What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?

The One Change That Could Make a City Breathe Again

If I could improve my city instantly by changing just one thing, I would not build another shopping mall, widen another flyover, or erect another glittering tower of glass and concrete.

I would give the city clean, safe, uninterrupted public spaces.

It sounds almost too simple. Yet sometimes the most consequential changes are not the grandest ones. A city is not merely a collection of roads, buildings, offices and traffic signals. It is a place where human beings are supposed to live. And people need somewhere to pause.

Imagine a city where every neighbourhood has a well-maintained park, a shaded walking path, benches beneath trees, clean public toilets, drinking-water points and spaces where children can play without dodging vehicles. Imagine streets where pedestrians are not treated as obstacles and elderly people can walk without fear. Imagine an evening when families can step outside their homes and simply sit together beneath a tree.

That would be a different kind of development.

We have become remarkably skilled at constructing things and strangely careless about preserving places. We measure progress in kilometres of roads, numbers of vehicles, square feet of construction and the height of buildings. But perhaps another question deserves to be asked:

How pleasant is it to be alive here?

A city should not exhaust its citizens merely by requiring them to cross it.

Public spaces have a quiet democratic power. The millionaire and the street vendor, the schoolchild and the retired teacher, the jogger and the grandmother with her walking stick can occupy the same patch of ground. For a brief while, social distinctions become less important. A park does not ask for your income before allowing you to sit beneath a tree.

There is another advantage: mental space.

Modern urban life is noisy in ways that are not always audible. Deadlines, traffic, notifications, bills, competition and uncertainty follow us everywhere. We carry invisible burdens through crowded streets. A little greenery, a quiet bench and a ten-minute walk cannot solve every problem, but they can give the mind enough breathing room to confront those problems with greater composure.

Children need this space too. Childhood should contain scraped knees, muddy shoes, bicycles, footballs, arguments over whose turn it is, and the temporary heartbreak of losing a game. If every vacant patch of land becomes a construction site, children gradually exchange outdoor adventure for screens.

And cities need trees not merely for beauty. They offer shade, reduce heat, soften concrete landscapes and make neighbourhoods more humane. A tree planted today is, in a sense, a gift to strangers we shall never meet.

But there is an important condition: public spaces must be maintained, not merely inaugurated.

We are fond of ceremonies. We unveil parks, plant saplings, install benches and put up plaques. Then enthusiasm fades. Grass grows wild, lights stop working, litter accumulates and the beautiful new space slowly becomes another neglected corner.

A truly improved city would therefore treat cleanliness and maintenance as civic duties rather than occasional campaigns.

Perhaps the greatest improvement would be psychological. When people see that their surroundings are cared for, they begin to care for them too. A clean pavement discourages litter. A functioning park encourages families to use it. A safe footpath encourages walking. A pleasant public square encourages conversation.

Cities teach us how to behave.

If we build only for speed, we become impatient. If we build only for vehicles, we forget pedestrians. If we build only for commerce, we forget community. But if we build places where people can walk, sit, talk, play and breathe, we remind ourselves that a city exists for human beings, not merely for economic activity.

So, if I were handed the impossible privilege of improving my city overnight, I would not ask for a spectacular monument.

I would ask for one good park, one safe footpath and one peaceful corner in every neighbourhood—and then I would ask that someone care enough to keep them beautiful.

Because perhaps the finest measure of a city is not how high it can build.

It is how gently it allows its people to live.

What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken?

The Longest Journey Was Never Measured in Miles

What is the longest trip I have ever taken?

At first, the question seems to demand a number. How many kilometres? How many days? How many cities, railway stations, airports, mountain roads and unfamiliar beds?

But the longer I think about it, the less certain I become that the longest journey of a life can be measured on a map.

I have travelled across considerable distances, sometimes with an itinerary carefully folded into a pocket, sometimes with little more than curiosity as my companion. I have crossed plains that seemed interminable, climbed into mountains where the air grew thinner and the horizon wider, travelled towards the sea, and returned from places that had seemed impossibly distant when I first set out.

Yet none of those journeys, however long, quite deserves the title.

The longest trip I have taken has been the journey from youth to age.

It began innocently enough.

In youth, the world appeared almost limitless. A few coins in the pocket seemed sufficient for adventure. A train journey could become an expedition; an unfamiliar town could become a story; a chance meeting could acquire the importance of destiny. We travelled not merely towards destinations but towards possibilities.

Then life happened.

Years began accumulating with the quiet efficiency of a railway timetable. Friends moved away. Some disappeared from our lives altogether. Responsibilities replaced spontaneity. Dreams acquired practical considerations. The exuberance of youth gradually made room for discernment, and sometimes for regret.

The strange thing about growing older is that one does not notice the journey while travelling through it.

There is no announcement saying, You have now entered middle age.

No conductor walks through the compartment and declares, Please prepare yourselves for the next station: old age.

One morning, you simply discover that yesterday’s adventures have become memories, yesterday’s heroes have become photographs, and some of the people with whom you once imagined growing old are no longer walking beside you.

That is when you realise how far you have travelled.

I have discovered that the longest journeys are not always the most exhausting ones. Sometimes the hardest distance lies between what we expected life to be and what it actually became.

There have been stretches of uncertainty, moments when the road ahead appeared obscured by mist. There have been decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time but looked rather different when examined through the rear-view mirror. There have been successes that proved less satisfying than anticipated and disappointments that eventually revealed unexpected lessons.

And, thankfully, there have also been moments of extraordinary beauty.

A mountain at dawn.

The sound of rain against a window.

An old song suddenly transporting you decades backwards.

A conversation with a stranger that remains in your memory long after the stranger has disappeared.

The laughter of children.

A quiet morning when nothing spectacular happens, yet everything somehow feels right.

Perhaps this is what travel ultimately teaches us: the destination is important, but the experience of moving towards it changes us.

We leave one place as one person and arrive somewhere else slightly altered.

Sometimes the alteration is imperceptible. Sometimes it is profound.

A long journey also teaches humility. The world is too large for certainty and too complex for arrogance. Every unfamiliar landscape reminds us that our little corner of existence is only one fragment of a much larger mosaic.

And every journey eventually brings us home.

Home, however, is another curious word.

When we are young, home is a physical place. Later, it becomes a collection of people, memories, familiar sounds and emotional landmarks. Eventually, perhaps, home becomes an interior territory—a place within ourselves where we no longer need to prove anything.

That may be the final destination of the longest journey.

Not wealth.

Not recognition.

Not even achievement.

Peace.

The ability to look backwards without being imprisoned by regret, and forwards without being paralysed by fear.

If I were asked today how far I have travelled, I could give an impressive figure. But it would still be inadequate.

The longest trip I have ever taken has carried me through laughter and sorrow, ambition and disappointment, friendship and separation, certainty and doubt. It has taken me from the impatience of youth towards the patience of age.

And there is still some road left.

I do not know precisely where it leads.

Perhaps that is the beauty of it.

After travelling for so many years, I have finally learnt that a journey does not need to reveal its destination to be worthwhile.

Sometimes it is enough to keep walking.

To remain curious.

To notice the landscape.

To be grateful for the companions who stay.

And, when the road becomes unexpectedly beautiful, to slow down and look around.

Because perhaps the longest journey was never measured in miles at all.

It was measured in everything we became along the way.

What happens, when nobody listens?

When Nobody Seems to Care: Learning to Stand by Yourself

There comes a point in life when you may feel that the people around you have stopped noticing what you are going through. Your achievements receive little acknowledgement, your struggles remain unasked about, and the things that matter to you seem insignificant to everyone else.

It can be deeply painful.

We naturally expect some degree of care from the people we love. When that expectation is not met, we begin to question everything. Have I done something wrong? Have people changed? Did I expect too much?

Sometimes, we even turn the blame towards ourselves.

But not every change in a relationship is a reflection of your worth.

People grow apart. Priorities change. Circumstances interfere. Some relationships are temporary, while others simply cannot offer the depth of understanding we hoped for. Accepting this can be difficult, but it can also be liberating.

The important thing is not to allow another person’s indifference to become your definition of yourself.

When appreciation disappears

Most of us are accustomed to receiving some form of reassurance from others. A kind word, a message asking how we are, a little encouragement when things go well—these gestures matter.

When they disappear, their absence can feel much larger than we expected.

Yet your achievements do not become less meaningful because nobody applauds them.

If you complete something difficult, it still deserves to matter to you. If you overcome a problem that nobody else knows about, that is still an achievement. You do not need an audience to give significance to every step forward.

Learn to acknowledge your own progress.

That does not mean becoming self-centred. It means developing enough self-respect to recognise that your efforts have value, even when others fail to recognise them.

Stop chasing care

One of the most exhausting things we can do is continually try to convince someone to care.

We send another message. We explain ourselves again. We make excuses for their behaviour. We wait for the affection or consideration that once seemed natural.

At some point, we have to ask whether we are investing our energy in the right place.

Care should not always have to be begged for, negotiated or earned through endless effort.

There is dignity in stepping back.

Not every relationship needs a dramatic ending. Sometimes you simply stop forcing what no longer feels mutual and redirect your attention towards people and places where your presence is valued.

Learn to care for yourself

When others are unavailable, self-reliance becomes important.

Ask yourself the questions you wish someone else would ask.

How am I really doing? What do I need? What is making me unhappy? What would make tomorrow a little better?

The answers may be surprisingly ordinary.

Perhaps you need proper rest. Perhaps you need to say no. Perhaps you need to stop comparing yourself with others. Perhaps you need to pursue something you abandoned years ago. Or perhaps you simply need to give yourself permission to have a difficult day without judging yourself for it.

Self-care is not about pretending that you need nobody.

We all need connection. We need friendship, affection, encouragement and people with whom we can share both ordinary moments and difficult ones.

The goal is not to become completely independent of others.

The goal is to ensure that your entire sense of worth does not depend on their attention.

Do not become bitter

There is another danger when we feel neglected: we may start believing that nobody deserves our kindness.

That is understandable, but it is also a trap.

Someone else’s inability to value you should not turn you into someone who cannot value others.

Remain kind—but establish boundaries.

Remain generous—but do not allow yourself to be repeatedly taken for granted.

Remain open to relationships—but learn to recognise when effort is flowing in only one direction.

Strength is not becoming hard. It is learning where to place your softness.

You still matter

Perhaps the most important lesson is this: being overlooked is not the same as being worthless.

Your value does not increase when people praise you, nor does it disappear when they fail to notice you.

You are still the person who has survived difficult days, learnt from mistakes, carried responsibilities and continued moving forward.

Give yourself credit for that.

And if you currently have people in your life who genuinely care, do not take them for granted either. Tell them you appreciate them. Ask how they are. Listen properly. Sometimes we spend so much time wishing to be cared for that we forget how powerful it can be to offer care ourselves.

Eventually, life teaches us that we cannot control who stays, who leaves, who understands us or who appreciates us.

What we can control is how we treat ourselves through all of it.

So, when nobody seems to care, do not spend your entire life trying to prove that you deserve care.

Stand a little steadier.

Choose people who choose you.

Protect your peace.

Celebrate your own progress.

And keep becoming the person you would be proud to have beside you.

Because sometimes, the most important relationship you will ever build is the one in which you finally stop abandoning yourself.

Who is your favorite cartoon character?

The Cartoon Character Who Never Grew Old

If someone were to ask me, “Who is your favourite cartoon character?”, I would not need a moment to think.

It would be Tom from Tom and Jerry.

Not because Tom was always clever. He wasn’t. Not because he always won. He rarely did. And certainly not because he was a model of good behaviour. Chasing Jerry around the house with frying pans, traps, hammers and occasionally something far more destructive was hardly an advertisement for peaceful living!

Yet there was something wonderfully human about Tom.

Tom was the eternal underdog.

He schemed, plotted, waited patiently and constructed elaborate plans with the confidence of a military strategist. Then, within seconds, the entire plan would collapse spectacularly. Jerry would escape; Tom would suffer the consequences; and we would laugh until our sides hurt.

But beneath the comedy was something rather profound.

Tom never stopped trying.

He could be flattened by an anvil, scorched by an explosion, thrown through a window or reduced to a bewildered heap of fur—and yet, a few moments later, there he was again, ready for another attempt. His failures never persuaded him that success was impossible.

Perhaps that is why Tom has remained memorable long after many supposedly more sophisticated characters have disappeared from my mind.

As children, we watched Tom and Jerry simply for the laughter. We did not analyse the characters or search for philosophical meanings. A chase was a chase; a collision was hilarious; Jerry’s cleverness was irresistible.

But adulthood has a peculiar habit of changing the way we look at childhood.

Today, I sometimes see Tom differently.

Life, too, is full of Jerrys.

Just when we think we have finally cornered a problem, it slips through a tiny opening and disappears. We make meticulous plans, only to discover that destiny has prepared an entirely different script. We pursue success, happiness, money, recognition or certainty, and occasionally end up sitting amidst the ruins of our carefully constructed expectations.

And yet, like Tom, we get up.

We dust ourselves off.

We try again.

Perhaps that is the real charm of cartoons. They allowed us to laugh at failure before we were old enough to fear it.

Tom taught us, without ever preaching, that losing one battle does not mean surrendering the war. He also taught us something else: sometimes the chase itself is the story.

There is a certain sadness in growing older. The cartoons remain, but the child who watched them with unrestrained delight slowly becomes an adult burdened by responsibilities, disappointments and questions.

Still, every now and then, a familiar tune begins, Tom appears on the screen, Jerry emerges from his little hole, and something inside us smiles.

For a few minutes, age becomes irrelevant.

We are children again.

No deadlines. No bank balances. No complicated relationships. No philosophical dilemmas.

Just Tom, Jerry—and another wonderfully ridiculous chase.

Maybe that is why my favourite cartoon character is not merely a character from an animated series.

Tom is a small reminder that life need not always be taken seriously.

Sometimes we need to laugh at our own disasters, accept that our grand plans may go spectacularly wrong, and then get up and begin another chase.

After all, tomorrow may bring another trap, another disappointment and another anvil falling from the sky.

But if Tom can survive all that, perhaps there is hope for the rest of us too.

And perhaps that is the secret of never growing completely old: somewhere within us, the child who laughed at Tom and Jerry must always remain alive.

If your pet could talk, what would be the first thing it says?

“At Last! You Can Hear Me!” — If My Pet Could Talk

Imagine waking up one morning to discover that your pet can suddenly speak.

Not bark.

Not meow.

Not chirp.

Not make those mysterious noises that leave you wondering whether your beloved companion is hungry, offended, bored, or secretly plotting your downfall.

Actually speak.

Perfectly.

In fluent English.

The first few seconds would probably be filled with stunned silence. You would stare at your pet. Your pet would stare back at you. Then, after years of watching you talk to it without receiving a single comprehensible answer, it might finally sigh and say:

“About time you started listening.”

And honestly, I suspect that would be the beginning of a very long conversation.

“Why Do You Keep Calling Me?”

The first complaint would probably concern names.

We give our pets perfectly respectable names — Bruno, Bella, Leo, Milo, Lucy — and then proceed to call them everything except their actual names.

“Come here, sweetheart.”

“Who’s my little monster?”

“Look at you, you naughty fellow!”

“Come to Daddy!”

If pets could talk, they might reasonably ask:

“Do I actually have a name, or is it ‘Good Boy’?”

And imagine the embarrassment when they revealed what they call us.

Perhaps I would discover that I am not “Master”, “Dad” or even “Human”.

I might simply be known as:

“The One Who Opens the Fridge.”

The Great Food Mystery

Food would undoubtedly become the next topic.

Pets have an extraordinary understanding of hypocrisy.

We eat biscuits, chocolate, cakes, crisps and all manner of culinary indulgences while looking solemnly into their eyes and saying:

“No, you can’t have that. It’s not good for you.”

If they could speak, I imagine the response would be immediate:

“And the third piece of cake you ate was medically necessary?”

That would be awkward.

Then there is the strange ritual of feeding them expensive food while secretly hoping they will finish the leftovers we don’t particularly fancy.

They would probably have opinions about that too.

“Why does my dinner cost more than yours?”

Silence.

“Exactly.”

“Why Do You Leave Me Alone?”

But beneath the humour, there would probably be something more profound.

Pets understand absence.

They know when we leave.

They wait near doors.

They recognise the sound of our footsteps.

They know the difference between a five-minute trip and a day-long absence, even if they cannot understand where we have gone.

If my pet could speak, perhaps one of the first serious questions would be:

“Why do you leave me when I am happiest when you are here?”

That question would hurt.

Because animals do not measure love in expensive toys, fashionable collars or elaborate beds.

They measure it in presence.

In companionship.

In the simple comfort of knowing that their human is nearby.

“I Know When You Are Sad.”

Perhaps the most astonishing revelation would be discovering how much our pets already understand.

We often imagine that because they cannot speak, they cannot comprehend our emotional lives.

But anyone who has lived with an animal knows otherwise.

They notice when our voice changes.

They sense when we are anxious.

They know when we have had a difficult day.

Sometimes, without being asked, they quietly come and sit beside us.

No advice.

No interrogation.

No clichés.

Just presence.

If they could speak, perhaps they would say:

“You don’t have to pretend with me. I already know.”

And that might be the most beautiful sentence a human could ever hear.

“Stop Taking Photographs of Me.”

Of course, dignity would also become an issue.

We photograph our pets sleeping.

Eating.

Yawning.

Stretching.

Falling over.

Looking guilty.

Looking innocent.

Looking guilty while pretending to look innocent.

If pets could speak, I am fairly certain there would eventually be a formal complaint:

“Could you please stop posting pictures of me without my permission?”

And then:

“Especially the one where I was asleep with my tongue sticking out.”

Social media might never recover.

“You Are My Family.”

Yet, after all the complaints, jokes and accusations, I suspect the conversation would eventually become quiet.

My pet might look at me and say:

“You know something? I never needed you to be perfect.”

“You didn’t need to have all the answers.”

“You didn’t need to buy me the finest things.”

“You didn’t even need to understand everything I did.”

“I just wanted you to be there.”

And perhaps, after a pause:

“You are my family.”

That would be enough to silence any human heart.

The Final Question

There is something deeply moving about the relationship between humans and animals.

We speak different languages, yet somehow understand one another.

They cannot read our books, but they read our faces.

They cannot understand our ambitions, but they understand our loneliness.

They cannot discuss philosophy, yet they teach us something philosophers have struggled to explain for centuries:

Love does not always need language.

Perhaps that is why, if my pet suddenly gained the power of speech, I would not want it to tell me about the weather, food or all the embarrassing things it had witnessed.

I would want to hear one simple sentence.

Perhaps it would look at me, wag its tail, and say:

“I was talking to you all along. You just never learnt how to listen.”

And perhaps that would be the real miracle.

Not that an animal had learnt to speak —

but that a human had finally learnt to listen.

Have you ever regretted reading a book — which one and why?

The Book I Wish I Hadn’t Read: When a Bad Book Becomes a Good Lesson

Have you ever regretted reading a book?

It is an odd question, especially for someone who loves books. We are usually taught that every book has something to offer. Read widely, we are told. Never judge a book by its cover. A book is a friend. And, as someone who has spent a considerable part of his life reading and writing, I have always believed that even an imperfect book can leave behind an interesting thought.

But there are books that do something rather different.

They leave you wondering why you did not spend those six hours talking to a friend, listening to music, watching the sunset—or simply doing absolutely nothing.

For me, one such book was Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James.

Now, before anyone objects, let me make one thing clear: this is not a judgement on the author or on the millions of readers who enjoyed the book. Literature is intensely personal. What bores one reader may fascinate another. What one person considers profound, another may find unbearable.

My regret was simply this:

I finished it.

And that, perhaps, was my first mistake.

Curiosity is a dangerous reader

I picked up the book partly because of its extraordinary popularity. When a book becomes a worldwide phenomenon, curiosity takes over.

What is everyone talking about?

Why has this book become such a sensation?

What makes millions of people turn its pages?

These questions are irresistible to a reader.

So I began.

And then I waited.

I waited for the great revelation.

I waited for the extraordinary writing that had apparently captivated the world.

I waited for the characters to develop into people I could care about.

Most importantly, I waited for the story to become the story everyone claimed it was.

Instead, I found myself increasingly aware of the clock.

That is never a good sign.

The tyranny of the unfinished book

There is a peculiar psychological trap associated with reading.

Once we have invested an hour in a book, we feel compelled to finish it.

Another chapter.

Just another fifty pages.

Surely it will improve.

Perhaps the author is building towards something.

Perhaps the great moment is just around the corner.

This is the literary equivalent of waiting for a delayed train because you have already spent twenty minutes on the platform.

At some point, you should ask yourself whether the train is actually coming.

Yet readers are stubborn creatures.

We suffer from what I call the sunk-cost syndrome of literature.

We think:

“I’ve already read 150 pages. I can’t possibly stop now.”

Why not?

There are thousands of wonderful books waiting patiently on the shelf.

No book is entitled to your time merely because you have started reading it.

But did I really regret reading it?

Interestingly, the answer is both yes and no.

Yes, because I felt that the time could have been spent more profitably.

No, because even a disappointing book teaches us something.

It teaches us about our own taste.

It reminds us that popularity and quality are not necessarily the same thing.

It teaches us that millions of readers can adore something that leaves us completely cold.

And perhaps most importantly, it teaches us the liberating art of putting down a book.

I learnt that lesson rather late.

Today, I have no guilt about abandoning a book.

If the characters fail to speak to me, I leave them behind.

If the prose feels like wading through wet cement, I escape.

If the story has stopped making me curious, I close the book.

Life is too short to finish every book we begin.

The books we love are different

The books that stay with us are rarely the ones we merely finish.

They are the ones we continue thinking about after we have closed them.

A good book follows you.

You read a sentence in the morning and remember it at night.

A character becomes almost like an old acquaintance.

A philosophical idea quietly changes the way you see the world.

Sometimes a book does not entertain you at all—it disturbs you.

And that can be even more valuable.

Some books make us laugh.

Some make us cry.

Some make us question.

Some make us uncomfortable.

And a precious few change us.

Those are the books we keep.

Not necessarily on our shelves, but somewhere inside ourselves.

Perhaps the worst book can also be useful

Looking back, I would not say that reading Fifty Shades of Grey was completely wasted time.

It gave me something quite valuable: perspective.

It reminded me that reading is not a competition.

We do not receive medals for finishing difficult books.

There is no literary police waiting outside the bedroom asking, “Did you finish Volume III?”

A reader has the right to say:

“This isn’t for me.”

And walk away.

That is not intellectual arrogance.

It is intellectual honesty.

So, would I read it again?

Absolutely not.

Once was enough.

In fact, if I ever find myself tempted to revisit it, I shall immediately reach for a book by Tolstoy, Tagore, Premchand—or perhaps simply a collection of old Hindi songs.

At least they won’t make me wonder whether I have accidentally misplaced several hours of my life.

But perhaps that is the real paradox of reading.

Even a book we regret reading can teach us which books we should read instead.

And sometimes, discovering what you don’t like is almost as important as discovering what you love.

So yes, I have regretted reading a book.

But I have never regretted being a reader.

Because somewhere between the wonderful books, the disappointing books, the unfinished books and the books we wish we had never opened, we gradually discover something much more important:

We discover ourselves.

And that, I think, is the greatest book of all.

What’s the best and worst airport you’ve been to?

Airports: Where Journeys Begin — and Patience Ends!

There are airports you remember because they made you feel that you had arrived somewhere special. And then there are airports you remember because you spent three hours wondering whether you had actually arrived in civilisation.

Airports are strange places. They are neither here nor there. You are physically standing on one piece of land, mentally somewhere else, and emotionally praying that your luggage is travelling with you.

Over the years, I have passed through quite a few airports — some magnificent, some chaotic, and some that seemed to have been designed by a committee whose members had never actually travelled by air.

The best: when an airport feels like a welcome

My favourite airports are not necessarily the biggest or most luxurious. They are the ones where everything seems to work quietly in the background.

You enter, and somehow you know where to go.

The signs make sense. The staff are courteous. Security is efficient without making you feel like a potential criminal. The departure boards are actually telling you something useful. There are enough seats, clean toilets, decent food and, most importantly, no mysterious queue whose purpose nobody can explain.

A really good airport gives you the feeling that someone has thought about the passenger.

You can sit by a large window, watch aircraft taxi towards the runway and feel that little flutter of excitement that comes with travel.

There is something magical about watching an aircraft take off.

Thousands of tonnes of metal suddenly become airborne, carrying hundreds of people towards distant cities, reunions, adventures and, occasionally, someone’s mother-in-law.

Perhaps that is why I like airports at their best. They represent possibility.

And then there is the worst…

The worst airport is not necessarily the dirtiest one.

It is the one where nothing seems to happen logically.

You arrive three hours early, as instructed. You check in. You pass security. Then you discover that your gate is approximately the distance between Delhi and Mumbai.

You walk.

And walk.

And walk.

Eventually, you reach the gate, only to discover that boarding has been delayed.

So you sit.

Twenty minutes later, someone announces that the gate has changed.

You walk again.

At this point, your cabin baggage has developed a personality and your feet have begun negotiating for independence.

Then comes the boarding queue.

Nobody knows why there is a queue because nobody is boarding.

Yet everyone joins it.

You join it too, because airports have taught us an important survival lesson:

If everyone is standing somewhere, there is probably a reason.

Sometimes there isn’t.

The airport test

I have developed my own unofficial airport rating system.

An airport earns points for:

• clear signage;
• comfortable seating;
• clean toilets;
• efficient security;
• helpful staff;
• reasonable food;
• reliable Wi-Fi;
• and, above all, not making passengers walk unnecessary marathons.

It loses points for:

• unexplained queues;
• confusing announcements;
• gates changing every ten minutes;
• overcrowded waiting areas;
• charging points that don’t work;
• and the unforgivable crime of having only one tiny café serving 400 hungry passengers.

But there is another test.

How do you feel when you leave the airport?

At a good airport, you feel excited.

At a bad one, you feel as though you have completed a postgraduate degree in endurance.

Airports are little theatres of humanity

What fascinates me most about airports is not the architecture. It is the people.

You see everything.

The excited first-time traveller clutching his passport as if it were a treasure map.

The businessman marching towards the gate with the urgency of a man negotiating a billion-pound merger.

The family travelling with enough luggage to relocate permanently.

The child running around as though the airport belongs to him.

The elderly couple quietly holding hands.

The backpacker sleeping peacefully on three plastic chairs.

And the passenger staring anxiously at the departure board every thirty seconds, as though his concentrated gaze might make the aircraft arrive faster.

Airports bring strangers together for a brief period.

We may speak different languages, eat different food and come from completely different worlds, but for a few hours we share the same anxieties:

Will the flight be on time?

Will my luggage arrive?

Is that actually my gate?

And the eternal question:

Why is my boarding group still not being called?

The real luxury

As I grow older, I have realised that the best airport is not the one with the most expensive shops or the fanciest lounges.

It is the one that respects your time.

Give me a clean terminal, a comfortable chair, a cup of decent coffee, a large window overlooking the runway and a calm voice announcing, “Your flight is now ready for boarding” — and I am happy.

I don’t need marble floors.

I don’t need designer boutiques.

I don’t need a waterfall in the departure lounge.

I simply want an airport that allows me to travel without making me question my life choices.

And perhaps that is the secret

A journey begins long before the aircraft leaves the ground.

It begins when we enter the airport with a suitcase in one hand and expectations in the other.

The best airports add to the excitement.

The worst airports test our character.

And perhaps both serve a purpose.

One teaches us the joy of travel.

The other teaches us patience.

After all, an airport is ultimately a metaphor for life.

There are smooth departures, unexpected delays, confusing directions, long queues, sudden changes of gate and moments when we have absolutely no idea what is happening.

Yet eventually, if we are fortunate, the doors close, the engines roar and the aircraft begins to climb.

We look through the window.

The airport becomes smaller.

The queues disappear.

The frustrations seem insignificant.

And somewhere above the clouds, we remember why we travelled in the first place.

Because sometimes the journey is worth every queue, every delay and every misplaced suitcase.

Even if we still haven’t forgiven the airport.