This Christmas, your local airport's got swanky, Mr Solanki, but some things don't change
airports in the world. For example, the new Bangalore Terminal 2 is made with a bamboo motif and feels like a mix of Singapore Changi Airport and being in the Broadway musical, Miss Saigon.
Its retail outlets, esoteric even by Indian MNC standards (P.F. Chang's, Smoor), make you feel like you're waiting in an American teenager's dream, en route to Chikkamagaluru.
If you've had the misfortune of having to run through Delhi airport at rush hour as I have, it is so big, once you've navigated 240 Bulgaris and 1,400 places called 'Cafe Espresso' and get to your plane, you look slimmer and greyer, but not in a good way.
In a way, that suggests you were let out of Tihar Jail that morning.
Kolkata airport, I have heard, is run by the Thai government, although there is no real sense of any Thai-ness (missing prawns, missing Buddhas), as it is bathed in a pale blue of moroseness, suggesting it is forced to participate in some consumerist march against its will. Which is apt to the city's spirit.
Catch any Cafe Coffee Day, WH Smith, Wow! Momo employees early in the morning and ask for the thing they are selling, and you'll receive a well-deserved talking to, making you question the buyer-seller dynamic.
The only act of joy being a lively biryani counter, with takers of a double mutton biryani — at 7 a.m. Not something you'll see at, say, Ahmedabad's cool, clean, vegan, clinically beautiful steel-and-glass edifice named after the other great Indian Gujarati leader, built by the other great Gujarati businessman.
I can't make fun of Mumbai airport because it often feels like the sky above it is busier than what's going on in it.
