Ten Minutes Too Late, Part IV

December 23, 2009

It is not. I arrive at the airport and find that my flight is delayed by hours. I am not allowed to check in yet. I must wait in a pen inside the terminal, reserved for people seeing friends and family off and for a few delayed unfortunates like me. I stand and watch as the hours pass, as my flight is delayed and delayed again. A chatty man with a boisterous family tries to talk to me. Where am I going, and why am I waiting here? Why am I all alone? Why do I have a son, and only a son?

“Don't you want one like this?” he asks, picking up his small daughter for me to inspect. She is a slender little brown girl, hair cut in a Clara Bow bob, dressed in pink and purple. Gold earrings adorn her ears, and there are colored rhinestones on her sandals. The child is as adorable as a little girl can be, so I smile, and am gracious to this stranger who is trying to cheer me up. He is seeing a young couple off on their honeymoon, he says, but that is probably just a word he uses to explain that they are newly married. They are on their way to the Gulf, which is a place for work, not romance and leisure.

I wait in the pen another hour, making a total of four, after the happy man leaves with his family.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part III

December 22, 2009

I could wheel my suitcase to the woefully inadequate seating area to wait for a place to sit, then camp all night as penitence, but I have to rebook the flight to Siem Reap that I will miss tomorrow and at least try to email the hotel where my family is staying. There is no airport network in Chennai. I need a hotel room.

There is a little wooden kiosk outside the International terminal. A young man sits in it, alone with a telephone, which he uses to call hotels for passengers who were stranded, or have been too nonchalant about their itineraries. I have been his client before. He gets rather good deals and is always polite and helpful. (This story was written years ago. The man and his booth are no longer there. They have been swept away in a modernization campaign. I was sad when they tore his booth down. It was the only useful thing in Chennai airport, and now it's gone.) Today, he is pleased to hear that I need an Internet connection. Most of his clients want the cheapest room they can get, and haggle over the price as long as he lets them. And here I am, sad and cowed and in need of technology. My misfortune brings him a good commission.

•

Internet at the Beverly Hotel means sitting in a tiny cabinet to use the business center computer. The connection is slow, but I book a new flight—I choose the last departure of the day, reasoning that there is no way I can miss it—and try to send an email to Cambodia. A fool's errand if there ever was one, but required. I am not murdered. I have not run away. I have missed a flight, and will be delayed a full day. I am sorry.

I have less than four hours' sleep in my expensive bed. The car has not arrived when I go downstairs to check out. I sit in the dark next to a little artificial Christmas tree, haphazardly decorated and twinkling, and tell myself the worst is over.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part II

December 22, 2009

At the baggage claim in Chennai, my suitcase comes off first, as promised. With it, I run outside and along the sidewalk towards the International departures entrance, dodging picnicking families who sit on the pavement, waiting for their loved ones to arrive. It is serious business, for them. Anyone being welcomed by one of these groups is probably the family's main means of support. At minimum he is a joy to them, expensively educated and clever enough to get a foreign job. But I cannot stop to inventory the bright saris and homemade snacks. I push through the crowds saying please, sorry, please, sorry. No one pays attention or really minds. A little pushing in a crowd is just a part of any day in India. I get to the guard at the terminal door. He taps the departure time on my ticket disapprovingly, but lets me in.

Inside the airport, things are no better. The lines are so long and so disorderly that there seems to be a single crowd advancing on the unreinforced checkin counters. I push my way forward, and find an Air India employee. He is impassive, unsympathetic, but waves me towards the end of the counters, around the back to the Air India office. It is a set of three ugly little rooms paneled in red plastic. There are heaps of paper on all surfaces. I am made to sit in the anteroom. My heart sinks. Waiting in a dingy little office is clearly not a step towards being rushed onto the plane.

The officer in charge informs me that the gates have closed and there is nothing he can do. I am ten minutes too late. “You will go tomorrow,” he says, tonelessly. I let loose a flood of words about the flight that will be missed, about my family, unreachable in Cambodia and waiting for me. He is unmoved, and informs me, in his flat way, that it is my own fault. Then he writes out a ticket and tells me to come back tomorrow. He has put me on a morning flight, and I had better arrive early.

I know he is right. SpiceJet cannot help its inefficiency and complete lack of customer service plan. I, on the other hand, could very well have allowed four hours between flights. It is my fault.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part I

December 22, 2009

Picture Coimbatore. It is Tamil Nadu's second city, a cement scar on South India's red dust plains. It is a textile town, fed by the cotton that grows in the state. Increasingly, though, it is also a tech town. Old villas are pounded to dust to make way for cement and plastic office buildings. The sewers have almost all been sunk below ground, and the impromptu garbage dumps that once dotted the city are now regularly toted out to Ukkadam for sweepers' children to scrounge on. Picture Coimbatore Airport. It is nothing but a smallish hangar with 1970s linoleum floors. Two Xray machines sit in the middle of the departure area. The room is ringed with checkin counters, temporary structures that can easily be moved. No one has bothered to put in any paneling. The walls are raw and grey. There is no belt to transport the luggage out to the waiting trucks and planes. Instead, blue-uniformed men move the bags with startling speed and energy. They look too skinny to sling suitcases around so easily, but the constant exercise keeps them strong and thin.

Holidaymakers and honeymooners mill about, dressed in party brights. Among them are politicians, in white from head to toe and wearing their traditional lunghis, long cloths tied around the waist, in lieu of trousers. Businessmen wear shirts and pants, and could go to Munich or Cleveland and fit right in. And me. I'm there too.

I wear an ankle-length linen skirt and a long-sleeved blouse, nothing Indian, but modest. It's a look that says, I'm a lady, leave me alone. Or it would, if I were sitting down reading my book as I ought to be.

Instead, I am pacing. My SpiceJet flight, the one that was supposed to get me from Coimbatore to Chennai, is over two hours late. No one had announced the delay, or offered any excuse. The flight number and departure time stay on the board, unchanging, as the minutes tick by. I ask the man at the checkin desk when my plane will board, and ask again.

“It will come!” is his singularly Indian reply. He offers no details, is baffled by my explanation of why it is important (a connecting flight in Chennai, an international one, for which I need enough time to clear security and immigration), and is increasingly annoyed in the face of my nervousness.

The possible delay of my next flight, an Air India one, is really my only hope. When I made my reservations, I allowed for a possible two-hour delay on my flight to Chennai, but no more than that. Chennai airport is smelly and mosquito-infested, with an appalling lack of facilities. There isn't even a Coffee Day. I did not, and do not, want to spend a long layover there.

Coimbatore airport, much smaller, less odorous, but with more than enough mosquitos, has a Coffee Day. I had a cappuccino there after I checked in and now it has mixed with my unease and is causing me pain. I look at the board, helpless. The expected departure time for my flight is still frozen in the past. People are checking in for the Jet Airways flight to Chennai that I had ruled out as departing too late when making my plans.

At the Jet counter, the kind young woman assures me that the flight is on time, and that they have a seat for me. My plan, newly hatched and ill thought out, is to have a boarding pass for both flights, just in case the original one takes off first. The SpiceJet man is having none of it, though. Affronted at my lack of faith, he rips up my boarding pass and shoves my suitcase at me. It doesn't matter. The Jet flight takes off on time, while the SpiceJet passengers wait.

It is too late, though.

Continued.

What is Coffee Day?

Once in a while someone asks, and I say, “It’s a chain of coffee shops, kind of like Starbuck’s, but Indian.” The answer never seems satisfactory, which must be my own fault. I suppose it’s the way I say the words Coffee Day, the way a person might say knight in shining armor or beloved or at least hot fudge sundae, depending on preferences.

Coffee Day has rescued me in many a city, places where a woman should never sit down alone or where every business locks up for hours in the afternoon. Its sign is a red beacon, visible from blocks away, that says “Come. Sit. We'll take care of you.”

Not that it’s all that special inside. A Coffee Day usually has a clean to cleanish (it is India, after all), modern interior, with little square tables and reasonably comfortable chairs. The cappuccino is milky, with a heart swirled into the foam. Drinking water comes in little plastic bottles. Sandwiches, if needed, may be chicken, paneer, or spinach and corn. Sweets are mostly chocolate colored, but with only the mildest, if any, chocolate flavor.

Though the majority of customers are always men, it is the sort of place where ladies meet for coffee. Schoolgirls can be trusted to come on their own to share a slice of cake for a treat. In some places, clusters of students appear in the afternoon, boys at one table and girls at another. The important thing is that I can sit undisturbed, sip a coffee and check my map, read, or daydream.

Jet Lag

February 4, 2014

Peep-peep-peep-peep, peep-peep-peep-peep. The room is perfectly dark. I wake slowly, then leap from the bed. I have set the time wrong, or neglected to turn off one of my early morning alarms. My head is heavy and stupid with sleep. I press buttons to make the peeping stop, then open timeanddate.com to see what my mistake is. But timeanddate insists that it is 8 am in Mumbai, which seems impossible, given how dark it is. At last I have the wit to pull open the window curtain, and light streams in. From the right angle I can see a sliver of Juhu beach, the waves shining under the harsh Indian sun. But I will not run out to walk on the sand today, nor trot up the street to the Satya Paul to see if I can price one of the outfits I saw the night before. Now I must sleep.

Mumbai Arrival

February 3, 2014

I arrive in Mumbai during a festival, or maybe it's just wedding season. A little ways from the airport strings of lights begin to appear, and as we approach Juhu there are crowds of people dressed in their brightest, gold-decorated clothes. It is nearly midnight. They are on their way home.

Even at the hotel, merrymakers are starting on their way home. I look up from the desk where a clerk is taking as much time as possible to check me in. A group of young women are ambling towards the door, all long hair and bare midriffs. Turquoise and peridot, fuchsia and lime, edged with gold but theirs is a different shade from the tinsel-decorated saris I saw outside. I avert my eyes, a little frightened by their splendor. They reach the doors and exclaim their thanks to the hostess. “Oh, Auntie, what a wonderful party!” and they are gone.

At last the clerk has filled out enough papers. I am sent upstairs with my key, the luggage must follow. Room 214. It is oddly familiar, the way hotel rooms are. Mirror, desk, fridge underneath, two beds. My bags arrive with a bellhop who explains things. I don't know what. I am too exhausted to understand. I nod and nod, wishing him away, finally sending him off with an inadequate tip. Door locked, I bathe and finally sleep.

Getting There

February 3, 2014

Four flights, three layovers to get to my final destination. A long journey by any standards. It's still fun, sometimes. There is the guilty pleasure of the airport meal, so carb-laden, so expensive, and raiding the duty free shop for the best chocolates and champagne. In Brussels airport I order white wine, though it is only 7 am, since it is late enough for a drink where I just came from, but I need justify this extravagance to no one. All around me, Belgian holiday makers sip their beers and laugh.

This entertainment is always a heavy line item in the travel budget, but a worthwhile investment. Without it, the hours in the airport would be dull beyond reason and this trip too long to bear.

Easier always to be alone, and without anyone anxiously waiting. A delayed flight is just that rather than a cascade of problems. I can pace or stand, read or dream uninterrupted. And all goes well.

What Foreigners Like

In a Subway sandwich shop in Tamil Nadu, I ordered a salad with everything on it, until we came to the dressing. I said I didn't care for any. The man making my sandwich took a slice of cucumber, squeezed a bead of mayonnaise onto it, and handed it to me. I must have looked puzzled.
"Honey mustard!" he said. "Foreigners like honey mustard!"
It was honey mustard, more or less. I still didn't care for any. I was pleased, though, to know what foreigners like.