It was midnight by the time I landed at Seattle. The snowgods had delivered their payload with much gusto, laying down a 4 inch blanket. The city had feverishly worked itself into a standstill.
I made my way to the taxi stand. A quarter mile line for a yellow snaked along the terminal sidewalk. Tired, hungry, cold, confused frustrated travelers. Kids whimpered. Adults snapped. Everybody sniffled.
I took my place at the end of the line, slipped on my 40 ounces of leather, snuggled Geeta Dutt into my ears and prepared for a long night. I noticed the couple in front of me were in shorts, the sand still showing between their slippered toes. Too lost in a sunny honeymoon to have checked the weather forecast back home?
The laws of demand and supply governed. Taxis were at a shortfall. They came in ones and twos. They came when they wanted. 30 minutes later, the line had barely shuffled a few inches. Ms Dutt's mellifluous made way to Remo's ruckus. Time barely moved.
Out of nowhere, a town-car came to a crunching halt at my end of the line. The wrong end. The latino driver danced around the automobile, looked at the weary passengers and barked, " 75 dollars for Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond...".
The crowd rustled. Many hands shot up as did my eyebrow. The driver sized up the opportunity and quickly upped, "...per passenger"
"I'll take it", a burly middle aged man shouted, elbowed a slim nymphet in all her fineries and dragged his equally burly middle aged wife towards the car. The couple in the shorts said nothing. They simply darted towards the car. The girl lost her footing as rubber met ice. The guy did not even look back. He held on to her hand and dragged her. On a different day, a guy pulling a girl on her knees across an ice-bed would have been comic.
This triggered an instantaneous mayhem. The burly guy shoved his wife into the back seat. The guy in shorts let go of his girl and dived in from the other end. The slim nymphet, her huge fur coat trailing, yanked the passenger side front door, and crawled in, pulling her expensive carry-on behind her. A teenager actually hooked his arm around the middle aged burly waist - football style - and tried to pry him away from the car!
I pulled out the earplugs and watched in amazement.
I thought I had left behind the Western Railway platforms all those 13000 miles away!
I remembered a client who had traveled to India on business and had asked to be taken to a railway station. As if it were a zoo. He stood there and watched train after train suck in passengers. Their mad scramble for a few square-inches of room excited him.
"I always thought the books exaggerated", he said eyes gleaming, "This is fun. It seems like their life depends on it!"
Honest, hungry middle class trying to reach sparse suburban homes in time to hug their kids before a hot meal. A source of third world entertainment for the descendents of the Mayflower.
And here I was. In the bastion of modern civilization. Years of refined civility quickly lost to circumstantial desperation. Primal survival instinct unleashed with nothing worthwhile threatened. People losing it when their life did not depend on it. A seemingly minor loss of convenience had led to an extenuating circumstance.
I stayed rooted.
I smiled when it was not funny.
We are all just the same.