The curious case of Nalanda's pillow

We were dying to get some sound sleep from Delhi. Me and Nalanda slept tight in our flight from Delhi to Shanghai and from Shanghai to Beijing caring for nothing except food. Nalanda all the time was hugging her blow-up pillow right from Delhi. We landed in Beijing and had almost seven hours to spend at the airport. We took the trlley and put 41 kgs of our bags on the trolley along with the 300 grams pillow.
In Delhi, the Air China checked-in our entire baggage, gave us a tag and promised that we could collect our baggage directly in Ulanbaatar, Mongolia. At Beijing airport, we were a bit skeptical to believe that the baggage would diretly go to UB. So we decided to wait and check if the baggae arrives in Beijing. And it did!!!! Thank god we did not trust the airline. Else we would have been in the same boat as Peter who lost his baggage while coming form Spain.

Anyways, the story is about the pillow. After collecting the bags we were romaing around the airport inquiring at the information centre how we could best utilize the seven hours that we had in hand. Suddenly, Nalanda realized that her beloved pillow was no found on the trolley. We were now frantically searching for the pillow on the entire airport. We wen up and down the three floors a numbre of times with the baggage looking for the pillow. We had our eyes on the ground looking each and every navy blue color, rectangular, blows-up thing. We searched and searched, enquired at the lost-and-found section, took pains of explaining to them in English what had happened and what we needed from them. Our creative juices started flowing and we thought that we could ask the sweepers on the airport if they found any pillow-like thing. We did try to communicate with them- first in English and then with sign language- but in vain! A girl at the enquiry who understoon English helped us and she wrote everything on a piece of paper in Chinsese script. She asked us to show the paper to the sweepers. We thought it was a fantastic idea. We again went up and down the three floors behind all the sweepers of the airport showing them the piece of paper. They would read it and direct us to the lost-and-found centre again. :( where we had already tried going to.

Well.. we could not find the pillow but yes we successfully spent almost three hours of the seven hours that we had in hand. Nalanda now misses her pillow and has decided not to buy another one in the loving memory of her lost one.

I wish I had a picture of her pillow to put up. We will only cherish the pillow in our memories!