. Imagine if the gentleman stands up and walks towards the end of the aisle mid-flight? It would be a public nuisance! For a drink, they serve the ‘Unreal’, synthetic juice -– served at temperatures ranging from ‘room temperature’ to ‘doesn’t really matter’.
Finally, you resort to tradition and ask for the cup noodles. The steward hands it over daintily – like a ticking bomb. There’s boiling hot water in the red-yellow pack, and you end up leaving it for more than the NASA-stipulated four minutes. You open it to find a version of Maggi that would infuriate the Japanese. At the end of it all, you realise that humans weren’t meant to eat on a flight. That it is only our gluttony that drives us to such extreme measures.
Which is why my petition is aimed not to expose corruption, but to ask humane questions. I want to know if airline employees are able to sleep peacefully – after handing out `350 sandwiches? Do they toss and turn in their beds thinking about the stand-up comedian who thanked them for a Rs 300 cup noodles pack? I want to know, Your Lordship, is there humanity left in the world??
(The writer’s views are personal)