It feels instantly far away. Writing in a noisy Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Mumbai where we are working and killing time until our late night train to Jodhpur in the Indian state of Rajasthan – the Kerala backwaters feel like a distant dream.
When we left for the airport in our sleepy haze at 5:30 am, everything was so calm and peaceful – only the birds and the mosquitos knew we were leaving. We left the same way we arrived – traversing the long, dark path paralleling the small canal next to Keraleeyam. In the dark, you are still aware of the lushness, but the stunning beauty of the place is concealed until dawn.
As I said when we arrived, Kerala is my kind of India. The surroundings are gorgeous and tropical, the people are kind and well-educated, there is no abject poverty, the pace of life is slow, but they aren’t “backwards”. It feels like a modern incarnation of a Kipling novel.
We had one of the most social periods of our travels, enjoyed New Year’s on the beach, encountered some rare Jewish history, ate a different kind of Indian cuisine and relaxed. It may have been “India Lite” – a bubble that ignores the realities and very significant challenges that so much of India faces, but I like a good bubble.
My high-school French teacher Mrs. Myer, with whom several friends and I spent four long years used to say, “I have blinders on in life. I like my blinders!” Most of India will steal the blinders off your face – but not Kerala which hands you pair of handmade, decorative blinders and a cup of cardamom infused chai with which to enjoy them.
As soon as we arrived at the Cochin Airport, our blinders fell off. The crowds, the swarming, the confusion, the sort of disjointed functionality that characterizes India was waiting for us.
Our travel agent told us to report to the International Terminal even though we had a domestic flight. We fought our way through the chaotic crowds of families seeing off loved ones and then standing, staring at them even as were inside at ticket counters. The travel agent said this flight was different from other domestic flights – but he was wrong and we got talked to as if we were idiots and then banished to the domestic terminal. We battled the crowd to get out of one terminal and another crowd to get into another.
Inside, things were somewhat stark, but perfectly fine. Until we went through Security. We knew it would happen. We bought two, approximately four foot chains and padlocks we had bought to secure our luggage on the train and put them in our carry-on because we already flirt regularly with our 20kg per bag weight limit.
Had we tried this in Nepal, they might not have noticed the chains and if they did, Emily could have just said in Nepali, “But Didi (meaning sister – which is how they address all women), it’s meee!” as she did at the Kathmandu Airport when she didn’t want to dig out her flight itinerary for the airport entrance check. A white girl speaking Nepali to a Didi or Dai (brother) can get away with just about anything.
Here, Didi don’t give a shit. Neither does Dai, for that matter.
When the Security officers saw the chains in the bag, gathered around the Rapiscan monitor chuckling at the stupidity of whoever was trying to get this thing onto an airplane. Emily and I had already planned that I would walk through security with her purse and she would be in charge of the contraband-laden backpack. A caucasian woman dealing with a male Indian officer stood a chance, whereas I would be down and out before I knew it.
Naturally, he pulled the bag aside and asked whose it was. Emily raised her hand and stepped forward saying sweetly that it was hers. They pulled the chains and locks out and laid them on the table. They then held one up and found it drop four feet and again chuckled.
“You can’t take this on the airplane, Madame. This should go in your checked baggage.”
“But I already checked it in. Will I be able to get it it now? Will they be able to find it? How can I get this into my baggage? I need it for the train – we brought it to lock our luggage. We need to lock our luggage on the train….”
This stemmed a series of discussions between the officers, who eventually got their supervisor. The supervisor was nice and realized that the whole process of getting these chains onto the flight via checked baggage would be a pain for them all – and would inconvenience this poor, nice girl. In the end, he made a call that wasn’t necessarily fair – but was favorable to us.
“I’m profiling you,” he said. “You seem alright and you’re foreign. This is against the rules. Put it in your backpack and promise not to open the backpack during the flight.”
And so it was.
Emily didn’t get the joy of having Didi let her through, but she managed to carry about 8 pounds of heavy metal chains onto a 737 successfully.
After a two-hour flight on the most chillingly air-conditioned cabin to ever hit the sky, we flew into Mumbai over a sea of slums at the end of the runway. What must it be like to have the shack closest to the runway? We both wondered what that world must be like.
WIth about 10.5 hours to kill, we decided to drop our bags at the train station luggage check and head into town where we could get some food and WiFi without paying exorbitant airport hotel day rates.
The Bandar Terminus we’ll be departing from – nothing like the gorgeous World Heritage Site of Victoria Station. Amid a mixture of slums, shops and packed streets, the train station is the Indian urban train station of my imagination – run down, dirty, chaotic and a haven for people trying to shake down every tourist they see.
So, that’s where we’ll be at 11:25 tonight as we board our 18 hour train ride to Jodhpur.
Rajasthan with its painted royal cities, lakes, deserts, camels and stained glass windows sounds promising and a huge change from Kerala. We’ve been told the chai there is made with camel milk unless you request otherwise and every single person we’ve talked to says wonderful things.
I can’t wait to sit down to a warm cup of camel chai overlooking the lake – just as soon as I overcome the inevitable trauma of finding out what the lavatory on an Indian train is like at about hour 16 of the journey.
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