Bibek Debroy: Oscar and a tube of toothpaste

Presumably what's sacrosanct about hand baggage is its size, so why does it matter if it is one or twox.

I went to a conference in Kolkata. Since I was planning to spend a night, I only had hand baggage with me. One of those bags you collect at conferences. No checked-in baggage. However, I had not anticipated the professional hazard associated with attending conferences. At the conference, I picked up another hand-bag with conference papers and was given a huge memento that looked a bit like an Oscar, that is, it was a statue inside a glass case and was remarkably heavy. You could probably kill someone with it. I promptly threw away the conference papers. But that didn't help. Neither of the bags would fit into the other and they were both made of leather, so that they couldn't be folded. And the Oscar wouldn't fit into any of the bags either. I didn't have the heart to junk the Oscar or any of the two hand-bags. So I turned up at the airport, with two slim hand-bags and an Oscar and wanted to check in. "Can I carry all this as hand baggage?" I asked at the Sahara counter. "Why don't you put one bag inside the other (WDYPOBITO)?" I was advised. Clearly, my countenance displayed the fact that I lacked such elementary common sense.

First, the gentleman at the counter tried WDYPOBITO, then the lady next to him. Then the person who places checked-in baggage on the conveyor belt. Without success. Sahara then offered the following solution. Oscar was to be placed inside one of the bags, with his neck sticking out. The bag wouldn't close, but how did that matter? One piece of hand baggage was allowed, who said the bag would have to be closed? As for the other bag, might as well try one's luck. Perhaps security wouldn't object. After all, both my bags taken together were less than one-tenth the hand baggage other passengers were carrying. No such luck. I couldn't even get inside the security enclosure, but was turned back by the guard. Security regulations were clear. Only one piece of hand baggage allowed. Back I went to the Sahara counter. However, that wouldn't work, because checked-in baggage had to be X-rayed. So I now made my way to the X-ray machine and offered an empty hand-bag for screening. This was eyed with a great deal of suspicion. WDYPOBITO arose in a chorus. I shrugged my shoulders in despair.

This was rightly interpreted as lack of common sense. One person after another tried WDYPOBITO, other passengers with strong altruistic senses chipped in. When all failed, the offending hand-bag was passed through the machine and emerged with a security sticker attached to the lock. I returned to the Sahara counter and checked the bag in and returned to security with the remaining bag, Oscar's head sticking out. The guard allowed me in. Oscar and the bag went through the machine and I went through personal frisking. However, when I emerged unscathed, there was a problem with Oscar. I was told my hand-bag would have to go through personal checking. Obviously, Oscar was the problem. As I have already stated, you could have killed someone with Oscar. The lady security officer opened my bag and took Oscar out. She shook him, turned him upside down, weighed him carefully in both hands. But probably couldn't figure out a way of objecting to Oscar. He wasn't liquid, he wasn't a gel or a powder and there didn't seem to be any flammable stuff inside. Nor was Oscar sharp. To vent her anger, she turned my bag inside out and the triumph on her face was palpable. She had found a tube of toothpaste.

Not a large tube of toothpaste, but one of those tiny ones that you get on planes when you are traveling business class. About half an inch in length. No matter, toothpaste was toothpaste and was contraband. I suggested that she throw it away and let me pass. However, denizens of Kolkata are extremely helpful. "Why don't you put it inside your checked-in baggage?" she said. "That's what we advise all passengers to do." She was joined in this helpful chorus by other security staff. So as not to offend security, back I went, with this half-an-inch tube of toothpaste in my hand, Oscar laughing all the way. By now, I was a familiar sight and Sahara promptly retrieved my checked-in bag. The toothpaste was inserted into one of the zipped compartments, without disturbing the security tag. Nonetheless, the bag had to go through the machine once more. Since there were some new passengers milling around now, we had to go through the WDYPOBITO routine again. But eventually all that was sorted out and I retrieved my hand-bag and my half-an-inch tube of toothpaste in Delhi.

When I am traveling, I have now taken to carrying neem twigs, making sure they are less than two inches long. Otherwise, they will be classified as weapons. I am hoping for the day when one of three things happens "" all hand baggage is prohibited, we are forced to travel naked, or we are put into hibernation when we board.