When you drive down the Siliguri-Purnia Highway to Bagdogra International Airport in Darjeeling district in the northern part of the eastern state of West Bengal, you see queues of cars along the service road. clean. waiting. The drivers of these trains are busy chatting with each other while sipping a cup of smoking-hot milky-sweet chaOr just walking around.

Soon, one of them takes the call, and you take part of the conversation: “Get off? Okay. Call us only after you get your bag. It will take us 2/3 minutes to reach depending on the jam at the checkpoint. No, no, can’t leave earlier. We will have to pay a fine for overstaying.” !”

A few minutes later, another call comes. The bags have been collected and the flyer is now in the airport lobby.

The car accelerates, turns left and disappears from view. Another car takes its place.

This game of car-olet is an everyday occurrence. Throughout the day when flights land and take off at Bagdogra International Airport, there is a queue of relatives and drivers waiting for their turn. Next to the service road is the Bagdogra Tea Garden. A dazzling green expanse of tea gardens that stretches all the way to the airport.

The airport also serves as a gateway to northern Bengal and northeastern Bihar, the state of Sikkim and parts of Nepal and Bhutan. So, you have cars from the districts of Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Kalimpong, Darjeeling, Malda of Bengal and Purnia and Kishanganj of Bihar waiting for call from the airport.

There is a limit at the airport as to how long a car can wait at the pick-up point. 3 minutes. Beyond the 3 minutes stopping time, you will have to pay a heavy fine.

Sure, you can park your car, but when a middle-class Indian travels by air or goes to pick someone up from the airport, parking charges are a splurge you have no appetite for. Especially when you have built a service road. Jugaad,

Therefore, all your hugs, tears, goodbyes and welcomes should be done outside the tea garden, just like New Zealand’s Dunedin Airport just did.

Sometimes, you will see cars waiting on the service road after dropping off their passengers. Calls are exchanged to update each other about their status: “Have you checked in? Is your flight on time? Okay, if you’ve passed security, should we leave? Or should we wait a little longer?”

They wait a little longer for the second call.

Bagdogra receives around 60 flights and 8,000 passengers daily. It is operated by the Indian Air Force as a civil enclave airport at Bagdogra Air Force Station. Photography is prohibited (but not enforced). Overstaying is not allowed. However, this is not a hindrance for the many relatives, friends and well-wishers of the passengers who prefer to drop their loved ones or receive them at the airport. All this love on the road turns into a traffic jam, a chaos that Bagdogra cannot tolerate.

Sometimes money is the only language we understand; And one last call.

“Yes, I have boarded. The taxi is running. You can go.”