As I rezoned back from my firing thought I looked into the eyes of the young man. I believed he knew my fustrated situation and thinked that he can over talk me into his offering and assistance. He kept pressing for my passport and payment until I took a deep breath and said “I am not going to give you my passport. I can go get the ticket myself.” The young man seemed not satified and tried his attempts again. I myself repeated my earlier passage with stern expression. He finally claps his hands together and said “ok madam.”

I walked pass him and didn’t even looked back. As I passed the large crowds waiting for their luggage to be scanned out I thought to myself “how stupid does he think I am! I am not going to pay for a service I know I can perform on my own. Geez!“

I passed the securities and walked up to the small counter I saw the young man had gone to earlier. I asked the lady there for the next soonest fly out to Chennai. In a much professional manner she told me the time and then the cost in both currencies. I accepted the transactions, got my ticket and walked in the same direction I came from. The two securities eyed me again as I passed for the last time. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of the place. My checkout was at the same place where I meet the young man. In avoidance I took the next lady who professionally checked me in and took my lugguage.

I sat in the lounge before boarding a bus to a domestic terminal a few stretch away from the internation terminal. The domestic terminal was really different. It was clean, nicely tend to and well air conditioned. The people and security that I talked to were a lot more professional. While sitting in the terminal there waiting for my flight at 5:30am I reflected back to the international terminal and thought of what was wrong with it. To my observation, I felt that the Mumbai International Airport was really not well tended to. A lot of the employees there were young and would resolve to other options of being paid on the side through whatever means of service they can get. Customer service and professionalism was not present. As a foreigner entering the country of India through Mumabi, I felt it as a insult.

To cap off, I believed the Mumbai International Terminal could had been a lot more better in staff and cleaniness. I noticed that alot of the workers there were young people who didn’t really know much about what to do. Once I got to Chennai I told of the situation to my friend about the young people there just constantly asking for payment for any service they can provide for and he said that it can be due to various reason and one of them was that “they don’t get pay well for working there and that’s probably why they would do other things for a fee.” I tried to argue about it using my perspective from living in American but he mentioned that “there are some things that I would not understand” and so we left it at that. But every now and then, my experience at the Mumbai International Terminal still has me furious over the quality and cleaniness presented to forigners. When I landed in Chennai, the terminal was not even half as bad as Mumbai’s.