INDIA AT LAST

     “It’s 10:20 PM India time.  We’ll be landing in twenty minutes,” the pilot announced. I looked across the aisle through the tiny window that afforded a glimpse of New Delhi’s city lights twinkling in mass above the darkened landscape.     

     My mind flashed over the last twenty-seven hours:  I’d passed much of the Paris leg of the trip deep in conversation with the interesting young Englishman seated next to me. He was the CFO for a French company that designed and manufactured designer handbags, and never at a loss for words.  The flight concluded in Paris at 5:25 the next morning for a four hour and forty minute layover that stretched well into the 5^th hour. 

There, I killed time strolling along the perfume-scented corridors looking in the duty free shops that boasted their chic fashions du jour, tuned in the musical sound of spoken French from the passersby and watched the gradual ascent of a flaming sun pierce the dense gray clouds and leaving a brilliant orange streak in the sky above the runway.  

        

     The New Delhi leg of the trip I found that my assigned seat had been given to someone else. No point in arguing as I had already been bumped from my original seat twice before, so I took that to mean that there was a reason not to be questioned.

      I took my place next to a young man and attempted to jam my computer bag under the seat in front of me but it was partly taken up with a fixed metal box so I gave up the struggle.  Soon, I caught a peculiar scent coming from the man who was to be my neighbor for the next 8 and 1/2 hours. The scent is best described as an  “eau du kerosene” which was mixed with a splash of BO!” It was dreadful, but did not seem compatible with the man’s perfectly groomed appearance.   I grimaced, saying under my breath: If only he’d keep his arm tucked to his side instead of elevating it on the arm rest.  Oh well, I’ll just turn my head to one side.  But the pain of a stiff neck far outweighed the odor and I finally gave in, pressing a finger to my left nostril in the hope he’d catch my “drift.” Unfortunately he did not.   In the meantime I fought my computer bag that refused to stay under the seat, and the seat tray that insisted upon flopping down, both crowding me even more; all of this was commingled with an insistent prayer that the battery on my laptop would not lose its charge and the music blasting through the headphones would continue to drown out the sound of the restless children who would not be quieted no matter what was shoved in their cherub’s  mouths; this same group would later join in chorus to deliver a grand finale of “My Scream’s Louder Than Your Scream, So Let’s Have a Tantrum, TOO!”   

     Twenty-five-hundred miles, three continents, and a 9 ½ hour gain in time later, I was gratefully standing before the stern Indian custom’s officer watching him thumb the pages of my passport. When he came to the page bearing my visa (always an awkward moment) he stared momentarily at the photo, then at me. What followed was that familiar thud and clicking sound as the metal stamp permanently imprinted my passport, making me an official guest of India. 

       Once outside the security of customs I scanned the long line of people waiting for passengers. But only one mattered and that was,  Navneet, my hostess, who was nowhere in sight. What if she’s not there? From the crowd I heard a voice cry out, “Nanine, over here.  She was smiling that same sincere, warm smile that drew me to her during our first encounter some thirteen months earlier.  She must have read my expression of relief because some of the first words from her lips were: “You were afraid I might not be here to meet you.”  I admit, the possibility of Murphy’s Law had crossed my mind and although I was prepared to make the five hour journey to her home in the north of India by myself, I did not relish the thought of figuring out the unknown.  She was, indeed, a welcome sight… and I told her so.

     We stepped outside of the brand new, ultra modern terminal into the humid night air where I was immediately struck by the rapid pulse and disquieting noise. Cars were stacked up in rows of three waiting to collect passengers.  Honking horns echoed down the long corridors.  The smell of diesel fuel drifted in the air from the idling cars and taxis.  One such car had been intended for us but was nowhere to be found.  Navneet, paced up and down holding a cell phone to her ear, all the while assuring me that the driver was still in the airport but just making another loop around the terminal at the request of the terminal police.  The call soon produced our driver who emerged from his vehicle like a rescuing knight, giving me a gentle bow of his turban-wrapped head while relieving me of the burden of my suitcase. I had to restrain myself from staring at this mysterious looking man seated behind the wheel whose face was hidden behind a mass of facial hair that graduated into a neatly groomed, black beard; that and the blue turban defined him as a follower of the Sikh (sounds like sick) religion. When, Navneet, introduced us he turned his head in my direction and I could easily read the gentleness in his penetrating black eyes while sensing his curiosity over the American woman seated beside him. 

       What happened from that point on was nothing shy of breathtaking.  I will save the description of what could best be described as a “nightmarish drive in the making” for a later writing. What I will say, is, had I not been prepared for what was about to come, I would certainly have died from fright.  Sleep deprivation was no match for the adrenaline that was flooding my veins and while, Navneet, slept her way through much of the five hour trip I kept my eyes peeled to the road shocked at one point at a crowd gathered around a mangled truck in a ditch and a blanket-covered body. 

      We arrived in Patiala in the Punjab region of India at 4 AM.  The journey took thirty-four hours from start to finish.  And an incredible journey it was.  But that was just the beginning, for much was yet in store for this weary, but happy traveler.