Mamaji ki Ainak

In my 5th standard Hindi textbook, there was a lesson called "Mamaji ki Ainak" (spectacles). The main character Mamaji has his reading glasses missing one fine morning. After a self futile search, this Mamaji puts the whole kids gang in the house into a search operation. The story is about how kids scan through the house, till the spectacles are found.

It was year 2008, an all-boys vacation that me and my friends had planned, that included a stay at Alok's place in Singapore, followed by a 3 days flyover to Malaysia. After spending a gala time in Singapore, we were off to our second leg of the tour departing at the Singapore Changi Airport. Post check-in formalities, we decided to have some meal at the airport food court. Not sure why, but we (obviously me with some rebel choice) had bought strawberry milkshake and cold drinks to accompany the KFC burgers, fries et al. As expected, none of us felt like having the strawberry milkshake but instead of throwing away, I just packed the 2 bottles into the sack.

We moved into the queue for the security and immigration formalities. Amol, I and Bhooshan had got the Malaysian visa from one of the travel agents in Pune, while our 4th friend Shantanu had got his Malaysian visa done from some less renowned Akbar Travels (no offense) in Bengaluru, in the pretext of getting it done very fast which in the end had turned out to put him on gas till the very last moment. We had passports in our hands and were just checking each others visas, passport photo etc. noticed that Shantanu's visa was different than the 3 of us. The visa also had his photograph which itself looked very different from the one on the passport and also very less resemblance to his current look. We made jokes around authenticity of the visa and the dubious travel agent. We scared Shantanu that he might be detained and might have to stay back here.

One by one, we passed through the immigration counters curious to see what happens to Shantanu. Strangely he made it with a ease with a gentle smile exchange with the lady officer at desk. Bhooshan, I and Shantanu came on the other side while Amol was still missing, the very person who had raised question mark on Shantanu's visa was not making through the immigration desk.

While we were waiting for Amol, couple of security guards discussed something among themselves and with the 2 milkshake bottles visible in the side pockets of my sack, I was pulled out and asked to throw them out. I requested them if it was OK to finish those before moving forward to which the security guys exchanged looks, but allowed. Naturally I was not going to finish them alone and pushed my friends to share. Cursing me with the every sip of that strawberry milkshake, the poor guys finished it off and we were ridiculously laughing and making noise to the annoyance of the security folks. We emptied the bottles and other boxes in the trash and moved ahead. While still curiously waiting for Amol, Shantanu suddenly realized that he doesn't have his Passport with him. PANIC!!!! Just a day before Shantanu had narrated his story of how he had forgotten his Passport at the Bengaluru Airport, right at the security check where his boarding pass was stamped and he had realized it some good 5-10 minutes later. He scanned through his belongings, jacket, nope.. nowhere. While he was recollecting the sequence of events to the point of going back to the immigration desk, one of event was throwing the trash and bottles. Phew! we literally went to the trash can and started scavenging. We were in front of the same security folks who now started looking suspiciously at us and inquired about our intentions. We just mentioned some valuable was missing, but didn't say a word about the missing Passport as it would have raised eyebrows of the already suspicious ones.

In the meantime, Amol was going through a different drill. He was sidelined with suspicious Passport, as the plastic lamination over his passport photo had cringes. The senior officers interrogated Amol, asked him to sign for signature match with the one on the Passport, which again differed a bit as well. Finally he was asked to show another identity proof, and fortunately his international credit card that had his photo on it and was deemed acceptable. While Amol was being escorted back to the immigration desk watching us scavenging in the trash can and arguing with the security folks, he simply disowned us to avoid any further problems of suspicion. Finally he was let off passing the immigration desk.

Here, with every passing moment, anxiety level of all 3 of us had rocketed. We had traversed one place after the other in sequence, but no luck yet. Then suddenly there was a Eureka! moment for Shantanu. The Passport was found and where??? Right in the top pocket of Shantanu's shirt. We literally bashed him for all the tense moments. Amol unawares of this whole story joined us and just cordoned us off to the boarding gate, away from the suspicious stares. We finally proceeded through the boarding formalities, exchanging the stories and finally left the Changi Airport with all laughs.

Every time I go over this incident the "Mamaji ki Ainak" lesson runs through my mind. The kids after scavenging the whole house for the spectacles, finally figure out that the Ainak was residing this whole time on Mamaji's head.