camera@bangalore airport.

slightly longish....but please bear with me.........
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aaaaa.....the thing is I was supposed to board a plane for delhi last tuesday (20th Nov). so i went to the airport, handed over my luggage at the check in counter and waited for security check. I had only my
camera as hand luggage.....When my turn for frisking came, I put my camera in the x-ray machine and went to the police wala so that he cud frisk me. To my horror, by the time my frisking was over, i found that the my camera was no where to be seen in the vicinity..........i discovered that some one stole it.......for twenty minutes, i searched the whole area trying to figure which stole it......the only ppl whom i cud suspect, given the circumstances were the security police stationed there. i tried to see if there was any place near by where they cud hide it....when i found a small desk where i saw something blue (colour of my camera pouch) i asked the security ppl to show me wat it is.....it turned out to be his cap!

so a couple of security guys came to my rescue and took me to the CC-tv section. There they told me to write a letter explaining the situation and asking them for permission to view the CC-tv footage and
x-ray machine footage. After this episode, they re-played the cc-tv to show how I entered and how i was frisked and I started searching for the camera and didnt find it. But it was not evident from the footage
as to wat happnd to the camera..didnt appear any where!! i was really pained at the way things were going. i was already pained that the flight got delayed by 3 hours......i started considering packing the
whole trip (which was planned for 5 days). somehow i managed to tell myself that these things happen and tht hopefully, i will forget it and enjoy the trip. when i asked their names, they started getting hostile, saying showing cc-tv is a big security threat....that they will loose their jobs if authorities know of this and all such crap. surprisingly, not one of them revealed their names.

i just lodged a rewritten complaint, cribbing about indian bureaucracy, abt the security agencies, police ppl and boarded the plane at 9:00pm (scheduled time-5:00pm) and landed in delhi at 11:30 pm. i also started feeling nostalgic abt my camera and how I shud I hav put fight to understand it better....i vowed not to buy another camera until i read up all books on digital photography...

the next day, i traveled from delhi to jaipur to kota, all the while cursing that i cudnt take pics of rajasthan.......i switched off my mobile till 12:00 in the afternoon.....when i switched on the phone at
12:00 noon, i got a phone from an unknown number. the caller said "sir, i am vinay, head of CISF in bangalore airport.....we hav traced your mobile camera and have been trying to contact you since 12
hours...please come and collect it".....yeyeye...hehehoho..gud heavens....i thought....i was over joyed and felt thankful to all those security ppl....i also thanked myself for not giving up the trip.

it seems some other passenger has somehow taken the camera along with his bag. after 2 hours (thank god...his flight is also delayed)....he realised it and returned it to the police!!!

yesterday, when i came back to bangalore, i went to the airport and collected my camera.
this, is why I dont have photos of a very memorable trip to the north.

--raghu