October 15, 2011
The private airlines Indigo is known for their punctuality, so almost everyone I talked to this weekend in Mumbai were surprised that my flight from Thiruvananthapuram was 2 hours late to depart. On Saturday, by 9am I received a text message saying the 10:45 flight was delayed to 11:45. Amma dropped me at the domestic terminal of the airport. The single guard at the entrance, automatic rifle hanging to his side from a belt across the chest, examined my passport issued by the Indian consulate of Houston.
"You are smiling in this photo?" he quizzed with a smile.
"It was a happy day" I replied. It was the correct answer. I was let inside.
While checking in, I am told that the flight won't depart till 12:05. After clearing the security where the guard with the magic wand initialises it on himself by tapping twice on his own belt buckle, I went upstairs to the new louge. The lounge was a fabulous "set-up" as Murugan, the driver from Munnar, would say. Deep sinking leather chairs which haven't had the time to crack or human exfoliation performed. Brass lamps, elephants, lions, drinking water fountains and clean toilets.
Every few minutes, the announcement repeats citing the cause of delay as the lateness in another aircraft's arrival. I am glad they stop at that without tracing the cause all the way back to Wright brothers. An enormous young man in an embroidered dark gray kameez fills the chair in the opposite row. He munches on an apple while informing people in Mumbai about the delay. The 17" Dell laptop looks like a tablet PC on his lap. But with delicate moves of his chunky fingers, he pulls up an album of his baby boy and watches the slide show.
An Indian mom chases after her little daughter who is running behind an American boy. Couple of aging British girlfriends discuss their trip. A Belgian family: mom, dad and three twenty-something kids plopped down their carry-ons and immediately proceed to reading. Anyone who believes that reading is dying should visit this lounge. Every other person is lost in a book. The young man sitting next to me is enjoying how Nassim Taleb was Fooled by Randomness. He laughs once in a while. The Malayalee with uncombed hair is reading "Maalakhamarum Chekuthanmarum", the Malayalam translation of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.
12:40: finally boarding. The ground staff and crew of Indigo are all in their twenties which probably explains why it is the most efficient, fastest growing airlines in the country. The all female cabin crew are dressed in indigo frocks that stop tantalizing above their knees. This single piece tight dress caused much discomfort to one of the shorter hostesses who was tasked with closing the overhead bins before take off. She needed her best stretch to reach the shutters. To prevent the dress from taking off behind her, she kept her left hand on the small of her back as a stopper. With the fingers facing outwards and the palm ever so slightly lifting upwards each time she reached for the shutters, it looked like she had a bunny tail.
I paid very little attention to the mandatory safety briefing. The brand new A320s, I consoled myself, are very safe. My confidence appeared misplaced when an excruciating whirring noise came from the left engine as the aircraft accelarated. It stayed on till we reached cruising altitude. It was that same painful humming that comes from machines with blown capacitors and stuck fans.
I was in seat 4C. In 4A and 4B were Vasudevan Nair and his wife Rema, a couple in their 70s, going to Delhi to be with their daughter for a month. Their son had left for Dubai that morning. "I worked in Delhi for 51 years," said Mr. Nair. Indigo doesn't serve free food. Their expensive menu items come in quaint packaging like kulchas in giant matchboxes and Samosas, which Mr Nair bought (Rs. 100 for 2), in newspaper bags. The samosas come with disclaimer that they are being served at room temperature. The room being the airconditioned aircraft cabin, it is pretty cold service.
Mrs Nair had packed soft home made chappatis and potato roast. They insisted that I share. I quickly dispensed with the polite refusal ritual. The delayed flight was creating engine noises in my tummy. I happily tucked into the potato roast. The universe, hopefully, will continue to send me benevolent Rema auntys with great food. The air hostess was sympathetic enough to provide free water to help the consumption. Mr. Nair added spice to the meal with a tirade against the politicians.
Our mallu-accented captain informed us that we flew over Mangalore and Belgaum.
Mumbai, the bigger apple, has grown bigger. The roads are wider, there are more flyovers and bypasses, more mini-cities within the city, yet all neutralized by exponential growth in the population.
I try not to let the overwhelming congestion of the city invade our little blue WagonR taxi by catching up with Pillai uncle who had come to pick me up. He discusses his retirement plan. I discuss my career plans. His plans are better. Our sardarji driver disapproves other drivers from time to time.
Nearing the Indian Institute of Technology, my alma mater, I see the complete makeover that the Powai lake shoreline has undergone in the last decade. Apartment towers and hotels make the hills between Powai and Vihar lakes look much smaller. The road in front of the campus is twice as wide. The good old bars and hotels demolished. Road might be wide but there is four times as much traffic. My cousin's family who only had his bicycle to count as the wheels of the household in the 90s, now have two cars.
Quick tea at Vijayalakshmi aunty's new flat inside the campus. She used to work for the Regional Sophisticated Instrumentation Center when she was my local guardian 1996-2000. Now the center has been renamed as Nanotech Research center. She is guiding six PhD students.
A room for me was arranged at the SAMEER guesthouse. SAMEER is one of those creative abbreviations. It stands for Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research.
The room 105 in the guesthouse has a balcony overlooking an abandoned open air theater. A beautiful teak tree grows near by. Later in the evening I spotted a teak sapling growing on the wall of an abandoned building next to its second floor balcony railing. Birds! They crap at the most creative location. In this abandoned lot, a foundation stone with some unreadable names. A couple of rusted parallel bars. In the distance, the new apartment towers for the staff. Above them, in the distance, dark clouds ready to burst.
I call up Rajeev telling him that rains might spoil our plans. A facebook friend for years, this was going to be our first face to face meeting. He tells me that 45 minute downpour in the evening is a new Mumbai tradition. Rajan uncle, Viajayalakshmi aunty's husband, agrees to drop me at Aroma's, the cafe Rajeev was waiting at. I have never met a husband more proud of his wife's achievements than Rajan uncle. Exemplary! Aunty finished her PhD after their marriage and has steadily built herself a fabulous career in science. Uncle is all smiles whenever he talks about her conference visits to the far east and west.
On the way, he stops to buy flowers for the engagement ceremony next day. Through the windshield of the Indica, I watch Mumbai flow by. Much surprise, seeing an IITian walk past with new can of deodarant from the medical shop in front of which we had parked.
IITian with deodarant. A lot has changed in 10 years!
The campus roads are pretty much the same. The trees lining them still flourish, amply assisted by the copious amounts of dung the campus free range cows and bulls provide. I identified a couple of notoriously violent bulls from the late 90s. One of them had chased my bicycle all the way to the girls hostel once. I wondered what the life span of bulls are. If it is not the same bulls, then genetic replication is happening. Internet tells me that on an average bulls live for 28 years. I am sure that the well-fed, unincumbered, healthy lifestyle they enjoy inside the campus, would keep them alive and very much kicking well into their 50s. So it is the same bulls that still roam here with their harems.
With three times as many students, hermitic life is much less possible. Even the dilapidated lake shack which one could sneak up to in the past, through a small forested area, now has a paved path. Private thought seems to have been banished. Funded research should flourish, I suppose, especially with the ever expanding school of management complex.
World population is nearing 7 billion. Exactly half of them stay in the Hiranandani area in Mumbai. Through this human ocean in perpetual perfect storm, uncle navigates the car whose horn mysteriously died that afternoon. Perhaps out of shame. Perhaps out of exhaustion. I am sure cursing isn't all that sailors do. They must have prayed too. I prayed to nonexistent traffic dieties all the way to the cafe. After an excruciating 15 minutes, land! Before I drop to my knees on the pavement, I check for dog litter. In the meantime, Rajeev hurries out of the cafe, where I had kept him waiting, with a "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" expression. My khakhi shorts and canvas shoes would have matched such a greeting.
Rajeev and I exchange scientific, psychological, sociological articles on facebook. By exchange, I mean, he reads and posts, I hit the share button. So it was only befitting that during our face to face meeting over Coronas and a cappuccino, we should discuss the most sophisticated of all subjects: women. The discussion was edged on by the apparent bevy of beauties walking in and out of the cafe. Apparent because I was facing away from the door and I could detect their presence only by the reactions on the male visages angled towards the entrance. I felt like a particle physicist at the Hadron collider making judgements on invisible rays based on the reactions caused.
Rajeev was the cake bearer for a birthday party that night, so he had to leave by 9:30. I logged on to facebook, the cause and channel of our friendship, from his apartment to tag our real world meeting. We ended the night with the agreement that Thiruvananthapuram, with orders of magnitude less noise and other distractions, would be a much better venue for discussions.
Before turning in for the night, I ensure that the french windows are secured. Last year, couple of crocodiles killed a fisherman in Powai lake. Rain meant possible leopard intrusion from the Sanjay Gandhi National Park on the other side of the hills and lakes. I doze off listening to imaginary growls. It is incredible that such a green island with possible wild life is preserved within one of the largest urban concrete jungles in the world thanks to the vision of the fathers of this nation. Perhaps engineering education deserves more credit than it is usually given!
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