Below is exactly what I had experienced while travelling either from or to US.

Spread your legs and smile!
Shashi Tharoor
Taken from Newsweek, Oct. 11th, 2004.

I’ve been a frequent flier since I was 6, when my parents packed me off to a boarding school far from home. Working at the united nations for the past 20 years has only confirmed my blasé attitude toward air travel. For me, airport terminals have become almost as familiar as my own living room.

At least, they had until recently. Security checks existed long before 9/11, of course. But lately they seem to have entered another dimension. One friend is so fed up that he simply refuses to fly anymore. He can’t stand the routine – taking off his shoes, putting them through the screening device, lacing them up again. Not to mention the frisking, or that bleeping wand pushed into awkward places.

A less fastidious sort, I’ve simply taken to wearing slip-on loafers. Not my style, but less of a hassle. The war on terror demands concessions from us all. But must they be so… embarrassing?

Once upon a time, I’d check all my luggage so that I could casually stroll aboard with a newspaper and thick paperback. A sturdy suitcase secured with a combination lock ensured that I arrived with everything I’d packed. Now security wants you to leave the bag open so they can examine its contents. Could this be linked to the stories of pilferage that have proliferated on the frequent-flier circuit? I now pack so many of my valuables into a carry-on that I struggle onto flights more like an overburdened donkey than the carefree traveler I once was. As for my book, not long ago they took it away to a one of those new-tech compressors to see if they could blow it up!

Of course, your hand luggage is subject to the most thorough check of all, especially if (like me) you might pass for Middle Eastern. I don’t mind strangers (even wearing latex gloves) sifting through my possessions. But must the most intimate items be held up to dubious inspection, accompanied by loud calls to supervisors? Surely my tongue cleaner – an Indian hygienic device that involves a U-shaped loop made of stainless steel – couldn’t be repurposed for use in a hijacking. Woe betide the inevitable day I’m asked to demonstrate it. Just say aah…

If this is all you have to go through, you’re lucky. We all know people who, for one reason or another, always seem to be ‘randomly’ selected for more thorough secondary screening. In my experience, they seem to be picked in inverse relation to the likelihood of their being at terrorist – elderly grandmothers making their way through security on a walker, say, or white haired senators from Massachusetts. Perhaps they’re chosen for their entertainment value, like that American businesswoman quizzed about her vibrator, colleagues looking on and sniggering? Or the mother carrying breast milk in a bottle for her baby, who was ordered to drink it to prove it wasn’t a lethal toxin. A colleague tells me about his handicapped young son who flies with an oxygen tank. How do we know it’s not a deadly poison gas, security wanted to know – failing to note that the kid breathing the stuff hadn’t dropped dead.
Every time you think you’ve got the formula down-slip-on shoes, no nail clippers, nothing in your luggage that you couldn’t bear showing to the world – some new complication arises. It’s not enough that you have to open your laptop, empty your pockets, loosen your belt, shed your jacket, spread your arms, and legs and prepare to be violated. No, you have to smile through the whole ordeal. Because if you don’t, if you dare to complain, they really come down on you.

O for the vanished innocence of yesteryear. I feel sorry for 6-year-olds who fly today.