There I was, traveling to the pinnacle of civilization from a nation confounded by its own existentialism. Five legs over 36 hours – ordeals were to be expected. My journey was marred from the beginning – unloading and offloading my baggage became an enforced part of the ordeal. Beyond the winding maze of workers, I came upon the puzzled look of a Nepali immigration officer. Hennaed hair and tanned scalp gave way to a pandit’s peer over thick set glasses and ennobled nose.
“Vacation?”
A consultation with the supervisor followed.
“Let him go, he’s got the stamp”
“Why, is this so rare?” I asked. The conversation dried up.
I browsed the bookshop’s paltry selection of outrageously priced books. Not a shop for readers or one interested in selling books. Live cricket on TV – Nepal restricted the UAE to a chase under 7 runs an over. It looked promising. The cheers were muted. Most Nepalis wanted to get going and approached the match with hollowed hope.
I collected chocolates and candies to reach the magical 500 mark to use plastic money, just so I could have a bottle of water. Yet another ingenious way to rip people off.
I waited in the security line behind a few disinterested journalists swapping stories. They were tailing Jimmy Carter as he chased the Nepali elections. The police officers at the check needed behavioral orientation. Their grammar was limited to the lower echelons of the Nepali language. They pointed and prodded the journalists into submission. We could empathize with the goats in a goat market .
The Jet Airways flight managed to get us on board on time but took off an hour late. Traveling across the world was once an exotic and exciting idea, but the romanticism has long faded. Long-haul flights are a plain bitch. Marxist service ideals, patriotic zeal, and disingenuous cosmopolitanism. Thankfully Jet has a few inches more knee space than other airlines. Not so thankfully, Indra was on a drunken rampage. The second leg was going to get rained out.
Four hours after taking off, we were diverted to Jaipur Airport in all its dim-lit and scattered rainburst glory. We waited in the plane. A good three hours later, our pilot negotiated through a line of jets longer than the literature festival’s human beeline to Oprah. We landed in Delhi past midnight. What followed was an airport ordeal of epic proportions. To catch my 2:30 am flight, I had an hour to collect my baggage and get through immigration again. Jet Airways took up half an hour trying to pass me my boarding pass. The Indian Immigration officer I first met found it a good idea to send the two late Nepalis on the Jet Flight through the “Special Assistance” counter. Mr. Pawan Kumar at the counter processed it with easy comfort, but we were forced to cut in front of a group of elderly women in wheelchairs. Perhaps the chagrined looks we had gave them the patience to bear the additional wait. No answers were forthcoming from Mr. Kumar on why we needed such “Special Assistance”.
The journey took a smoother turn then – it was like hopping micros. In Brussels, I met 30-odd Bhutanese refugees, mostly women, young children and older men, being escorted to their new homes in the United States by the International Organization for Migration. They were cheerful in a lost kind of way and were quite resigned to the corralling. Most of them already had family in the States. As I watched them go through immigration at Newark, I listened in on a conversation between two gaming professionals talking about the lack of character and plot strength in the latest version of Metal Gear Solid.
