AUG-A-8

“OUT OF INDIA?”

OR A DIFFICULT “PASSAGE FROM INDIA”

THAT IS THE QUESTION

August 24, 2003

I had spent the rainy part of the afternoon, in escaping the high humidity, and even higher humanity pressure, by ducking into the email spot in the Ajanta Hotel, which I had remembered from prior experience was good, fast and even cheap. Is pent two hours reviewing the hundreds of incoming email messages, most of which do not even require opening, that come to me each week, with only a few messages of consequence. I learned my friend Frank Washington died. I learned that there was a question about the septic field and tank on the Derwood property that was needed on yet another unanticipated official document other than my just pointing out where they are. The money flow to the contractors working on Derwood has been apparently a question since the check that I had sent out before I left was not found—but I presume that has been fixed as various forwarded mail is sorted through. I have no word on what has been happening in the Derwood property current status, whether demolition has been completed or is in progress nor if the permits for construction are even applied for given the absence of some kind of “site survey map” that had to be officially repeated, and now a further question on the survey of the septic field map.

I was unable to send forward any information, of course, on when I would be able to get out of India, since I do not yet know. I will be going tonight to the Delhi airport and will stand around fretting from around ten PM to about 3:30 AM when it is expected that the overbooked Lufthansa flight I am trying for is expected to leave. It is especially annoying to know now about the details that require my attention back home that are deliberately put on hold as I am as well “iced” in a figure of speech that does not suggest the heart and humidity of the Delhi scene outside my Ajanta dining window where various hucksters come to press their noses against the glass either to hawk their wares (something no more upmarket than new soles for shoes) or to see what the diet of the world’s better (or, “over-“) fed half looks like.

CULINARY PEEPING TOMS,

OBSERVING THE WASTE OF PART OF THE GRILLEDFISH

SERVED TO ME FOR LUNCH

That diet is also true to from. I remarked that throughout the last month the almost pure vegetarian diet had consisted of a lot of curry and spice, with one serving of meat which had us quite excited. Even if they were pets, the chickens were a welcome menu addition. But, like the big rainbow trout that we saw when I was up along the higher valleys above Dharamsala and I thought would make a marvelous addition to our celebratory dinner on completion of the very large clinics we had run, several of the very big rainbow trout netted from the trout ponds were scooped up and sold to us. They would have made magnificent filets, since each was in the 3—4 Kg range. We salivated and looked forward to that dinner considerably. At last, the specialty came out, and was presented to us: the whole magnificent fish had been cleavered into small cubes, bones and all, and fried in a seasoning of the same curry powder that had soaked each of our veggie meals! The tasting of these morsels, if you could get the fire out of the tongue to appreciate any native flavor of the fish at all, would have to be very cautiously sampled lest that numbed tongue be skewered by the cleavered bones head to tail included. This has been the status of the cleavered chicken we have been served as well, which requires cautious sampling to remove the bone splinters. And my noon lunch was approached with similar care. I had ordered the “grilled fish” no knowing that it would appear in the cleavered cubes with all the bones protruding like sharpened needles. As I was working one of these morsels around into harmless position, I noted a couple of street vendors pressed against the glass, watching to see that this white fellow is so affluent that he is actually rejecting some part of the dinner served to him as inedible in piling up the bones on the adjacent plate. Aren’t they all part of the same fish? And when seasoned with the same curry powder, don not they also taste the same as the softer parts?

A MIDNIGHT RUN AT DELHI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT;

OUTCOME UNDETERMINED,

AS OF THIS WRITING NEAR TAKEOFF TIME BY TAXI TO DEL TO STAND AND WAIT FOR WHATEVER CRUMB OF

CONSDERATION CAN BE CAST TO A MAN OUTSIDE HIS

COUNTRY WHILE THINGS ARE MOVING ON AROUND HOME

Well, here goes! At least I plan to make a night out of it, and then will return if needed to the Ajanta hotel where we have told them not to give away our room just yet!

“PASSAGE OUT OF INDIA”

BY THE NARROWEST OF MARGINS,

WITH EXTRAORDINARY EFFORT,

AND WITH AN EXTRA CONTRIBUTION TO LUFTHANSA

FROM MY AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD!

I have staggered on board LH Flight 761, as the last (supernumerary) passenger admitted on board, and only after standing at the head of the queue to make sure they would not forget me, and elbowing out of the way the thirty or more standby passengers competing, often loudly and obnoxiously, for the three seats not filled ten minutes before take off time by the confirmed passengers who were overbooked at the getgo.

I had gone early to the Delhi airport by taxi with Kishor, who wanted to be here three hours before the midnight departure of his waitlisted flight to Paris. He tried to check in, and was denied, telling him to standby, and he did, only to have an aggressive fellow swoop in and pick up the boarding pass for the first and only standby passenger admitted, leaving him still stranded in Delhi. We even had the taxi waiting to take us both back to the Ajanta Hotel, since I was the very first person in line when the Lufthansa gate agents opened up three hours before flight time. I was thrown out as having a ticket for the day before with an overbooked flight, so there was not future in even being here, according to the gate agent. I went around to the back office of Lufthansa, and recognized the same fellow who had once charged me an extra $375 for leaving a day later than the same flight for which I was booked on the September 11 delay in the Spiti Trip. He did not even look up when I said I had recognized him, and he simply said that which he had said then—it was going to cost me a change fee simply to take the long chance on being on a wait list for this redundantly passengered flight. I said “OK”. Well, then go and wait until every confirmed passenger is already seated, and it does not look good for you, but report back after 1:00 AM. For the next hours I hung in there while a very hypertensive and angry young man kept shooing away a very insistent crowd of wannabe standbys back, and I had to keep my position against some very aggressive pushers to the front. For the 2:25 AM takeoff, finally it came down to 2:15 (and I would still have to run through the security and formalities yet!) as Kishor came over to see if we would be going back to the hotel together in the cab we had waiting. There were three seats when they had called out for the last of the confirmed passengers, and two of them showed up after they had closed it down. An employee of Lufthansa Teknik came in to say he was here to claim a jump seat. That left one regular seat, and only after a number of the later arriving but pushier standbys had been rejected, and I was sitting on my first-in line spot when they gave out my name and one quick command---“Credit Card, Bitte!” I tossed them my single light check-in bag wrapped in the Lufthansa plastic bag, and handed them my card, said a quick farewell and apology to Kishor who will have to repeat this drama for another few days in the Delhi airport for unproductive hours in Delhi as he had each of the last five days in Leh, and rushed through the security screening and exit formalities to get the last seat on the 747-400 in 32J. The purser came to me to explain that there would be two young men seated in the jump seats immediately in front of me but only during takeoff and landing and she would distribute them elsewhere during the flight.

These two “amateur missionaries” had come to India for eight weeks in an interest in “house churches” saying there were here to represent Christianity, but had no confirmed tickets, and had traveled incountry by standby. They had naively come to Delhi airport hoping to board a flight out, and had spent the whole of the last two weeks in the Delhi airport. Because of this “stranding” (more a matter of naïve lack of planning) the purser herself had tried to help them out by getting them an unauthorized seat aboard in the crew jump seats and then the crew sleeping bunks when unoccupied, and as I had asked them, “where were you the rest of the time other than takeoff and landing when I saw you in the cabin attendant jump seats?”—the responded, “In the johns!”

The female captain announced on the PA that we were full. All seats were taken and an additional 22 “passengers” were being accommodated without seats, somehow (like these two young guys) meaning that the plane had well over 400 people on board, a record for the 747-400. The purser said it is like this on every flight all over India this past month and will be for the next two months together, and they would have a curtailed cabin service, passing out a snack only, and making one set of drinks and cabin service rounds. So, I am lucky to be on board at all, and only by the dint of extraordinary effort and another bonus to Lufthansa to “top up” my ticket with the American Express Card, delivered to me with the charge slips while already on board.

So, only now as dawn is coming, and I have slept gratefully through the five hour vapid Bollywood movie, have I now awakened over mid-Europe, with a confirmed seat ongoing to Washington, which will have me in Derwood and DC to check on all the unanswered questions and get all the details I can manage done before taking off on the Alaska trip as planed without having to make changes in that set of plans for which I had alerted those who would be affected that I might still be stranded in India by the time that this trip would be impacted by this stranding..

So, all may be well that ends well, but I do not believe you could get that happy statement from Kishor who is still going to be repeating this same process repeatedly—a harder task in getting out of India that in trekking across the mightiest mountains on the face of planet earth!

For now, from only a “quarter of the world away” I am homeward bound and jumping in two eight hour leaps to get home, each of which flight times are shorter than the times I had put in repeatedly trying to secure the tickets to get me into those flying times!

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