What's this!!" a loud and aggressive voice shouts. "Carrying a knife in your hand baggage?!!" Suddenly, I am surrounded by gun-toting commandos as passengers with whom I had been chatting pleasantly a moment ago scatter away from me like I'm an incarnation of the hermit of Tora Bora.

The guns nudge me towards a hidden room where several grim-faced gentlemen, all bearing an uncanny resemblance to a certain American president, await me. I'm strip-searched by a female, built like a Hercules battle tank, who proclaims me 'clean', just like in the movies, and orders me to sit.

The questions come thick and fast and my head reels. No, sir, I have never seen Osama. Yes, of course, I've heard about him. Yes, I'm from India; no, I'm not Muslim. No, I'm not Hindu either. Don't get funny with us, ma'am. If you're from India you got to be Hindu or Muslim. Well, actually, I'm Zoroastrian. Oh, yeah, and what's that? Well, we're sort of immigrants. Oh yeah, from where? Actually, from Persia, sir. Persia? Isn't that the old name for Iran? "She's Iranian!!!!" he bawls out, and I think, dear Ahura Mazda, I'm really in for it now....

Yes, all right, that was just a nightmare. But one that could easily have come true had I not finished with whatever travelling I am likely to do, in the comparatively saner atmosphere of the previous century. It was not I but my mother who actually did travel with a knife in her handbag - a genuine Swiss army knife, a compulsory item on tourist shopping lists in the days when Swiss knives did not flood every Indian mall and street corner. Security at Zurich airport detected the knife, told her that such items had to be confined to her checked-in luggage and had the offending article bagged and given to the stewardess to return to us when we disembarked. No one made an International Incident out of it, or accused her of being another Leila Khalid.

On another occasion, a small case I was carrying opened up just as I was deplaning at Heathrow and out tumbled stacks of tablets I had carried to tame my asthma. The flight attendant, who helped me stuff it all back in, grinned and said cheekily, "Carrying your whole year's supply with you, love?" If that happened today, I would have been hauled off in chains on the suspicion of carrying chemicals with which to poison London's water supply.

The post 9/11 air traveller cannot afford to have the casual and cavalier attitude of the pre-9/11 one. When there are crazies out there willing and eager to drive large jets filled with passengers into tall buildings as they hallucinate about a houri-filled after life, it is incumbent upon passengers to cultivate the combined skills of Hercule Poirot, James Bond and Mata Hari in order to frustrate such nefarious designs. It's a jungle up there and all passengers must learn the art of survival.

Here are a few tips gleaned from friends and relatives who courageously continue to battle the dangers in the sky in the pursuit of business and pleasure....

In the check-in queue, look out for guys (this is a guy thing - only the LTTE uses women suicide bombers and they haven't graduated to airplanes yet) with dark complexions and beards who speak a language you do not understand. Okay, so your husband is dark and has a beard and is often unintelligible, but hey, you know he's no terrorist. The only bomb he's likely to throw is telling you he's ditching you for his young assistant (no one's called a secretary any more, you notice). And you knew that already.

Two, look out for guys behaving in a suspicious manner. This can mean anything from slicking down their greasy hair too often (a code of some sort), to fiddling with their wristwatches (easy to hide a dinky little bomb in there).

Three, be very suspicious of baby milk. Not because Maneka Gandhi says milk is poison, but because the London police say there's a devilish cunning detonator of some sort skulking in the milk formula. Keep a sharp eye open for the baby too - it might be a dummy. Even a terrorist might draw the line at blowing up his own kid.

Once on board, remember that the days of relaxing and catching up with some sleep are long over. Be vigilant, observe...ask questions. Why's that group of guys laughing so loudly? What's that chap muttering into his cellphone? Gosh, the stewardess is telling him to put it away but he's not listening. Maybe he's just an undisciplined Indian alpha male who doesn't like taking orders from a female and believes that behaving badly on flights is his birthright. But on the other hand, he may be Osama in disguise...

Notice also if the toilets have been occupied for too long. He's not in there because he's got the runs, but because he's busy putting together a witch's brew of shampoo, gel, aftershave, cologne, toothpaste, to make a deadly bomb to blow us all to bits. Immediately inform the steward and watch as the bewildered fellow is forced to emerge with the agonised expression of one interrupted in the process of pulling off a really big job.

Too much movement in the aisles is also a bad sign. Sure, doctors recommend that one move around occasionally to avoid a thrombosis, but what if these strolls down the aisle, especially when meals are being served, are for more sinister purposes like...well, I don't know what exactly, but something.

And, finally, dear traveller, look out for the most dangerous of signs - a man fiddling with his shoes. He will be white, rather grimy looking like many firang backpackers, but it's not a bit of ganja he's got stashed away in his bootees. It was the real thing - a genuine bit of plastic explosive, and he was prevented from using it by a securitywallah who - yeah, you guessed it - was an expert in detecting suspicious behaviour. Mr John Reid, whose suburban English mum couldn't believe her beta could be mixed up in anything so nasty, is not going to be flying anywhere any time soon.

When you finally touch down at your destination, you may be sleep-deprived, exhausted and in a state of nervous tension, in addition to being jet-lagged, but remember that the fact that you touched down at all, in one piece, owes to the ceaseless vigil of the modern air traveller.

It's a wonder that cruise companies have not switched the focus of their advertising from luxury to safety, in order to lure the scared air traveller. The loonies have not attempted to stash a bomb in the ballroom of the Queen Mary, or rammed the QE2 into the dock at Southampton. Not yet, anyway.