Stranger Danger
Transit Conversations
‘So, do you live in Dubai?’
‘Yes, I work there. What about you?’
‘I’m just heading there for a friend’s wedding. I missed the sangeet, it happened yesterday. But I’ll attend the rest of the events over the weekend. Where do you work?’
It is difficult, at 3 AM, to participate in lucid dialogue, much less focus on a conversation between strangers. But if you enjoy eavesdropping as much as I do, you make the effort to stay locked in. I dragged my suitcase forward a couple of steps and leaned in to hear the woman describe her profession. She had her back to me and perhaps it was the lack of sleep but her oversized black sweatshirt, and my bleary vision, made her look like a pint-sized dementor. The man she was talking to, however, seemed to have a more favourable opinion of her. He, too, was dressed in black — black tee, black jeans, black baseball cap worn backwards — and stood facing the woman, his feet slightly apart and his face displaying that classic expression of male flirting: I am interested in you but I’m gonna play this cool.
I am known not to possess any game — when it comes to wooing, a strip of sandpaper would be smoother than me — but I have a good eye for spotting it. This guy had it in spades. I was in the presence of a master. At an hour when most people wanted nothing more than to be horizontal, when it was too late to be night and too early to be morning, this fellow was able to fire questions with the dogged determination of a machine gunner. ‘When did you move to Dubai?’ ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Do you like it there?’ ‘Do you think you’ll ever come back?’ EMTs could have taken notes from him on how to keep a chat alive.
To be fair, the woman appeared to be enjoying the attention. On more than one occasion, she threw her head back in laughter. (This offered me a glimpse of her profile and I was able to confirm that she was not, in fact, a dementor.) She responded with questions of her own that the man was only too happy to answer. The slow crawl of the check-in queue allowed the two to cover a good deal of ground, exchanging background information and areas of interest. At some point, the conversation turned to music.
‘Do you like Linkin Park?’ he asked. ‘They performed here in Mumbai a few weeks ago.’
‘I listened to them when I was in school. Not a lot now. How was the concert?’
‘Yaar, they have this woman who is the new lead singer. They had to do something hatke na, after their previous frontman died. But this woman couldn’t match up.
‘Oh, really?’
‘Ya. Look, they have two songs that everyone knows, right? In The End and Numb. They are my favourites also. And she couldn’t even sing those properly.’
I was rooting for the chap but this made me draw in a sharp breath. Firstly, I did not approve of the way he’d dismissed Emily.1 I was at the concert and I could understand his grouse. When you’ve spent years listening to songs that were made famous by Chester Bennington’s inimitable vocal signature, that ability to alternate between high-pitched screams and whispered melodies in the same refrain, it becomes impossible to reimagine those songs. The dissonance, when a new singer takes the microphone, is hard to ignore. I felt it too, when the band performed songs I’d memorised when I was fifteen. The nostalgia surrounding those tracks was too dense, too overpowering, for me to listen to Emily. I only yearned for Chester. Nevertheless, when she belted out numbers from the new album, music that truly belonged to her, I had no trouble seeing her as the powerhouse rockstar that she is. That she ‘couldn’t match up’ to an iconic predecessor felt to me like a poor appraisal.
But more importantly, I pursed my lips because no conscientious Linkin Park devotee would ever name In The End and Numb as their favourite tracks. These are hackneyed choices, preferred by the casual listener.2 This guy was clearly one of those people who sauntered into concerts but did not have the band’s Wikipedia page saved in their bookmarks. I was certain he had not spent his youth downloading pirated copies of Linkin Park albums, or scouring local markets for a poorly printed t-shirt bearing the band’s motif. He was bound to be a dilettante, I reasoned, a fickle butterfly that revelled in shallow dalliances but never committed to a deep relationship.
Having gleaned this knowledge, I was anxious to warn the woman about his true nature, but this Romeo never left her side. At the boarding gate, in the bus ferrying us to the aircraft, at the baggage carousel after we landed in Dubai — he stuck to her like a persistent bout of herpes. I failed to notice if they left the airport together, but they must have exchanged phone numbers. There was nothing I could have done, I later told myself, I never saw her alone. But I knew this to be a lie. Even if she were freed of his presence, and I had the opportunity to caution her, I wouldn’t have done it.
You see, the problem is that my love for snooping on strangers is matched by my inability to talk to them.
A few weeks ago, I lent a book to a friend who was heading out of town on a business trip. He wanted something he could read on a flight and I was happy to supply the material. When he returned the book — The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitava Ghosh, if you must know — I asked him what he thought of it.
‘Oh, I didn’t end up reading it,’ he said.
‘Not even a little bit?’
‘No. I spent the entire journey talking to the guy next to me. We had a great time!’
This scenario is so far beyond my ken that I did not know how to react. Two hours spent talking to an unknown co-passenger? Impossible! It’s the stuff of nightmares. Forget initiating chit-chat, I baulk at even making eye contact with those in my vicinity. It is a crippling affliction, and I often wish I wasn’t so ferociously reticent. If I possessed my friend’s bonhomie, not only could I have saved the Dubai-bound lady from a (potential) heartbreak, I could also ask people at airports why they hate sitting.
You must have noticed it yourself. The second a boarding announcement is made, folks leap out of their seats as if they’ve won an award and must rush to collect it before the authorities change their mind. Zone 1 only, a harried official announces, only passengers in rows one to ten prepare to board please. And yet, dozens approach the gate, form a queue, and remain standing for minutes, believing, perhaps, that should they not position themselves within six inches of the person infront of them, they will be denied entry into the aircraft.
If there’s a bus enroute to the plane, everyone chooses to stand near the exits. To these travellers, the seats in the back of the bus are about as inviting as electric chairs. Sitting? Instead of rocking back and forth while trying to grab a handhold? Oh no, no, we can’t possibly do that. Sitting is evil. Benches are the Devil’s handiwork. Suitcases tread on toes, noses are pressed into armpits, but nobody yields. The heatmap inside the bus resembles the silhouette of a middle-aged man: narrow at the ends and bulging in the middle. The gold medallists in this field are, of course, the ones who stand up as soon as the flight lands. (I despise this habit enough to have written about it before. I’ll save you from a rerun of that rant, you can read it here.)
As someone who never stands when he can sit — and never sits when he can recline — I have always been perplexed by this compulsion to be upright. I suppose the reason will remain a mystery to me, because I will never muster the will to talk to those who are plagued by it.
My reluctance to engage with strangers does not mean I’m a dour traveller. If a fellow passenger makes the first move and draws me into a conversation, I curb my natural instinct to whimper while covering my face, and do my best approximation of a well-adjusted adult. It is often awkward but I keep the rally going with appropriate responses to the queries lobbed in my direction. Even so, there are times when choosing the right reaction can be a challenge. Take, for instance, the time we were flying to Almaty.
The plane was taxiing towards the docking gate, and we were unbuckling our seat belts, when the woman seated next to me asked how long we’d be staying in the city. A week, I replied.
‘Have you guys been here before?’
‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘This is our first time in Kazakhstan.’
She switched her gaze from me to Simran. ‘Well, you should not have any trouble as a married couple. But when you’re alone in your hotel room,’ she added, her eyes snapping back in my direction, ‘be very careful.’
The vagueness of this warning made it all the more ominous. ‘What do you mean?’ I whispered. ‘Are there robberies inside hotels? Muggings?’
‘Oh no. Much worse. I heard about it from my fiancé. I will be joining him now, but he got here a few days earlier. He came with some of his friends — a boys’ trip, you know. Anyway, so last night, they were chilling in the hotel room when the doorbell rang. It was quite late so they were a little surprised. They opened the door and there was a Russian woman standing there. Dressed very provocatively, lot of make up, high heels. She walked into the room and casually asked if they wanted to have some fun! Can you imagine?’
‘Err… really?’
‘Yes! My fiancé later told me that he was very alarmed. Who sent you here, he asked her. And she said she’d received information about some tourists staying in the hotel, so she’d wanted to come by and check if they were up for a good time. Obviously, my fiancé told her to leave. She was starting to create a scene so they had to pay her something. But thankfully, she went quietly after that. It was a very upsetting experience for them.’
I imagined this scene: A group of Indian men minding their business in a hotel room, until an escort bizarrely appears at their doorstep in the middle of the night, whom they then usher out at their celibate best. After paying her, let’s not forget. I am not a suspicious man by nature, but there are limits to my credulity. Simran and I looked at each other. Should we tell her, we silently wondered.
Fortunately, the woman did not wait for us to respond to her riveting tale of temptation and marital fidelity.
‘Make sure you lock your door,’ she counselled, ‘and don’t let someone into your room at night.’
‘Umm.. yes, of course. Thank you!’ I replied, thinking how talking to strangers can sometimes be quite rewarding after all.
After the tragic death of their lead singer, Chester Bennington, in 2017, Linkin Park went on a years-long hiatus. In late 2024, the band announced a new lineup — with the rock musician Emily Armstrong as their vocalist — and released their first album of the post-Chester era. They performed in India for the first time in January 2026.
My top picks, for the record, are Somewhere I Belong, Faint, and My December.
Better question on the LP listening list is, which version?
The paradox of loving to eavesdrop but being unable to talk to strangers - that's painfully relatable. 'A strip of sandpaper would be smoother than me' - I'm stealing this. Beautiful airport anthropology.