My suitcase weighed forty kilograms, and the moment I tried to carry it out of Dum Dum Airport the truth of the matter tapped upon my spine. There was no way I was going to haul this behemoth through the streets of India. The only solution was to extract the absolute essentials, put the thing in storage and reclaim it on my departure from Calcutta.
My first thought was that I’d have to find a tourist hotel, and leave the bag in a storage room or behind a desk. But as I glanced around the baggage claim area, I spied a squarish, hand-lettered sign above an open door: LEFT LUGGAGE. A classic arrow pointed redundantly downward, towards the doorway itself. My suitcase had no wheels, so I pulled and hefted it, in stages, towards this specialised exit. Arriving at the doorway, I glanced through it. There was nothing but a huge, empty field: a lost world which seemed to go on for ever, in all directions, under the blinding Calcutta sun.
It was a million degrees outside. A shimmering haze rippled above the ground. But in the distance — could it be? — stood a house of some kind, a tiny hut at least a kilometre away. There was no road to speak of, just a cracked and overgrown concrete pathway covered with spiky weeds and broken glass. Chipmunks ran to and fro. Emaciated cattle grazed on the horizon, and their dung — fresh, dried, and all stages in between — was piled everywhere. I could barely make out the faraway shack, but it did seem to have some kind of sign on the side, something that might have said ‘Left Luggage’, but which might just as easily have been an advertisement for car tyres, in Hindi.
India’s infamous sun beat down on the field, and on my neck, as I dragged my impossible bag along the concrete track. Perspiration soaked through my clothing, and stung my eyes. The broken pathway scraped the corners of my suitcase, and the little plastic feet shredded like hard cheese. Shards of glass tore my sneakers. There was no avoiding the dung, and each time my feet or my case encountered the droppings of a sacred cow a foul brown track followed me along the path.
For many minutes, the shack seemed to get no larger. Finally, with a parched tongue and peeling shoulders, I staggered onto the front step of the square white building. Inside it was cool and dark. There was a single wooden desk, long and venerable, a remnant from the British Raj. Standing behind it, silent and attentive, was an elderly man dressed in an immaculate white kameez. With his white moustache and starched collar, he looked like someone straight out of Gandhi’s Congress Party. Behind him, through double doors, was the storeroom, filled with high wooden racks. They were covered with ancient luggage that looked like it had been checked in by Rudyard Kipling.
Mustering my remaining strength, I heaved my suitcase forward. The man pressed his eyebrows together, and he began filling out a small tag with the stub of an oversized pencil. His eyes peered up at me.
‘Your good name?’ he enquired.
‘Sir…’ I croaked. I was dehydrated, sweating profusely, and at the point where my anger and frustration were ready to erupt and parboil anyone within earshot. ‘Sir. Getting here, to this place, was an absolute nightmare. No journey through hell, no walk over glowing coals, could have been worse. Do you understand me? It took me thirty stinking minutes to get my bag to this stupid place. There are no handcarts, no shuttles, and the pathway is a wreck. It’s an outrage. An insult! Tell me, if you can, what is this room doing so far from baggage claim? What’s the point? Shouldn’t you be in the baggage claim area? Wouldn’t that make sense? How the hell are people supposed to…’
As I ranted on, the man reached down with both hands. On the desk before him was a huge journal, bound in rich leather, with a ribbed spine. It looked thick enough to be the Calcutta telephone directory. The spine was blank, but on the cover was a single word, stamped in gold script:
Complaints
The man pushed the book forward, and it slid across the dry wood with a hiss. ‘Yes’, he sighed. ‘Please… please, you make a note of this.’
‘Oh, I’m going to make a note of it, all right. A long note. This is unacceptable. I’m going to give you airport wallahs a piece of my mind.’ I declined his pencil, and pulled an indelible pen from my passport case.
I opened the book, and began flipping through the pages. The tome was of some antiquity, with the earliest entry dating back to the late 1950s. I don’t know when the Dum Dum Airport opened for business, but it is quite possible that the book was inaugurated during the facility’s first year of service. The first entry, in fact, was written in 1958, in ink. The blue script was fading, but the words were clear:
Best of luck viz your new endeavour. Airport clean and modern. This storage facility, however, is inconveniently distant from the terminal. Please address this problem for the convenience of your patrons.
Kind regards,
R Sivarakham, Esquire.
Similar entries followed, firm but polite. I flipped ahead a few pages to 1966. These were the halcyon days of the Magic Bus, which plied the overland circuit through Europe and Central Asis, migrating through India before reaching the hashish-clouded teashops of Kathmandu. In fact, a troupe of hippies had passed through the airport in July of that year. Their spokeswomen offered a comment:
Namasté, but why is the Left Luggage place so far from the airport? It took us forever to get here, man. And the cement is so hot that my thongs melted. No lie? Anyway, if you can x this, we thank you in advance. Otherwise Mother India is the best. Janis.
(PS: Also, the pathway from the luggage place to here is broken in a few places, those rocks are sharp. Owww!)
(PPS: Much fine weed growing in the eld, the cows are very friendly!)
Many pages later, in 1974, an Indian visitor named Agarwal weighed in:
Sirs: If you will not change the location of the Left Luggage depository, at least attend to the pathway from the airport. I sprained my ankle in a pit, and my wife lost the heel of her shoe. Also the livestock should not be allowed to roam free. Their mess is not appropriate at an international air terminal. Requesting your immediate attention to this matter.
The tone of the discourse had hardened somewhat by 1980:
What the hell were you thinking, putting this place a kilometre from the airport? I know the place is called Dum Dum, but it’s named after the bullet, not the imbecile. Suggest you send one of your peons to carry a bag both ways, you will nd it is a huge pain in ass. Correct this problem at once or I will y into another city on future trips to India.
In 1987:
What the hell is Left Luggage doing so far from the baggage claim?! For the love of Christ, or Buddha, or Krishna, or whoever! Can’t you at least x the goddamned path?
There were many entries I could not read, in every imaginable language, but even the most superficial command of French, German or Spanish revealed an increasing, and increasingly futile, sense of outrage. By 1989, the pleas had become almost absurd:
PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD. PAVE THE ROAD.
(PS: Please see footnote, below.)
I glanced down:
PAVE THE ROAD!
Page after page, spanning five decades and hundreds of pages, the same complaint — until, a week before my arrival, the most recent pilgrim had simply uncapped a thick laundry marker and scrawled, across two pages:
FUCK YOU
I looked up from the register, and regarded the little clerk with astonishment. ‘Have you looked through this book?’
The man wagged his head, an ambiguous gesture that could mean anything. I lost it.
‘Well check it out, mister! Every complaint is the same! Thousands of them, exactly the same!’ I picked up the book then smacked it on the desktop, raising eddies of dust.
‘What’s the use of this charade? Nobody even sees this book!’ I shouted. ‘It’s never been opened by anyone with the slightest bit of authority! Are you aware of this? Do you care? Yes? No? I took a single, very deep breath. ‘Sir. Listen carefully to what I’m about to ask you. Is there any way to get any official of this airport to spend five minutes with this book?’
The man nodded pleasantly, and pushed the volume back towards me. ‘Of course,’ he pronounced. ‘Please. Make a note of it.’
— Jeff Greenwald, in his essay “Left Luggage” from the book By the Seat of My Pants: Humorous Tales of Travel and Misadventure
