On Monday evening, I left Hyderabad through the soon-to-be “old airport”. Everything about it was the usual scene. Women were bent over pushing garbage from one place to another with basic brooms made from a handful of reeds, other women in black bhurkas were everywhere, and massive groupings of men and women awaited the arrival of a loved one out of the airport's exit. I had spent countless hours at this airport navigating the masses that were intent on getting in front of me at the queue, then trying to find the seat to wait in that was the least filthy, and making sure it was not next to a woman in a bhurka. I had long ago learned that if you sit next to an Islamic woman, she would get out of her seat. I always felt bad about that, so I would stand in the event that the available seat was next to a woman clad in a full-body black dress with her face veiled. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, in a cross-cultural sort of way. Life in the US had not taught me about this particular situation of politeness, but new dimensions were being added to my schema of politeness every day here in India.
As my flight was announced that morning, the usual scramble for the line happened, yet I sat back and watched it. They had called my section, but I waited. I knew that the act of getting to one’s seat at the appointed time was an exercise in shoving and jostling and I knew that it was more worthwhile to be the last on the plane as opposed to pushing, and getting pushed back, by my fellow passengers. I waited for the final boarding call for my flight and then I walked up. They checked my ticket and passport at the gate. Further in, a new officer checked my ticket and ripped off the stub with my seat number. 25C. I walked down the stairs and asked a young woman which particular vehicle was the bus for the flight to Mumbai. She pointed to the bus directly in front of me. It said Chennai on the inside marquee.
“That says Chennai,” I pointed out.
“Yes, sir,” the young woman answered.
“I asked which was the bus for the Mumbai flight?” I stated, a mild tone of annoyance in my voice. But I knew the tension would not help.
“Yes, Chennai is there. Last Mumbai bus is behind it,” she corrected me. Somehow the same question had brought out a different response a mere ten seconds later.
“So, this one is not my bus. You told me to get on it. The next one is my bus?” I asked. I was clear on where I needed to go, I just liked to check into this impulse of giving the wrong answer and seeming oblivious to the correction.
“Mumbai bus is behind. You are going to Mumbai?” she asked. She had looked at my ticket already.
"Yes, as I said, I need to take the shuttle to the flight for Mumbai,” I explained again.
“Then this is not your bus, just wait.” As she explained my error, or hers, she smiled largely. It wasn’t a language barrier that had lead to the confusion. She was speaking without flaw, it was that "other thing" that happened here so often. I don’t know what the name of this phenomenon is, but it was unique to India where you could get contrary guidance within the space of thirty seconds from the same person. It never ceased to amaze and amuse me.
What was it that that guy said about Russia? A mystery wrapper in a riddle within an enigma. Something like that. Seemed more applicable to India.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling back.
My bus pulled up and a mere ten of us got on it and were shuttled to the Mumbai flight. As I walked off of the bus and onto the stairs at the back of the plane, I yet again showed my stub to someone from the airline that reviewed it and requested that I have a nice flight. I thanked him and ascended. I got to my seat and saw that it was clean and the stewardesses were fair skinned, young and pretty. This particular airline was always like that. I sat there as they gave the directions for safety during the flight, catching about fifty percent of the Hindi about keeping my kirki oopar and to kripia diyaan digiye to everything that was being explained to me by the crew. I put on the iPod mini and turned up the volume on some ambient music that I had downloaded in a podcast from Latvia.
Small world.
Mellow world.
Sleep followed quickly.
The week in Mumbai passed in the normal fashion, with work and nice dinners and a quick jaunt to the seaside where I viewed the hustle and disparities of Mumbai with awe and delight. Mumbai was an exciting city, one that was more or less a part of the small category of “world cities”, yet very uniquely Indian. Most people in the US still knew the name Bombay, which the place had been called until recently.
Work, work and more work.
As I got on the flight to return on Thursday evening, it was with a certain amount of anticipation. I was landing in Hyderabad’s new airport that evening. It was the opening weekend and I did not know what to expect, but I knew that Tom, Roy and Davesh and countless others had worked on it, and I was excited to see what had come of their countless hours of hard work. I had some small sense that what I was doing in India had helped bring to fruition this new airport. Some from afar might have worried that the Westernization that was coming with the tech boom was bringing a culture and a way of life that was foreign to India. Their perspective was not entirely without merit. But there was perhaps one unifying factor for all of these people who thought what we were bringing to India was purely a bad thing – they did not have to spend time stepping over wild dogs and refuse on their way to their flight. I was perfectly ok with a Western-standard airport replacing what had been built and maintained by Old Hindustan’s standards. No existential crisis would follow stepping out into a clean and well-organized airport. Although my college education had taught me that “progress” was a “value laden term” and should not be used by anyone wishing to be christened as a member of the intelligentsia, I had a new sense that progress actually had a profound definition for India and that there was actually something to it. Additionally, the new airport promised that our home would no longer be in the flight path.
Progress - bring it on.
Something about the sound of engines revving up brought all of my fatigue to my head, and I promptly fell asleep. The same announcement of Kripia diyaan digiye was quickly met with heavy eyelids and I drifted off into a deep sleep that would only be ended by the jolt of the landing gear hitting the tarmac back in Hyderabad. And so it was. I awoke at Hyderabad’s new airport.
As we taxied along after landing, I looked out of the window and saw something the likes of which I had never seen in India before. Shining, expansive, inviting – the new airport was beautiful It gave me a small thrill to see it. I would never again need to see the old airport, a place entirely devoid of charm. This new airport was mostly glass, and was a few stories tall. It had a distinctive curve on the roof, a massive swoop front from to back. Job well done, dosto, I thought.
Very nice.
I walked off of the plane and got onto the bus. We were packed in at a density level that would have been unthinkable in the US, but I had finally gotten used to the fact that any available parcel of space in any context would be used to the maximum degree here in India. I was cramped, but not in a way that I could not deal with.
I was just excited to see the new airport.
We go to the entrance to the building, and the rush to get off the bus resulted in the usual jostling and shoving. I thought to myself, Well, that didn't change. Not that a new airport would lead to a change in human behavior, I knew that made no sense, but I guess I was expecting things to be new in the midst of this new structure.
I walked up the stairs into the airport and was pleased out of proportion to anything I had expected. As far as the eye could see, open space surrounded by huge expanses of glass. Clean floors of marble, and organized gates at standard intervals of space from one another. Bright, polished coffee vendors and magazine racks and book shops sprinkled throughout the structure. The ceiling had huge structures along them which looked like sails from a grand ship, above these sails were openings that let light in from the sky. There were entire walls covered with living ferns, and ficus trees dotted the scape of the new airport. It was as different from the old airport as anything could be - the short, rank, squalid old airport was now but a memory on Hyderabad's evolution toward modernity. Hyderabad had an airport that was on par with anything in the United States, if not better. Despite the fact that I had lived here only eight months and could not be mistaken for a Hyderabadi in any way, I had definitely developed a keen sense of appreciation for the city's people and their good attributes, of which there are many. I was happy that they, and in fact we, could now fly out of a place that was of this quality.
I just stood there and marveled on.
Wow. Really nice, I thought.
It was an absolutely stunning leap forward, this airport. People largely seemed oblivious to the place, as they all walked onward, to retrieve their baggage. Before I joined them, I noticed that there was Urdu script on the glass of the airport's shining walls. It was large, with each swooshing stroke about eight feet in length. Something that I could not read was being declared, and the letters themselves comprised a space of about half of a football field. I did not know what it said, but I was sure that it was reiterating to those visiting Hyderabad that they were arriving in a unique south Indian city. Once home to the Nizams, Islamic rulers in a sea of Hinduism, Hyderabad had a distinct character and reputation for being a very Islamic place in a nation dominated by Hinduism. This script, a close cousin to Arabic, was the liturgical script of the Sunnis of India. If it declared "Rajiv Gandhi International Airport" or "Allahu Akbar" was irrelevant. It said loud and clear that Hyderabad was home to millions of Muslims.
I walked on and noticed another quote on the glass, albeit much smaller. This quote said something about a journey having a destination, but it was the journey itself which was important. This was attributed to "Lord Buddha", per the marquee. It was nice to see something that rounded out the Islamic script. Buddha was a native of Bihar, a state that was reputed to be the most lawless in all of India. In casual conversation, Hyderabadis and Delhi-ites and Mumbaikers would all mention Bihar in sentences of advice about how important it was never to go to Bihar, as if it simply existed in order to be avoided. The religion that Buddha had started was essentially run out of Indian by the Brahmins. It had been pushed up into the Himalayas and spilled over from there into China, Japan and other lands.
This quote was a reminder of the deep spiritualism that filled India. I yearned for "Consider the lilies of the field, they neither spin nor toil, yet Solomon in all his grandeur was not arrayed like one of these..." or something that would engage my heart, but I knew that was unlikely.
The script and the quote gave me pause, and I considered how exceptionally transcendent this country was - it had an ongoing engagement with its own past in a way that was profound. This glittering new structure housed the latest in space age technology, yet it also had spiritualized quotes on the spacious expanses of glass. This was a uniquely Indian thing - to have the old and the new co-mingled in this unique way. It was something I really enjoyed about India's public life. Even if the spiritual weltenschauung that 95% of Indians followed were counter to mine, I liked that belief in something beyond our sight was evident all around.
I kept walking.
As I passed more of the floor of the airport, I continued to be amazed at how nice everything was. It was an absolutely beautiful setting. Not just in contrast to the prior airport, but to airports in the US. Except for the signs being thrice translated into Telugu, Hindi and English - a telltale sign of being in Andhra Pradesh - you would not have any idea that you were in a third world country. As I went through these exact thoughts, it occurred to me that either India was on its way to leaving Third World status, or Third World as a concept was going to need to change, or...... the most revolutionary thought I had had in a long time....... maybe all of these definitions that we were married to in the US and elsewhere were just intellectually vacuous attempts at dividing humanity up into categories. This was a new India that was coming around, and it was a true pleasure to see it during its nascent phases with developments like this airport.
I felt upbeat.
As I walked along, I slowed down to read the signs in Hindi. Having developed a reasonable command of the language, I had taken the plunge into reading and writing in Hindi, and I could work my way through the words. It struck me how many words in Hindi script were actually the English word bent into a Hindi spelling. "State", "Bank", "International", "escalator", "ATM" - all in Hindi script and pronounced in the English. Old and new mixed together in a way that only Indian Hinglish could deliver. Sometimes the words were amusing. It occurred to me that I had joined perhaps the smallest club of all - American English Speakers Who Read Devanagari Hindi Script and Get a Chuckle from the Words. Such a small club that I have never even met another member, but I was sure I was not alone.
I got to the baggage area and walked by slowly. I had a system down that ensured I never needed to check a bag during a business trip of three days of less, so I was purely a spectator at the baggage claim area. I took a step back and just watched. A new, shiny conveyor turned around and round in the midst of an expanse of open space and neatly uniformed individuals bustled to and fro in the ever-present task of Chaos. Behind the conveyor was a huge wall covered with living plants growing out of the side of it. Ferns and peace lilies, sticking out of a wall that was ingeniously designed to allow them to flourish while perpendicular to the floor.
Brilliant. I had never seen anything like it.
My attention was caught by a huge thud. I looked down and caught a glimpse of something that made me smile.
I decided to walk over for a closer look.
This baggage conveyor adhered to the same system and apparatus as in any developed airport. The luggage would come up a conveyor belt and the luggage would then fall into place and work its way around the belt. But this conveyor had a unique twist that. There was a young guy straddling the hole from which the luggage was coming up the belt. His apparent role was to lift the bags up right before they came off of the belt and shove them to a second guy on the ground who pulled the bags onto the conveyor, followed by a third guy who looked mildly panicked and gently touched each bag as it passed by him. Their trust in the device had apparently not yet been established, so they had developed a manually intensive process to move the bags along despite a lack of need. They were all sweating and each had a look of intensity on their faces that betrayed a deep sense of purpose. From the reaction of the crowd waiting for their luggage, no one else found it odd. I simply sat there and enjoyed the scene of three guys pushing, pounding and shoving luggage along on this as-of-yet-untrusted conveyor system that was in use throughout the world. It made me smile. Old habits die hard, I considered as I watched this spectacle.
I realized that my leisurely saunter through the airport had perhaps taken enough time, so I decided to go outside and look for the taxis. I had opted out of having a driver scheduled for me, as I wanted to get the full experience of the airport in all of its glory. I walked toward the exit, the bahar. It was just like the old airport scene, in that a mass had formed around the exit, where family members were anticipated by multiple generations of adoring family. There were women in bhurkas moving to and fro, men in white khurtas with beards down to their chests, and countless children in skullcaps. The old standing just outside the new. I walked out and saw my path, so I was determined to get out to my car and driver.
As I walked through the crowd, I realized that with each step they were closer to me. The crowd had developed in such a way that each person was looking around the person in front of them so as to evaluate who would walk out of the airport next. Because of this, I was walking into a long, cone-shaped crowd of Indian people who had a notorious tendency to enclose each other into a pushing mass of Chaos.
I walked on. As I walked forward, everyone was closer and closer to me on each side.
I finally got to the end of the crowd, which was so narrow that I had people on my right and my left. And in front of me.
The cone had culminated into its tip, and I was standing right at the end.
A man was there at the end, and the spot where he was faced me. I stood there for a second. He kept glancing past my shoulders, apparently unaware of my presence despite the fact that I was blocking his view of the door several meters behind us. I decided not to push my way through him, and as an experiment I thought it would be interesting to simply stare at him with eyes that plead for passage. His head bobbed left and right, looking past and around me. Otherwise, he gave no sign that I was there. I looked at him. He did not look at me. He stood there. This was the part that drove me crazy, but I was going to remain calm, still basking in the afterglow of the nice new airport experience.
Ok, I'll give in, I thought.
"Excuse me," I said gently. He ignored me.
"Excuse me," I repeated, this time with more force. He moved to the side, not with any acknowledgement of me.
Ok, that was a bit strange. No matter how many times I experienced, I was always struck anew by the general lack of willingness to cede ground to another.
Well, that has not changed, I thought again.
I refreshed my psyche and kept walking. I found the area where the taxis were located. I saw something new - a queue. I walked up to the young woman who appeared to be in charge and asked how I could get a taxi. I was pointed to the end of a line of about a dozen people, all standing there in a noticeably disinterested way.
I looked back at her and asked, "You know this line will not last, right?"
She looked puzzled, so I repeated, more slowly, "No one will obey the queue."
She showed recognition that she understood, and said, "We must have everyone in the queue. Please take your place."
Annoyed out of proportion to her polite reply, I restated, "I am telling you that this queue will not last. I will get in it, but I want you to know that I don't think it will last."
She smiled, and moved her hand toward the end of the line. I smiled back, and got at the end of the line.
As I stood there, I saw another thing to make me smile. There were four people with whistles managing the taxis. Two of them were standing in front of those taxis that had a passenger loaded, coaxing the drivers to take off quickly, and the other two were whistling and waving in new taxis. The taxis that were ready to leave were being boxed in by the new taxis pulling up. Loud beeps were exchanged. The whistles continued to blow. Empty taxis continued to pull up, three deep, and immediately next to those taxis that were ready to pull out. I chuckled out loud, and then laughed. It was a taxi storm, completely chaotic and out of control. Four people with whistles, completely out of synchronicity with each other, but mutually managing a deluge of aggressive taxi drivers. The woman in the front of me turned and looked at me. I smiled at her, expecting that she would find some humor in the scene. She did not break a smile, and just turned away from me.
This is actually a pretty good queue, I considered.
As I stood there, one of the men with the whistles turned to those of us in the line and stated in English, "Many taxis are coming!" It was not an announcement as much as an invitation to everyone in the queue. It shattered utterly. All of my fellow queue compatriots stormed the sidewalk and started to jostle for taxis. I stood in my place, and hung my head. The balance was starting to tip. The joy of seeing the space age airport was beginning to wane and I started to get pissed off. Everything else had flowed right off me with dispassionate observation, but now I was starting to get angry. This was the part I hated, the freaking dash for the taxis with a paucity of manners from the usual....
I walked up to the young woman to whom I had shared my prophecy-come-true. She was just standing there with a flashlight in her hand, looking defeated.
"I told you this would happen. I knew it!" I stated with a misplaced sense of vindication. "No queue can be obeyed in India. You are incapable of it!" My voice had started to rise above a normal tone, and I checked myself. I realized that she was not the problem, and that my behavior was starting to become the real problem. I slowed down and just stood there, looking at her. She was looking at the small crowd now pushing each other around in front of the taxis. I looked over at them, as well. Mayhem. A passive form of aggression it was, with people pushing and shoving but not looking at each other while doing it.
I looked back at her and said, "I really don't want to push my way into that, what should I do?"
She seemed unable to reply, but then she said, "I think we must start a new line." It was one of those statements that could have been interpreted as a question, if need be. She was looking for an ally.
"OK, where do you want me to stand?" I asked.
"Right here, sir," she said, pointing to a patch of concrete right next to us.
"OK," I said gently. She was not the problem. Maybe nothing was the problem, perhaps this was just "the way of things" and I should have held tenaciously to dispassionate observation. Maybe. But I had lost it and was in need of a little forgiveness, whatever redemption she could offer to me.
As I stood there, the sole member of India's newest queue, we both watched the taxis, men with whistles, and prospective riders all cannibalize the opportunity for order in favor of their own form of resolution. Eventually, they were all gone. A few more people had been placed into the line behind me. Everything was coming together. We'd be redeemed. Let's give this situation a second chance.
As a new taxi was waved in by the four me with whistles, a guy slowly stepped in front of me.
Can't be.
I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder, gently. It was partly to get his attention, partly to ensure he was not a figment of my mind. I considered that perhaps I had gone crazy. Alas, I tapped a real scapula.
He ignored me.
The rage was just below the surface. I called out to my friend who was looking out at the road - "Ma'am?" She turned to me and I pointed at the guy in front of me. Nothing more was needed. She started yelling at him. Hell hath no fury like a woman ignored by a queue cutter. She stood in front of him and started raging. He put his hands up, made a sour look on his face and started to explain how it was someone else's fault by pointing off into the distance. But it was only a few seconds before he knew he was outmatched. He got to the end of the line. I quickly considered how exceptional this situation was. A young woman and an old man had an expected range of interactions, and publicly embarrassing the man was not the outcome that was expected. But she was the avatar of one possible future India, where the basics of politeness, or at least order, would be followed. He was an ancient emmisary of the culture of Chaos.
I finally got into a taxi. My driver smiled at me in the rear view mirror in a way that shed all of the events of the past few minutes. Another awesome guy driving a taxi. They always got a kick out of my Hindi, so I thought I would stoke the smiling.
"Namaste mera dost, aapka naam kya hai?"
Look of shock, big smile, "Sivaji, sir. Aapki Hindi aati hai, bahut aachi hai!"
"Tikh hai - mai koshish ka raha hun."
We continued talking for a few more sentences until we were both smiling.
As we were driving out of the airport, I was struck by the fact that hundreds of people were standing on the bridge that was the entrance to the airport. We had once seen such a crowd gather at the site where a young person had jumped in front of a train to his death, so I asked with some trepidation, "Kya ho raha hai? - What's happening?"
"New airport, many people like it," he told me, smiling again at me in the rear view mirror.
I looked again. It was a massive crowd. They had apparently just come to watch the planes take off. Men in white flowing robes, groups of women in saris and bhurkas, and countless children of all ages and sizes milling to and fro. I noticed that a plane was about a half mile out from landing.
"Stop the car for a second," I asked the driver.
"Yes, sir," he replied, and pulled over.
I watched the crowd.
"Sir?" he asked quietly.
"I just want to watch this," I told him. He relaxed, assured that he had not done anything wrong.
The plane approached the airport as a huge light. Then it became two large lights, and finally you could make out the outline of the plane itself. It approached the runway and you could finally make out the label - Kingfisher Airlines.
As the plane hit the tarmac, the crowd erupted. They clapped, children jumped up and down, and I could make out two women hugging each other. I could hear the dull roar of their shouts through my window and decided to roll it down. They continued to cheer for a few more seconds, and one little girl's voice yelled out for joy. I considered that probably not a single person in that crowd had ever been on a plane. For most, they probably never would. Their outfits and demeanor and the fact that they were standing in amazement of flights landing and taking off told you that they were several degrees removed from India's tech boom. They were old India, seamlessly moving into the future with an amazingly light spirit. The old and the new, previously discordant in my thoughts earlier, were now joined together in a way that made no sense, but could only make you smile. There was in fact nothing left to do but smile.
As I smiled, a laugh jumped out. My driver laughed a little, too. It had been an amazing little experience.
I remain convinced of it - when you are entirely fed up with her, India will remind you why she deserves your admiration, even love.
"Chello, Sivaji."
"Hanji."
Off we went, into the night and toward home. I was always amazed at India's ability to win me back.
