Oh yeah… India!

16 March 2010

After 2 months of traveling overland from Southern Vietnam north into Northern Laos, then south into Cambodia and west to Bangkok I find myself at the Bangkok International Airport. I’m exhausted. I’ve slept poorly for the past several nights in my tiny room on Khao San road, blasted with horrible club music until 3am. And last night I went out salsa dancing again, not getting to bed until 1:00am, only to wake up this morning at 4:30am for my ride to the airport. Zombie-like I find my airline to check in at. This is not so simple because the Bangkok airport is huge. There are at least 40 different airlines here, probably more. Walking down the rows of kiosks I finally find Jet Airways on row P. I’m too early to check into my flight so I fall asleep across two seats, cradling my pack. I’m nervous about having to check my pack in, it contains everything, and I haven’t been properly parted from it for the whole trip. What if they lose it?

At 7am I approach the counter to check in. With my bag on the scale I hand the woman my passport and bend over to zip in the straps of my pack. From the empty line behind me an Indian man approaches and places his passport on the counter I am at. I stare at him bewildered. The woman says, “Sir, you need to wait your turn.” She pushes his passport back to him. He inclines his head to the right and says “ok.” But he doesn’t move, he just stands right next to me. “Sir, you need to wait behind the red line.” After a couple of gestures from the woman he backs away.

While she is checking me in he approaches again and the exact same exchange occurs again. And once more when she is telling me my gate number and handing me my passport. I was too tired to be really annoyed, but I was awake enough to register that while his behavior was very out of place at such an orderly beautiful airport in Thailand, he was just following normal conduct in India. You move to the ticket counter when you can. There are no lines; just people progressively pushing forward until they can get their request in, bus station, train station, movie cinema, and apparently airports are all the same.

When I first got home from India 2 years ago everyone wanted to know, “Did you love it?” I had a wonderful experience, but India was India, I wasn’t crazy about it. Would I go back? Probably, but not anytime soon, I had the rest of the world to see. I told people about the problems in India, the challenges, annoyances, as well as the good things. But over the past 2 years my stories, and as a result my memories, changed. By the time I left Seattle in January I told everyone I was excited to return to India. Many travelers I have met exchange stories about India. Many hated it and many loved it, but it is usually one or the other. For those that hadn’t been yet I told them they should go, but they should give India its own trip. I advertised Uttaranchal and promoted Rajasthan. I think I played a big role in convincing Dina to change her plans and fly to India.

Now, waiting for a flight to Kolkata, I’m having my first Indian experiences. And suddenly the memories, the ones I stopped sharing and remembering, are flooding back. With only a couple hours of sleep in me I’m not sure I’m ready to be in Kolkata in 3 hours. And it’s not just the fact that I’ll be landing in India, it’s just that I’ll be landing somewhere. I’ve been traveling across 4 countries gradually. I’ve seen the landscape change past my bus window, along with the culture. The food has slowly morphed from lemongrass chicken and pho, to spicy ramen soup and laap, to grilled fish and sticky rice, to noodles and fish, to noodles and curries. Now I’ll have the pleasure of “culture shock” as I touch down in India. From efficient, modern Bangkok to crowded, crazy Calcutta.

I slept most of the 2 hour flight. As we landed I looked out at the little airport and the busy streets, “oh boy” I said under my breath. The woman sitting next to me must have either heard me or noticed the distressed look on my face. “Is this your first time to India?” she asked smiling. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh. Her question is one that everyone in India will ask you, I even wrote a blog entry about it on my last trip. I was surprised by just how proud I was to tell her, “No it’s not, I was here 2 years ago!”

“In Kolkata?” she asked.
“No, not in Kolkata.”
“Ahh, so this is your first time in Kolkata,” she said wisely.

As we spoke, waiting to get off the plane, I learned that she has lived in LA for many years now, but she lives part of the year in Bangkok. Her husband and her both grew up in Kolkata. Now her husband is a business professor who lectures at both UCLA and a university in Bangkok. She asks me where I am staying and I tell her I don’t have a place yet, I’m just headed to Sudder St where the budget hotels are. She offers to give me a ride there since her home is nearby. I gladly accept.

Jyoti’s offer for a ride saves me the stress of getting a taxi to the metro, figuring out the metro, and then finding Sudder St, but it also gives me a chance to continue talking to her. She’s wonderfully outgoing and motherly. “Are you taking malaria pills?” she asks sharply.
“No, I know I should be…” I say guiltily.

She recommends a pill that she claims she takes every time she comes back to India, even her son-in-law took it his first time in India. I have to get them straight away, I should have started them a week ago. The way she talks about her son-in-law catches my attention. She says it endearingly but there is also something different about her son-in-law. I ask.

Her son-in-law is American and white. I’ve already told her that I will be traveling for a month with my boyfriend but I was hesitant to tell her Atish is Indian. She’s been so sweet to me and I don’t want to jinx it. Having just arrived to India I don’t know yet how people will react to knowing I am dating an “Indian-boy.” But hearing that her daughter is in an interracial marriage encourages me to share my full story with her.

“He’s never been to India?” she asks, wide-eyed, “It’s going to be quite an experience for him. You better take good care of him, you’ve been here before.”

She tells me about her daughter and the wedding and how the groom’s entire family was so thrilled to be a part of an Indian wedding. Everyone wore sari’s and after the wedding the groom’s immediate family all came with them to India. We discuss how westerner’s love to embrace Indian culture. I tell her about my mother and my parent’s travels in India, and how I grew up with an odd exposure to Indian culture and Hinduism. She asks me what it is like for Atish dating me with his family? A work in progress, I reply. She nods wisely, understanding.

“In some ways I am a very traditional person,” she says “but for my daughter my priority is that she is most happy in life, and you must look at her now, she is so happy! When we announced the wedding people started asking me if I was angry because he isn’t Indian. But it was everyone asking me that began to make me angry.” But, she adds, it wasn’t her family in India that were concerned, it was only the NRIs (non-resident Indians). “I think it is all about worrying what people will think of you,” she continues, “there is so much pressure to uphold an image for your family.”

As we enter Kolkata conversation shifts to her telling me about the city. Her entire family still lives here. She and her husband are the “black-sheep” in the family for having left. Every time she visits she must try to see everyone, she says. But this trip is only a visa-run from Bangkok, tomorrow she will already be on a flight back. “I’ve already been here to visit 3 times since January; you’d think it would be enough! But they always say I need to come more. I think they just want the presents from America,” she laughs.

When her driver drops me at the base of Sudder St I thank her for making my “welcome back to India” fantastic. It was such a pleasure meeting her. I really regret I didn’t ask for her email, but perhaps our paths will cross again.