Life of S ~ The Russian Roulette ... Vol. II

Continued from here...

I realized the weird atmosphere in the room and turned around to make my way out of there, only to realize that the door had been locked. I was in a small room which could well be considered as the prison in the airport. It seemed as if we were all convicts and had committed an inexcusable crime. The lot included people from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia, and many more countries that I didn’t get to ask or find out. Some of the people had been held here for one week, others for two-three days. I only wondered how long I was going to stay here.

It seemed as if the ‘Third World Summit” was taking place at the Domededovo Airport in Moscow. Initially I was a little upset and worried at the whole situation. But amidst all this chaos, I found that the people here were talking to each other, laughing and trying to motivate each other. None of them knew why they were here, and all of them knew that it was only a matter of time before they would be deported back to their respective countries. I was learning so much about the ways of life and about the positive attitude towards life that they talk about in B-schools. Interestingly, none of these people have ever been to any such school but they knew all about it. I was one among the 4 people who spoke English. The others knew only one sentence in English “No speak English”. Wow!!! Now I had to pass my time with a group of people whom I had no other way of conversing with, other than the primitive way of hand signs. But I was learning how to do it. And at the same time I was learning about the different cultures across the world in a very different way.

It was about an hour before I realized that someone there had a cell phone and was actually charging $5 for one call. Talk about ideas!!!! What a way to make money while sitting in airport-prison. That was really innovative. I felt like punching him in the face, but at the time he was my only savior. Later I realized that neither the phone, nor the sim card in it was his. It was the belonging of a lady and this gentleman was calling his friend sitting outside the airport to fill credit in that number. How innovative!!! He was neither Bill Gates nor Dhirubhai Ambani. But he had the presence of mind to think of doing business even in such a situation. Not to my surprise, there was a waiting queue for making calls and I had to wait for my turn. I needed the phone badly as it was getting late to make calls to India and everyone would soon be sleeping. As I got my turn, he said he didn’t have change for a $20 bill that I had. So I had to get $10 credited considering the situation. Nevertheless, money was not as important to me as getting out of the mess I was in.

Then I called up my friend/Mr Dependable, SP, and explained to him the whole situation. I told him to call whomever was required and to get me out of the bloody mess. I knew he would do something and real quick. I also asked him to get back to me on the same number ASAP and so he did. I still remember, every time the phone rang, every person in the room would run towards it, expecting it to be their call. It was like a lottery being called and every person waiting for their name to be called. Within an hour, things had started escalating to the right people in my company and I had also received a call from Gerardo, the Recruiting Manager for Asia, the same gentleman who had taken my interview and recruited me. Only to my shock, the lady whose phone was being used all this while was upset with everyone using her phone and she finally took it back and switched it off once most of us had fallen asleep. Hungry and tired, I tried to catch up on sleep using my laptop as a pillow and my NorthFace jacket as a blanket, sleeping on the ground. This was nothing very new though for me, as I had already done such things in the pick-up’s when we would go for jobs on the rigs. Nevertherless, the situation was definitely one that was new to all of us.

to be continued...