FEBRUARY 9, 2022 – Wendy spirited me through officialdom as if she were Indira Gandhi herself. Despite my questions on the fly, I received no explanation as to what her true role was or why a baffling reception had been reserved for a 26-year-old, American vagabond packing two bags of granola . . . not pouches of heroin.
Wendy turned to give me a friendly send-off.
But I was hardly prepared to be sent off. Though English was an official language, I was surrounded by a polyglot crowd, shouting in every language of India, it seemed, except English—and all at very close quarters. In my attire and whiteness, I was the standout alien—so outnumbered (I don’t remember seeing a single Westerner in the crowd) as to be in danger of being trampled and, to my later frantic embarrassment, a flag-waving mark for thieves and scam artists.
Despite the inscrutability of her role, Wendy was my only reference point to sanity. I dared not let her go until I’d found my bearings.
I asked her where to book a flight to New Delhi. My original plan, after all, had been to tour northern India and eventually Kashmir in the far north. Moreover, in my naïveté I now reasoned that if I could get to some mountains—the Himalayas!—conditions would improve.
“You’ll need to go to the domestic airport,” she said.
She led me through the crowd scene of a great opera filled with strange faces, exotic garb, musical shouting, compulsive pushing and shoving, and . . . an assault on my (Western) olfactory sensibilities. From this chaos we emerged from the front egress of the terminal—and into stagnant, stinking outside air, mad with noise and fumes of rowdy cars, buses, scooters, and beeping auto-rickshaws.
“Wait here,” shouted Wendy, “for the bus that says ‘Domestic Terminal,’ which should be along in about 15 minutes.”
With that instruction, Wendy bade farewell and vanished back into the terminal. I was on my own—as if on the first day of kindergarten . . . 10,000 miles from home.
Upon Wendy’s disappearance, I was surrounded by a steaming mass of young boys shouting aggressively, “Rupees! Rupees!” By their demands, unruly hair, and dirt-ingrained clothes, they appeared as the poorest of the poor—“untouchables.” They confirmed their lot when their bony hands—two and three at a time—tore into my pockets. Preoccupied with a white-knuckle embrace of my backpack/daypack, I was defenseless against “pickpocketry,” but I also knew enough to travel with empty pockets.
I was rescued by the shuttle bus and its driver, who stepped out, shouting furiously and contemptuously at the “poorest of the poor.” The kids chased off like angry dogs whose prey had been yanked from their jaws. I felt an inner conflict that would resurface regularly during my sojourn in India: guilt and revulsion.
Meanwhile, on my way to the domestic terminal, a parachute opened inside my thoughts: forget India; fly directly to safety (Europe).
At the “reservation table” inside the terminal, however, the parachute dropped like a rock.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
