Airport Signs

From 5 June

On the Ground in Kathmandu - June 2010

In the pre-dawn hours, the check-in area at Kuala Lumpur International Airport is cool, darkened, and nearly empty. The sole exception is a long line of young men that forms along the far eastern wall of windows.

Their luggage trolleys overflowing with plastic-wrapped bags and cardboard boxes reinforced with packing tape and twine, these migrant workers patiently wait for the counter of [formerly Royal] Nepal Airlines to open. Before the shops and facilities of the airport are fully up and running for the day, they will all have passed immigration and boarded flight RA 416 bound for Nepal - bound for home.

Their discrete departure serves as an apt symbol of their place in society here: out of sight and out of mind of most Malaysians.

Some four and a half hours later, in Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport, the traffic jam of luggage trolleys tells a slightly different story. Interspersed with the plastic-wrapped bags and strung together boxes are signs of budding prosperity.

Dozens of Panasonic Flatscreen TVs and Sony Stereo Systems make the rounds of the baggage carrousel. Picked up by prodigal sons clad head to toe in new leather clothes, these modern luxury items will soon be carted back to villages, homes, and families that are still governed by centuries old traditions and customs.

These things, these physical objects, are further signs that significant change is in the air, as thick and palpable as the dust and diesel fumes that hang over the city.

Furthermore, the young men who bear them - having been away and back again, having been acclimated to a growing global [mono]culture - are likely to be agents of that change.

It was in their midst that we entered Nepal.