Chennai Floods: Airport Baggage Trolley Turns Bed

Wearing same clothes for three days and lugging trolleys, those stranded outside Chennai airport have a harrowing time

CHENNAI:  Baggage trolleys have turned into beds for the 70-odd people stranded outside the Chennai airport. And after three days of wearing the same clothes and lugging heavy suitcases for a marathon distance every time you feel like taking a meal - these folks can’t wait to escape the never ending wait to that boarding call.

However, apart from these passengers, the rest of the airport entrance and parking lot is quite empty. And might we add, bone dry! In fact, if you didn’t have to brave the floods en route, you would never guess why it’s been closed till December 6.  However, a few like the 15 students from Vels University will probably never forget the dreaded water situation outside. Sanjana, one of the girls, tells Express, “Our hostel at college got inundated so badly that Fire and Rescue Services had to come get us.” And now, despite tickets in hand, they have nowhere to go.

The reason these passengers aren’t leaving despite the knowledge that the airport won’t be open for business till Sunday is that all of them are either ‘in transit’ or are leaving after a short stay in the city.

Add to that the fact that networks are down and their families are unable to reach them, and the situation becomes doubly dismal. Strangers find themselves lending their phones for a reassuring hello on the other end. And one of the students shares, “Only four of our phones out of 15 in our group are actually getting signal, so we’re playing pass-the-parcel with these four phones for now.”

Of course when you’re living out of a suitcase, the only thing more urgent than reaching home sometimes, is reaching the bathroom.

“We’ve been using the staff urinal outside,” one of the girls states, clearly not having enjoyed the experience. “But sometimes,” her classmate jumps in, “the security guard lets us into the airport to use the restroom if we show him our ticket.”

With a majority of them headed home to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in this party, the larger complaint, however, is that the airlines have been biased with offering accomodation.

Sanjana shares woefully, “There were lots of flyers headed to Hyderabad and Bengaluru who were quickly given accommodation. So why not us?”

And we can’t help but wonder that same question ourselves when we meet Ramayya, a 60-plus gent headed to the Andamans in the same fix. “I went to Madurai to get treatment for my dislocated jaw,” he says, adding, “Chennai was just my transit point!” Jaw in hand, and an ocean away from home -  Ramayya’s wait till Sunday feels as long as the Chennai airport runway.

Fortunately, three days in and a small protest by this group later, they have been provided with a place to stay, we are told. When Express contacted the Airport Director, his phone remained unreachable for comment.