Even our airports seem to exist in multiple centuries

A couple of years ago, as I went through security check at Bengaluru's swanky international terminal, complete with wall gardens and food franchises of companies owned by celebrity chefs from the West, my computer bag was taken aside for inspection.

- RAHUL JACOB is a former Financial Times foreign correspondent

The CISF person said my massage ball, made of rubber with spikes, could be used as a weapon; I would have to check it in. I appealed to his supervisor. He gravely agreed with his colleague's assessment. Rather than go back to the check-in counter, I suggested the supervisor and his team use it as a massage ball.

A fortnight ago, a security-check guard found a tennis ball in my backpack and examined it with a thoroughness that would have befitted a hand-grenade. After recording my tennis ball, flight details and seat number in the airport's 'pat down register,' which sounded like it might double for #me-too complaints, he waved me through.

To paraphrase Jane Austen, even in the age of Digital India, it is a truth almost universally acknowledged that a functionary in possession of a good government job often yearns for a register and a rubber stamp. The paradox is that some of our international terminals today look like Muskian-landing sites for travel to Mars. Physically and metaphysically, they belong to wealthier countries, but process reforms seem unable to catch up. We have among the quickest immigration queues in the world and baggage-claim belts that are loaded efficiently in comparison with, say, Heathrow airport, but ever so often, the long arm of Indian bureaucracy pulls us back to the 20th century.