Saying goodbye to India was both slow and tedious. My cold prevented me from pursuing any additional adventure in Delhi on the last day. I just stayed in bed late into the morning and then lay around the pool reading in the afternoon. After the four of us who were going home checked out of the hotel about 7:30, there was a tedious wait for new SITA personnel to come to take us to the airport but the mini-bus arrived on time and we piled in, none of us - Cesar, David, Dennis and I - felt much like talking. About fifteen minutes after we left the hotel, our guide explained that he was leaving us and someone new would meet us at the airport. The driver stopped at a light in heavy traffic and the guide simply got out and disappeared. I had visions of the driver taking us down some dark and lonely road (if such a thing exists in India) and abandoning us there, which shows just how paranoid I am when I have a bad cold goes to my head! But another man met us at the airport and helped us through the process, which wasn't easy.
Indians seem far more concerned with security at their airports than we are here. This is both a good and bad thing. Good because it instills a sense of "...well, they're really taking care of things," and bad because it takes so long to get to the plane. As usual, we had to stand in line to enter the terminal and show our passports at the door to a uniformed officer who took an inordinate amount of time looking at my picture and comparing it to my face. Although the photograph is far from flattering, there's no doubt it looks like the real me. But no humor, please; this is serious. Then, in the Bujsiness-First line, which usually moves quickly, another uniformed Continental man stopped me to check all my papers again, even before I'd reached the desk. Then came the usual check at the kiosk where the clerk told me someone would come to take me to a special security screening. When he arrived, and I asked what this was all about, he explained that I'd been especially selected for additional screening. He didn't say why. Maybe it was because my bag is now torn - could that be cause for security concern? - or because my passport is so full, or I was hiding contraband in the Kleenex I was using to blow my nose. He accompanied me to immigration where I filled out yet another form, to get out of the country, just like a form I'd filled to get in. The immigration officer checked them both carefully, kept the immigration form and stamped my boarding pass with a loud and authoritative thump and waved me on to my special security man who was waiting on the other side. Then it got a little scary. He led me around a wall and into a dimly lit office where there were several people in civilian clothes, babbling away at each other. A man at a desk motioned for me to sit down in front of him. Then he went on babbling with the man standing next to him. My companion laid some papers on the desk but the man behind it ignored him. I wondered if this was where they were going to strip search me. Partly to hide my concern, I casually glanced at the papers at the man behind the desk quickly moved them away from me and looked at me for the first time. He asked me a question I couldn't understand and when I asked him to repeat it, he looked at me in disgust and waved me away. That was it. I was happy to be on my way. But wait. Then there's the usual security check to go through. And the lines were long. My replacement knee set off the alarm, of course, and the man wanding me made me take everything out of my pockets even though I'd been careful to be sure there was no metal there. It's very humiliating to pull wads of spent Kleenex out of your pocket for all the world to see. After I was cleared, I had to wait for another security man to check my carry-on and camera case. Even though they'd already been through the usual machine, I had to open them both while someone pushed and shoved around, rummaging through the dirty underwear I'd so carefully wrapped around a marble box I was bringing home. But that was finally all complete and the guard stamped the little orange tag on each carry-on. At the gate, we had another security check - passports, boarding passes, orange tags - and just as we were about to board the plane, we had to go through the process all over again - this time taking off our shoes and the bags going yet again through yet another machine. By the time I got to the plane, I was surely secure.
Fourteen hours is a long time but I slept some, if fitfully - it's not easy to sleep on your side in a chair - and read a lot of a book called "A Princess Remembers" about the life of the last Maharana of Jaipur whose father, brother and husband were all maharajahs. She lived a priviledged life during the Raj and was very involved in politics after. I found her story fascinating. And then we were in Newark, where David and Dennis got their luggage immediately but mine was almost the last to arrive on the belt. While I was waiting, I had visions of it stuck in that dim office back in the Indira Gandhi Airport and having to cope with the lost baggage office and going to BWI to claim it when it might finally arrive. But it came, we breezed through customs, said a hugging goodbye to Dennis who was off to Cleveland and took a cab to Penn Station in Newark where we waited for the first train to Baltimore, which finally arrived amid much very early morning rush hour confusion at 5:45 AM. There were no double seats available on the quiet car so David and I were separated and I finished my book just as we pulled into Penn Station in Baltimore about 8:00 AM. As usual, I couldn't find the keys to the house so I had to drag myself around to the front to retrieve the outside key before I could get in.
I don't know why my house always looks smaller when I return home. Perhaps it's because I've been in the wide, wide world. It was also cold - I'd turned the temperature down to 55 while I was away. I was too wired to sleep (and didn't want to) so I set about with unpacking, laundry and all the usual chores one has to face after a long trip. I was fine until about two, when I got dizzy, couldn't think, and just had to collapse in bed.
Despite taking melatonin, jet lag drags me into bed about 8:30 at night - early even for me - and I sleep in segments of about an hour and a half each, waking up from some strange dream and trying to then go back to sleep. Last night (Tuesday), in the first one, I was covered with brown insects that although didn't hurt were sucking my blood, like leeches, and I was desparate to brush them off me. In the second segment, I was going to war with an Indian general, all tarted up in a Nazi-shaped helmet with a swastika on the side - the swastika is also an old Indian symbol of purity and life - and glitzy golden fringed epaulets, his face colored as for Holi. And in the final dream, I had received an order for 10,000 chairs and while I was delighted with the volume, I had no idea how we could produce so many chairs in so little time. After that, and even though it was only 3:30, I decided it was time to get up and work on this blog.
I'll write one more piece before I end this saga. So if you're still with me, stay tuned.
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