At around 6 in the evening on a Sunday early this month, city-based paediatrician, Dr Bhatta, received a short text message on his mobile from a relative. The sms, which had been sent from Kharagpur, read, “Arriving with wife and daughter via Falaknama Express… to reach Howrah Station at 8:30 in the evening.”

Bhatta waited for them at his residence in Ballygunge and when even past midnight they still hadn’t arrived — though the train, he found out, was on time — he decided to alert the police.

It was only on the following Tuesday — after a frantic search by the police and a mild heart attack suffered by the missing man’s father, who lived in Balasore, and who was informed of the bad news by Bhatta – that the family resurfaced. In Balasore. Angry that Bhatta wasn’t there to receive them at the station, the family had checked into a hotel in Calcutta, stayed there for a day without informing anyone and went back to the man’s parents’ home in Balasore.

“This relative is a first cousin of mine,” explains Bhatta, “and we were very close when we were growing up, so I guess he felt hurt that I hadn’t gone to pick him up.” Now an orthopaedic surgeon, he lives in Saudi Arabia and according to Bhatta, has been on holiday in India since early March. “After visiting his parents in Orissa, he decided to pay me a surprise visit. He boarded the train from Balasore, dashing off an sms from Kharagpur, to give me enough time to get to the station, I guess,” says Bhatta. Then, with some irritation, he adds, “But I find it strange that even in this day and age, when travelling is so rampant, that people still expect to be picked up and dropped off from stations and airports”.

And evidently, Bhatta is not the only one to think so. A visit to the city’s airports and major railway stations indicate that receiving or seeing people off, whether friends or family members, is on the decline.

“Gone are the days when entire gangs of people — sometimes in busloads — would turn up at the airport to see-off just one individual,” says Pinak Chakraborty, manager, Maruti Udyog Limited, Calcutta, waiting — alone — to catch a flight to Guwahati at the domestic terminal in Dum Dum airport. “Earlier, fewer people went abroad and once they went they couldn’t come back as frequently as they do now. Also, communicating with loved ones was a major hassle, not only because it was expensive, but also fairly inaccessible. Now, the world has become a much smaller place, with advances in technology and communication. These days there are hundreds of avenues for communication. STD and ISD booths have mushroomed, even in remote villages. You have access to mobile phones. You can send an sms or an e-mail for as little as the cost of a local call. You even have the option of video-phoning, where you can actually see the family member while you talk to him or her. I for one, travel regularly on business and obviously don’t expect my wife and daughter to see me off or receive me at the airport each time.”

In fact, according to some, it’s really passé to do so. “Now it’s only the gawars from villages that turn up in large numbers at the airport to see off their relatives,” laughs G.S. Sandhu, C.I.S.F sub-inspector, who has been working at Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in Dum Dum for the last three years. “Now people are more educated and polished. They are confident and can travel alone. They don’t want to display their emotions in a public place. In fact, I have seen some young ones get embarrassed if their relatives come and create a huge fuss about their travelling abroad.”

That is not to say however, that everyone wants to say goodbye to this age-old and otherwise, in the words of Air Sahara ground staff Aneepa Kar, “beautiful” tradition. “Almost everyday I witness touching scenes of family members crying, hugging and kissing as they say goodbye or hello,” she says. “I think these are the moments when you can actually sense the kind of love family members share with each other.”

And there are still long lines of people who wait teary-eyed until the aircraft carrying a loved one takes off. Groups of people still crowd entrances at airports, straining to catch the first glimpse of a loved one as he or she walks out of the passenger gate. Basudev Roy Paladhi and his sister Swapna have come all the way from Patuli, the southernmost tip of the city’s fringes to Dum Dum Airport, the northern most, to receive their mother, who is coming back from a visit to Thailand. As he waits for the Indian Airlines flight to land, Basudev says, “My mother travels quite a bit. And it’s not that she can’t go home on her own. But I’ll always come to pick her up — even though she often tells us not to. It’s a sentimental thing.”

And there are those, like, Dr Bhatta’s cousin, who are hurt if you don’t show up. At Calcutta’s Sealdah Station, Nupur and Dipak Mazumdar, residents of Lake Town, are waiting for their 23-year-old daughter who is returning from a visit to Siliguri. “If I don’t come to receive her,” smiles her mother, “she won’t talk to me for a week.”

But clearly the fuss that used to be made earlier when family members travelled abroad or returned home has today become something of a laughing matter. When Abhishek Sengupta, a student of IMI, Delhi, arrived at Calcutta for his sister’s wedding, his elder brother, Anirban, a sound-engineer, who himself came from Mumbai the previous day, landed up at the airport with a garland of marigolds. It just goes to show how people these days are poking fun at the practice of receiving returning relatives with pomp and show.