Thought Police had taken the day off from a busy day at Amsterdam airport. He had finally, after great reluctance, cleared 12 passengers from India on the Mumbai-bound Northwest jetliner. Thought had gone through the drill before ordering the fighter jets.Like Osama’s rule book, the Thought Police had its own set of rules. The passengers of course were acting suspiciously. Many of them had not even fastened their seat belts, a few were digging their noses, one had even sneezed. But more than that what aroused suspicion was that although they were Indians they were not speaking a language that sounded Indian. He had already alerted all the sky marshals on board. They were watching the suspicious passengers running up and down laughing and talking as if they did not know that there was a terror scare in the world. That aroused his suspicion more. When there is terror in the air how could these people laugh and appear as normal passengers before 9/11?Code red had become orange and now crimson.‘‘What language are they speaking?’’ Thought had asked the pilots. ‘‘No idea sir.it all sounds Greek to me,’’ was the reply.Thought did his own checking. India had 24 languages. ‘‘How can any country have so many languages?’’‘‘Ask them if they can speak Hindu,’’ came an urgent message from Thought. Prompt was the reply, ‘‘Yes they understand Urdu.’’Do they know Urdu, was the next question.Yes, was the reply. That was enough.Thought was immediately alerted about a terrorist attack. Urdu was an Osama dialect. But they were not carrying liquids. How much of liquids in their stomach, was the question asked.None was the reply, they had just urinated.Could there be solid bombs as opposed to liquid bombs?Questions, questions, questions. No answers.There were no explosives but the 12 of them could confuse the pilot, disarm the sky marshal by speaking a language that could confuse them and compel them to crash the jetliner anywhere. That was the clincher. The passengers were ordered to be detained.Thought was scheduled to meet an old friend of his from Mumbai, a Mumbai-cur.Mumbai-cur of course wondered whether he really did the right thing by releasing the passengers. ‘‘You never know about them.In the next flight again they would start digging their noses and speaking Urdu and wearing salwar-kameez.’’‘‘Precisely my point. They could still be potential hijackers. In fact at airports we have been told that assume everyone who has a beard could be a hijacker, anyone who does anything out of the ordinary. We catch as many as 50 people every day at every airport on suspicion.’’‘‘You release them later.’’‘‘Of course we do, but it is a drill for us and also for the passengers. Next time they will behave better.’’Mumbai-cur: ‘‘I wish we had the same laws here. Left to us we don’t want anyone to watch Rakhee Sawant, bar girls and words like sex should be used positively and not in any bad sense.’’Like how?‘‘For instance, why can’t we tell children in sex education books that reproduction is a result of divine intervention. That God comes one day and delivers a baby to a married one in the ninth month.’’‘‘How brilliant!’’ said Thought. ‘‘This gives me an idea. All international passengers should be given the Bible and select passages from it. That way we would know who is with us and who is not!’’
