Palolem, Goa: Arrival

The flight from Banaglore arrives at little old Dabolim Airport just before dusk. The baggage claim area is disorganized, ill-suited for a very mixed crowd hoping for relaxation. People mill about, uncertain where, or if, their luggage will appear. Mine does, but it seems others on my flight are not so lucky.

I negotiate a ride from the pre-paid taxi window in the baggage claim area, and a driver appears. I follow his plaid back, struggling to keep up, jostled by slender men pushing carts stacked high with bags. They do not care whose ankles they bruise along the way. The driver glances back at me. Stuck in a crowd of trollies, I cast him a dirty look. When I finally break free, he takes the handle to wheel my luggage around a corner, then leaves me to wait while he gets the car.

Our drive to Palolem is long and dark. Snack stands and barber shops stand out, beacons of light in the night. Mostly, though, the road is unpopulated, and barely lit. The air carries hints of what might be seen, were it light: sewer canals, salt flats where fish dry, and, once, a fragrant forest. But perhaps it's best that it's too dark to see. The heat of the day is past, and Goa's black air is soft and cool, mysterious. When we turn for Palolem, the roadside bursts to life. A man is getting a shave in a pink-painted barber shop. A group clusters around a stand, drinking tea. Vendor's stalls loom, full of T-shirts, brass trinkets, silver earrings, and mounds of fake spices and teas.

As we approach the arch that leads to the beach, touts crowd around the car. They hope I want a room, but are disappointed. Already booked. They point me in the right direction and leave me to tote my bags down the beach alone. I am in Goa.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part VII

December 24, 2009

The hotel is really not all that close to the airport. It is even bigger and more impersonal than I was able to imagine. The vast foyer is nearly empty of people, or seems so. I wait behind the family, who are taking their time negotiating something with the checkin clerk. As I wait, a group of men, tall and stout with shaven heads, Germans I guess, strut by, on their way out. I wonder idly why they chose to be here. They are on their way to Soi Cowboy. Silom has so many impersonal hotels, all built with men like these in mind. Why strand themselves all the way out here?

A bellhop seems to suddenly tire of my waiting. He takes my papers, addresses the clerk behind the counter, and receives a key. I follow him as he pulls my suitcase down one hall, and then another. Gradually I begin to doubt that I ever left the airport at all, and then to wonder how I will ever get out of this labyrinth without a guide. One dim, carpeted corridor leads to another. I am lost and dizzy when we stop at a door exactly like all the other doors. I tip the porter, and he goes.

Inside, the room is plush. The windows look in on an atrium, so that people in rooms must keep their curtains drawn if they want any privacy. I close mine. Sitting on the footstool, I think that I want some water, and to shower. I think I ought to eat. Instead, I take out my laptop to check my email. There is no message from Cambodia, so they probably don't know where I am. I send another message, not believing it will ever get to them. And then I realize that no one in the world knows where I am.

The idea is oddly liberating, license, somehow, to be someone I'm not. I order room service, and wine. I shower, then lie on the soft bed, drinking and eating and watching the television. I don't flip my laptop open again to try to work or to listen an educational podcast. I revel in being alone in the world, making up my identity as I go along.

•

The next day goes as it should. I wake and pack, then jog down the long maze of corridors to wait for the shuttle bus in the dark. The flight is on time, uneventful. It's only when I stand alone outside Siem Reap airport that my panic returns. For I am alone. There is no taxi queue. Tourists have all been collected by hotel vehicles, locals by their families. No one is waiting for me. After a time, I look for a phone, but what for? All I have is the name of the hotel, and the non-working email address.

Then a tuk-tuk approaches, a three-wheeled, open-sided vehicle built around a lawn mower motor. This is my only chance, but I already doubt that my absurd struggle is over. I know the hotel is a modest one, so it's unlikely that the driver will be able to identify it by the name alone, and that's all I have. I feel that I haven't the stamina to knock on every hotel door in Siem Reap looking for my family, but I may have no choice.

The tuk-tuk pulls up in front of me, and the passenger steps out. It is my darling son, just sixteen years old, but suddenly grown up enough to come to my rescue. He has been coming to the airport to meet every Bangkok flight since the one I should have been on. We hug in Siem Reap airport, on the morning of Christmas Eve.

Read the beginning.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part VI

December 23, 2009

I love Suvarnabhumi International Airport. It's true! I adore this airport as much as it's possible to like a place. It is clean and orderly, easy to navigate. Staff are polite and helpful. It has shops where people like to shop and food people can enjoy eating. Beyond these practicalities, it's a place full of promise. Arriving, I have always felt joyful. All Bangkok to explore and enjoy — what could be better? But today, I can only repeat the sad marathon I did in India. This baggage claim area is sparkling and insect-free, a sharp contrast to poor dirty dingy Chennai. I wait watchfully by the carousel. I pull my suitcase up as quickly as I can, and run through the building, down long shining halls, down an escalator and up another, to arrive, panting, at the checkin counter. My flight is on Air Bangkok, a no-frills budget brand, chosen for economy. The journey from Bangkok to Siem Reap is short, after all. No need for soft seats, or food. A little empathy might be nice, though I don't expect it. I am informed, brightly and cheerfully, that I have missed my flight by a mere seven minutes, and will have to wait until the next day to fly. Then I am sent to another counter.

I walk slowly. Missed by seven minute. Surely Air India could have done a little better, and shaved seven minutes off a six-hour delay? Or could I have run faster? Couldn't I have avoided this second mass of uncertainty and expense, another day of worrying my family? Tears rise in the back of my throat. I cannot cry here, in the most public of places, in front of hoards of happy tourists. I swallow hard.

The woman at the booking counter accepts my papers and starts to scold me for missing my flight. I have been in Asia long enough to understand this piece of social interaction, and to know how I ought to respond. But today I cannot. The required deflection, the half-apology are not there. The unfairness of delayed flights, the dollars pouring from my never-full pockets, the worry of my still far-away family, the uncertainty that they've received my message, is too much to bear. I try to explain what really happened, knowing the woman behind the counter will not understand, but I am unable to stop myself. She looks at me with disapproval and disbelief, and begins her reproach all over again.

I have no answer. The tears press up and up until they are rolling down my cheeks. Now the woman at the counter regards me with round-eyed horror. So does the woman at the desk to her right, and the man on the other side of her. No one else notices the crazy foreign woman weeping in the airport.

Perhaps Air Bangkok employees are taught a protocol for dealing with distraught passengers, but I doubt it. It is simply that they have failed to stop me from disgracing myself, and now they must mitigate any shame my bad behavior might reflect onto them. Together, they silently decide to get rid of me as quickly as they can. The Air Bangkok woman demands my credit card. The woman next to her announces that I need a hotel room and selects one for me. She goes through the motions of showing me the pictures in her catalog and explaining that it is the best choice, because it is near the airport and has a shuttle that will get me to the airport on time in the morning, and of course she can give me a good discount.

I have never stayed in an airport hotel in any city. In Bangkok, I know some hotels in Chinatown and even in the backpacker district that will cost a fraction of what this room will cost. But there is the expense of the taxis, and with that, the uncertainty of navigating Bangkok traffic well enough to get back here in time. My new flight leaves painfully early in the morning. The calculus of comparing what I would well be able to do on my own with what this woman is offering fails me.

That isn't why I choose to do as she says, though. It is not because I am weak-willed, or cannot do math in my head. I choose the airport hotel, expensive and characterless, because it will not taint my memories of Bangkok. I am assured that I will make my flight. More than that, I am submitting to the impossibility of the situation. The last moment when I truly had a chance to avoid this whole mess was when I pressed the “buy now” button on the SpiceJet web page. Since then, the whole affair has been out of my hands. Let it stay there. There is no need for me to pretend to be responsible for what happens next.

The pain in my stomach subsides a little as I wait for the hotel shuttle bus. I climb in behind an American family. The husband and wife are bickering. She doubts the wisdom of staying at this airport hotel, and would have preferred a place in town. The husband impassively insists that his choice is the better one, but does not elaborate on why. Perhaps he himself is doubtful. Their children, pre-teens, are made querulous by their parents' disagreement, mild as it is, and interject irrelevant little complaints when they can. I endure.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part V

December 23, 2009

The departure lounge is not much of an improvement on the holding area. I have a seat, at least, but here the updates on our delay cease, and time stretches on. I begin to feel uneasy about my onward flight from Bangkok, but I am too cold, too tired, too hungry to worry. I realize that I have had nothing to eat for 24 hours and go to the snack bar, but the display case is crawling with roaches, so I return to my seat to shiver and wait.

I start to listen to the announcements. A man's voice, elegantly accented and beautifully clear, announces the departure of a Jet Airways flight. Another, equally lovely, informs us of a Sri Lankan flight, and a woman calls passengers for Singapore. Then there is a harsh squawk from the PA system. It is a man's voice, an irritated, harassed man, and one who did not do well in English class. “Air India” he barks, and … his message is unintelligible. It is not my picky foreign ears. People all over the lounge are looking around, baffled, asking each other what he said, but nobody has caught a word.

The plane takes off eventually, and I am on it, but later I will remember nothing about it. I sleep. My eyes shut the moment I am tucked into my seat, and do not open again until the announcement of our imminent landing.

A flight attendant, hurrying past to check that our seatbelts are fastened, asks me if she can bring me a cup of tea, even though orders to collect all service items have long ago been given. There is concern in her voice, and her eyes. I realize that she had tried to wake me for the meal, and failed. (The directive to make sure all passengers are served is taken quite literally on Air India. Declining a meal is, as a rule, nearly impossible.) I tell her thank you, but no. My next task will be to see if I am too late to get on the flight I booked the night before, nearly at midnight, and at great expense. I know the chances are slim. My stomach feels heavy. It's full of worry and frustration, nothing more nourishing. Tea would stimulate this ache to a full-fledged pain, so no, no tea. The lady leaves me, but not without a reproachful glance over her shoulder. I have failed at being served.

Continued.

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.