It is five in the morning on November 1 at Delhi airport and a British Airways flight has come in from Heathrow. This is the brave new airport DIAL is building and will be second only to Beijing. Notwithstanding Cassandras, it will be the pride of the Commonwealth Games and one can already witness signs of improvement. On the hardware.

But at five in the morning, arrival is in a mess. There is a swine-flu check that the space can't cope with. There are two cameras to either side and a melee occurs in the middle. As passengers descend down the escalator (and the fixed staircase to its side), someone decides to switch off the escalator. Caught unawares, some passengers fall down. Others clutch co-passengers on the staircase. The two cameras can't cope with the crowd. So there are a couple of medical officers in the middle, stamping medical forms without any checks. Combating swine flu is a matter of self-certification. Why bother with health checks then?

On to immigration. Half the counters are meant for Indians, half for foreigners. But that's impossible to implement. The able-bodied elbow others aside and head for the relatively uncrowded disabled counter. Counter No. 10 is manned by D S Mehendwat. He has had a tough night and is sleepy. He is cowed down by the sight of 50-odd passengers waiting for their stamps. Though counter No. 10 is open, he decides to disappear. Beyond immigration, there is an X-ray machine used for checking hand baggage. Since it is rarely used, no one knows why it is there. However, next to it, there is a chair and Mehendwat heads there and goes off to sleep. No replacement is sent to Counter No. 10 and other queues will not allow passengers from queue No. 10 to gatecrash.

... contd.