Am Back... and making you wish I wasn't

When traveling through foreign lands the first thing that tends to disappear is your sense of anonymity. You are no longer just another Indian amongst millions (or a billion and a half) speaking the same language, paying the same taxes, struggling against the same daily realities as everyone else around you. As a traveler your identity becomes a fluid, amorphous thing; something to be defined by every conversation you have, every move you make. An open space, filled with questions and possibility, and something you are sharply aware of at all times. It happens for everyone, but perhaps for an Indian the shift is more dramatic, more unsettling: huge crowds are a very essential part of being Indian, perhaps explaining the inherent insecurity that makes us form lines and rush to get a seat even when there is no need. The fear of being forgotten, left behind, or simply swallowed up in the mass of humanity that is this country is something we are all born to. From school admissions to job prospects, life in India is a constant round of musical chairs, with way too many circling the one available seat, hoping for luck and whatever else it takes to get ahead of the crowd.

Though my amusement may never fade, I have gotten somewhat used to the spectacle that presents itself without fail at the boarding gate for any flight into India: all it takes is one nervous Indian, usually a very old lady in a pink and yellow sari, clutching a pillow and what can only be called a trunk on wheels as hand baggage, to stand in front of a closed boarding gate an hour before the scheduled time. Faster than the smile beginning to form on your face, a serpentine line creates itself, straight out of some snake-charmers conjuring repertoire; complete with octogenarian couples, huge families struggling to keep track of their luggage as it heads for a collision course with the orbit of the twelve kids zooming around the nucleus of a mother clutching at the illusion of order and sanity, and the odd village or two. Though I may have been hallucinating, I swear I’ve even heard a moo or two, and seen the swish of the occasional brown tail. Of course they all know that the flight is not going to leave without them, and they’re pretty sure they’re going to get their assigned seat, and all the food and put-away-in-your-pocket condiments they could possibly need (you’ve paid for it, after all!), but better safe than sorry you know. The spectacle is familiar to seasoned travelers, and I’ve even borne indignant, and somewhat amused witness to airport officials having some fun with the phenomenon: at Yemen once, when the line resolutely refused to unform itself after repeated requests from the confounded official (we do have a long and proud tradition of passive resistance to live up to), the PA system crackled into life to announce that the boarding gate had been changed to another one. I have never seen such a mad rush, not even at Dadar when the fast local to Andheri arrives. Creaky joints, fragile bones, recalcitrant kids and monumental baggage notwithstanding, the line had reformed at the new gate within a minute. After a brief tussle and some reshuffling in the order, the disgruntled losers and the glorious victorious soon settled down in their hard won positions, reconciled to an hour of standing till the boarding call. But the wily Arabs were not about to be cheated out of a promising hour’s entertainment. They tried again, with the same announcement for the original gate. With the predictability of Halley’s comet coming to call, my undaunted countrymen launched forth once more into the fray, not to be stopped by mere scraped knees, elbows in ribs, embarrassment or common sense. I am proud to declare after an hour of watching my fellow-countrymen ping-pong across the terminal that either the officials tired of trying, or time ran out, but the line never gave way against the furious advances of the crafty foe. And of course, all of us seated spectators got seats on the plane too, but I doubt we settled into them with quite the same sense of satisfaction, of a hard-won victory to be savored.