If you are going to fall, do it at the Thiruvananthapuram airport

If ever you are going to fall backwards with your luggage trolley on top of you because of your ever-dislocating knee, do it at the Thiruvananthapuram airport. I did.

As I lay supine on the floor, I was the only one who knew what had happened. Above me, the crowd was deep into concern and conjecture.

“She has fainted.”

“The trolley fell on her.”

“Give her air.”

“Let her lie quiet”.

“Bring some water.”

“Call a doctor.”

Someone kept saying, “Bring tea, bring tea.”

I could hear all this as I lay eyes closed.

But it was, “Lift her by the armpits” that jolted me into gathering my wits and raise my arm in the general direction of the crowd looming over me enough to say, “Please, just let me lie here for a minute.”

The thing is, I know what to do when my glass knee does its own thing and goes in a direction that it should not. My usual practice is just to lie there and when the pain is done, I get up and walk away. ‘The Knee’ as the family has come to know it has often refused to support the rest of me — on the streets of New York, Delhi, Stockholm, and London, and in the strawberry fields of Coonoor. It’s not pleasant but it is familiar; and, beyond terrifying my companion of the moment it holds no fear for me.

Still, alone at the Thiruvananthapuram airport, it allowed me to ponder the lovely kindness of strangers. In less than a minute, solicitous passengers, security and airline staff had surrounded the spot. The women made sure no one came too near unasked. A porter squatted close by, a bottle of water at the ready. “A doctor is coming” he whispered softy, “Nothing to worry.”

An instant later the airport doctor was bending over me. A few matter-of-fact questions later, certain I was compos mentis he assured me of a wheelchair and hovered until my ‘thank yous’ persuaded him his ministrations were no longer needed.

Without more, my bags were checked in, my boarding pass appeared in my hand, those pesky luggage tags appeared magically with ‘priority’ for my carry-on, and my seat was changed to the best in the house. I couldn’t help smiling through the pain when the woman at frisking said “I will be careful.” The man at security shouted for someone to get me on the lift.

Vishwanathan, the airport manager, sat by me apologising for coming around late. He had been on the phone fixing for an ambulance, but was happy it wasn’t needed. We promised to meet at Coimbatore next time after his soon-to-happen transfer there. We agreed a house on the Salur road would suit him best.

Ravindran and Padma, Air India’s officers on duty, walked me to the aircraft door chatting happily about similar injuries received as cricket enthusiasts and cycling champions. In the company of the genuinely war wounded I felt like an imposter.

I could only claim to be a victim of lasting injury because of a long-ago silly mishap and the ministrations of a ham-handed army doctor. Faced with the displaced knee of the ‘General’s daughter’ who had done nothing more than twisted her foot on an evening walk in the gooseberry patch he had solicitously taken on the plastering of the then 16-year-old leg himself. Bad mistake. In misguided ‘special treatment’ to the important knee before him, he had thrown medical wisdom to the wind and decided “For you, I will make a loose plaster.” A week later within that ‘looseness’ my vagrant knee took up residence at a place where it never should have gone and has remained there in life residence.

Back on the tarmac, my escorts finally left me at the aircraft door with instructions to the crew to take special care of ‘Madam’. What more can a person ask? It made my day to realise that so much attentiveness cannot come out of professional training but is born out of genuine human kindness that is so often suppressed because we are scared of how it will be received. For myself, as I traipse around the world on the wounded knee, I am grateful.

(Maja Daruwala is chief editor, India Justice Report and senior adviser, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.)