On The Road Again

It must be time. The flight attendants are wearing saris, I’m hearing a lot of Hindi and “I Just Called to Say I Love You” is playing elevator-style on this Air India 747.

I stash my Washburn-filled gig bag, sit down and watch as a scene unfolds before me; An older Indian couple fusses with their bags and the overhead compartments. The controversy is that they can’t fit their bags directly in the overhead with their seat number on it, which they believe is solely allotted for them. It happens to be small and full of bags from passengers in the area, including my own. We have drama. In one of my favorite India customs, the entirety of the section begins to gather round the increasingly exasperated couple to add insight and generally to see what will amount from the developing drama. Voices raise. Children watch in anticipation. The flight attendant arrives. Literally, it couldn’t be a smaller issue, but this is custom and I embrace. I do my best to convince them that they can put it in one of the several empty storage units further back. It eventually works. The crowd disperses to their seats and voices quiet as the cabin calms to the newly-audible elevator jams of Air India.

The storage situation is squared, but the heat is here. Grounded planes so often suck on the AC front. With a filling flight, even a slight up and down breaks a sweat. My fidgety neighbors add heat. Preparation for India I presume. I will arrive at the end of the monsoon and, I hope, some cool air. Of course, few places warm like India and at some point between here and Cambodia I’ll sweat just because I’m breathing. Oof! Let’s get airborne and leave that thought behind.

Today has been a strange day. One that has left me with a feeling I can’t quite pin down. I feel excitement but I’m not excited. I feel anxious but no anxiety. I feel on an adventure but not adventurous. Curiosity, but not curious.

It’s not a malaise or ambivalence. It’s almost like normal. And perhaps it is. I’ve been living on the go for a steady three years and packing today happened so smooth and fast that it took (and still takes) me some convincing to believe that I’ll be gone for a while. It’s the life I’ve been crafting and it’s a life that brings me joy. Still, I’m feeling surprised and a little strange when I stop to think of the trip.

My friend Sean says it should feel different, and that it is so even for him. I’ve gone before. I’ve come back. My Mom said its like going back to your sophomore year of college. Strangely, that seems so accurate. Even though I bought a one-way ticket to the subcontinent this time, I feel a sense that I’ll return sooner rather than later upon AfL’s conclusion in May.

I hit my light switch on the armrest console and a spotlight smacks my neighbor in the face. Hmmm…more problems with the neighbors? I ask him to try his light and another spot drenches my face. An electrical mixup probably around since the plane’s virgin flight. Taking in the retro interior, amenities and the current light situation, the woman turns to me an delivers in a brilliant Indian accent: “I this plane needs to be junked!”

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Any flight to India will hold a few classic events:

Inter-Continental Cuisine: Upon receiving my Newark-Paris dinner, I scoped the plated to find a balanced Euro-Indian plate. “Brilliant,” I thought, “They are easing me back into the scene.” Without hesitation I crushed the chicken curry and quickly turned to the garden salad. After picking at some lettuce and tasting a few bell peppers slice, I uncovered a string bean. “What a treat,” I thought. “Nice work Air India! A little random, but this string bean actually looks perfect right now!” I pop in and chew only to immediately taste the unmistakable smoke of a chili pepper. Yes, a little less string bean and a lot more green chili, raw and unseeded. Blazing, I turn to my neighbors in disbelief and mute, only able to exclaim with my eyes that I indeed have gnoshed a screamer. “Oh, you are very brave Chris!” they observed. “You must be very much liking your Indian spices!” With mouth still afire I begin to pour the creamy keer dessert down my throat. By the time I finally cooled, I had to laugh that my first culinary injury of the trip occurred before I even touched land!

Wake Up! Open Your Eyes!: Throughout the flight Sree, my clumsy flight attendant, demonstrated the barest sense of fluency with her position. I couldn’t complain, but those of you who fly know the difference between a savvy FA and the one who just hangs on to that job. Well, dearest Sree earned a place in my forever travel hall of fame at about 9am plane time (3am home time). Finally fast asleep for about 90 minutes, Sree welcomed me to the morning with a smash. Yes, her breakfast service cart blasted my knee from short range, jolting me from sleep and welcoming me to French airspace. Unsurprisingly, dearest Sree continued her work without any mention of this event (to which I could only conclude that either a) she didn’t notice it happened or b) it happens frequently enough that its not worth her mind. I still laugh thinking what my face must have looked like in that moment of awakening.

Singh is King: An hour away from Mumbai Air India mercifully decided not to air another Bollywood movie (a subject that may need a whole entry at some point. I almost rolled out the prayer mat to thank God on the plane, but I thought that might draw some suspicion.). As one is too many for me, you can imagine my joy at three successive flicks. Spared at last, AI decided to offer us “Potpurri”. “Potpurri” was generally good, if only for the fact that it was the first entertainment I could actually watch without feeling that I had eaten three cotton candies in a row on a hot summer day. “Potpurri” hit its high point when they aired a 7-minute fashion. The novelty of course was that the show entirely consisted of Sikh men as the models. The beards and turbans struck an amazing contrast with the runways of Paris and Milan and prepared me for my later viewing of the uber-hot “Singh is King” on the way to Panchgani from Mumbai.

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Touch down in Mumbai. We rattle down the runway and taxi to the gate. On cue, the plane seems to stop and many begin to unpack the overheads. Then the plane starts moving again. This seems to faze no passenger, as everyone continues there unpacking as we continue to taxi for another minute. I’m definitely back now.

Leaving the plane and airport I connect with my old friends Alex and Nigel. They’ve been waiting for me dutifully at the airport since they landed two hours earlier. It’s now 1:30am. I exchange my dollars into rupees and we walk out into the cloudy monsoon air of late-August Mumbai. It’s cooler and cleaner than I remember. It starts to rain as we pack tightly into the bumblebee-colored ambassador, our bags tied onto the trunk by rope. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for almost 18 months. All those feelings of departure fade away and clarity comes to mind. I am here. This is where I am meant to be.

Engine on. Windshield wipers on. We roll off into the Indian night.