The musician's plight

In Canada when I was flying from Halifax to Quebec, I was carrying my smallest esraj. When I went to sit in my seat, a stewardess asked, "How is it you have brought that in here? Did you pay for it?"

I said, "No, they didn't ask me to pay."

She said, "It is illegal. You have to pay and you can't bring it here."

I said, "They allowed me to come in here and they saw that I was carrying this."

I was sitting on the extreme right. A musician happened to be on the extreme left. He took my side. He got furious, and started abusing the stewardess: "You make your rules every second. All over the world we go and here you won't allow us to carry an instrument."

I said, "When I went to Halifax, Air Canada allowed me to bring this with me."

Then the stewardess got frightened or perhaps she was amused. She said, "Please give me the instrument. I will keep it very safe and give it back when we land." She kept her promise. As soon as the plane touched the ground, she brought the instrument back.