Airports, not the Kumbh Mela, could be a new setting for separation dramas

The Home Aloneseries of films may never have taken off had audiences been unwilling to believe that harried and forgetful parents could indeed leave of their brood behind when departing for a vacation. So, all the Bollywood scriptwriters should note that among the Rs 23-crore worth of things abandoned or forgotten at Indian airports last year, a CISF constable was literally left holding the baby when a couple flew in to Delhi from Mumbai, had some coffee and then proceeded to Ghaziabad sans their offspring. Of course, the parents are in exalted company as British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife famously left their child behind in a pub in 2012 — as they thought she was in another car. So, this Indian couple can perhaps also blame it all on the pop psychologists’ explanation for such lapses: the modern “busy lifestyle syndrome”.

As the Indian parents did come back a few hours later to reclaim their heir-loom — only 30% of passengers actually return to retrieve their property — the baby did not have to suffer the fate of other goods left behind at airports worldwide —auction after a year or so. But this lost-and-found story is surely film franchise material, especially since it presents a new take on the countless subcontinental movies based on the coming together of long-lost siblings.