Barapani Diary 

My job as an air traffic controller needs me to be posted at small and very small practically non-existent airports for a certain duration of time. In year 2011, one such posting led me to Barapani, an airport around forty kilometres away from Shillong. An entirely different world where from around thousand arrival departures at Delhi airport there was a lone flight to control, that too the flight played truant and missed our airport many days! In the place where my toddler grew up amidst nature, I read, wrote, introspected, reflected, and missed my husband at times!

Check out all episodes of Barapani Diary – https://www.storyberrys.com/category/series/barapani-diary/

Falling in Love (Part 2)

Every place has a pulse throbbing underneath, a heart beating within- be it a hardcore stone-hearted city like Delhi or a soft shy coy Elizabethan maiden like Barapani. Once you feel the pulse, you start vibrating with the same frequency out of habit maybe and then… If you dare, you fall in love. Maybe with the beauty, you begin to touch the heart within and maybe simply you have no other option, and things begin to work out just like an arranged Indian marriage does!!

A stupid analogy maybe but then trying to make the best of what one has or to lay contented with what destiny has offered or to try to explore discover and if not anything else than grumble, sulk all these somehow compare to one analogy…

Anyways in this land, hope against hope is my newfound ‘friend’ rather than companion – almost a decade younger than me ( as per her statement), my Malayali colleague struggling in the Khasi land with her language, her food habits, struggling with the severe cold hitherto unknown to her, with her new job, with her stern bosses.

Looking at her. I somehow doubt whether my company has an HR policy where H stands for Human (Please pardon me AAI, with all due regard to everything you have given me to date), a twenty-three-year-old Malayali girl from Kottayam, an engineer by profession has her first posting in Barapani Airport of all the places, and all the directions (southwest to the north east).

Wonder how much travel allowance AAI has to pay her. She is my companion for morning walk (one walk a month 😉 that’s a different story), where we did yoga in the Runway (I Hope higher authorities are not reading). Can’t help but mention just as we were into ‘Balasan’ (our favourite one, lie on your stomach with knees curled up like a child) a flight hovered above and she stared at me for a moment before breathing ‘Run’ …

Well, well a tried and tested air traffic controller like me was taken in by the ‘Run’ before ATC since poured in ‘This is an overflying aircraft, it won’t land…watch opens at nine-thirty. I convinced myself before convincing her as we watched the plane fly away, and faces lighting with dismay replaced by laughter…

She turned out to be my saviour, tea biscuit breaks in the office, long evening walks, long chats, our worlds were different. Kerala village with hardworking mother and siblings in financial constraints and my world in bits and parts- parents coming in sometimes, reminiscent of childhood days only the child now replaced by my toddler, tussle between mother and my help… and the husband alienated with his daughter and wife, but not sure whether to feel pity for him as every weekend a new movie, or the same movie twice, a new restaurant…freedom, I guess.

And yes I am not disliking the freedom as well, books, net( though service is very erratic), a little bit of blogging, some diet of daily soaps with Ma, getting in touch with the sweet sounds of the languages I knew so well since childhood, the taste of childhood food and vegetables and the rains, incessant, nostalgic.

A dash of Kerala, a pinch of Delhi, bits of Guwahati – in the rain kissed hills of Barapani. While we count our days for the end of a year and the end of an exile.

Excerpt from my one year posting at Barapani Airport where I had a tryst with nature…!

Soma Bhattacharjee