Indian Arrival

June 11, 2009

It’s midnight at Mumbai’s domestic airport. I have to wait  ‘til morning for my next flight, so I sit in a glimmering, shiny departures hall with other families with carts full of luggage, electronics, and children eagerly waiting to get home. A full day of travel, I suppose, does wear on you differently than other types of exhaustion. In a way, it has left me in a sort of trance where I can neither feel scared or unfamiliar. And although this long (and yet to be completed) rendezvous of travel has diluted my senses to some degree, my bewildered senses, I believe, still remain intact.

Walking out into the brightly lit darkness of the arrivals gate in Mumbai, I can smell monsoon season hovering like a warm blanket over the skyline. During the landing, it was clear that the entire terrain had just been soaked with a fresh, almost cleansing, rainfall. With the rain clouds still hovering nearby, the humidity kisses the skin on my forehead and arms. Soon I am overcome by a whirlwind of confusion, heat, and excitement. I’ve never been here before, yet, it feels somehow familiar, as if I can anticipate everyone’s moves. In that regard I suppose people always stay the same, simply take on the same roles. The masses of people waiting everywhere to pick up their loved ones are just as I left them. The people I meet are still just as eager to learn everything about me, my occupation, my salary, and everything in between within a few minutes. In return, I get the pleasure of learning all about them in short as well. So much so, even, that the mother of two dentists next to me on the plane told me about her angioplasty and showed me her leg wounds from a recent fall within the first ten minutes of the 13 ½ hour flight. Although I have not arrived quite yet, my body remembers what it is like to be in India, the sensory overload, the organized chaos, and the ongoing small personal victories that each minute achievement conjures up (making it through customs, not getting eve-teased on the bus).

And yet, although this first adventure back to India isn’t over yet and at this moment, Kodaikanal seems as far away a place as any, I can tell that this is simply one of those adventures. With this I mean that eventually this trip of navigating the chaos that is foreign airports will go simply go unnoticed in my memory, logged only as a brief whirlwind rather than what now seems like a long series of unfortunate events. All I can do now is hope that I reach my destination.

Peace and Love, Coco.