As a delightful
evening sun was all set to make its way into the horizon, it was time for me to
say goodbye to everyone who came to see me off at the Kolkata airport and make
my way to the long flight via Dubai to Houston. The previous few days, earmarked
by stuffing the travel bags as fully as possible without violating the airline
restrictions and all my near and dear ones making it a point to visit our home,
had been full of intellectual and emotional ups and downs. Everyone else were
excited that I would be studying abroad and sad that they would not see me for
long, and I was no exception. Finally the day arrived, and as the airport
became visible from our car, the same unique combination of excitement and sadness
made me quiet while the others were trying hard to rejoice. The last minute
surprise came when we were waiting at the terminal for the check-in to begin,
as my maternal aunt, leaving aside all her work, came down to see me one last
time in possibly more than a year. “Do not prove blind those who love you
blindly”, murmured I to myself, thanks to Facebook, and entered the terminal,
as the blind lovers continued to wave their hands at me.
Left alone after weeks and
being about to board a flight after three years, it was my nervousness at its
peak as I approached the Emirates counter. “God, please do not raise the alarm
at the scanner”, I was praying while standing in the luggage scanning queue,
despite knowing very well what all were in. Then, I was about to leave the
Emirates’ counter as soon as I handed over my checked bags, when the guy at the
counter reminded me that I had forgotten completely to collect the boarding
pass! “It’s no big deal; take it easy man”, I whispered, took a deep breath,
sat down comfortably on a chair and took longer than usual to fill out the
immigration form that came along with the boarding pass, only to shiver once
again at the security counter when the officer said, “Bhaiya, itne bhaag ke kahan jaa rahe hain aap?” (“Where are you
rushing to, brother?”), as he stamped the ‘hard-earned’ boarding pass. Finally
I was into the boarding area, and the very first place I looked for was the
restroom! When I went out after sprinkling cups of water on my face, which at
that point of time gave me the feeling of bathing at the holy Ganges, it was
still an hour to go before we could board our flight to Dubai. I found it very
hard to sit quietly, so I went to the glass-windows to watch the ‘parking’ of
one gigantic aircraft which would later fly with all of us inside. With a
childlike excitement, I called one of my best buddies, who unfortunately works
in Bangalore and has matured too much by witnessing many such ‘flight parking’s.
At last it was the time for us step into the giant’s stomach, and we were
welcomed with a glass of lemon juice. I continued gazing through the window as
my very dear Indian soil disappeared among the clouds.
“Hi, where are you travelling to?”
asked a middle-aged lady sitting next to me.
“From Dubai to Houston, then to
College Station.”
“Hey, even I’m going to Houston – I live
there. Are you from Kolkata?”
“Yes.”
“Oh you see, my mother who is in
Kolkata has undergone a surgery, so I had to stay with her for about a month.”
“Okay.”
“So, are you going to work or to
school?”
“I’m joining Texas A&M this Fall
semester”.
“Oh great! That’s a very good
school. I’m an assistant professor at so-and-so university at Houston.” (I
forgot the name of the school by this time!)
An aspiring professor myself, I felt
good to be seated next to a professor in my first journey abroad. We continued
chatting till dinner was served, and I once again spilt soup on my pants while
trying to keep a larger tray on a smaller extension from the back of the seat
in my front row, and she asked me to be a little careful being a first timer in
an international flight. Then, as the lights were dimmed, the frequent flyers
soon fell asleep, and a few started watching movies. I was looking constantly
at the map displayed on my front-screen, showing the major cities being
crossed. After Thane, our plane went in tangent to the southern edge of Kathiawad
instead of turning towards Mumbai, and very soon we were flying at over 900
km/h above the Arabian Sea. The instruction to fasten seatbelts came after
another couple of hours or so, while we were above the Gulf of Oman, and I kept
watching as the giant performed a few scintillating rolls before landing in the
midnight at Dubai.
We were brought to the terminal by a
red-colored bus (I have a fascination for red-colored buses and trains, don’t
know why!) that has sliding doors on the right side, and it was the first time
I saw vehicles keeping to their right. There was an announcement in the bus,
asking the passengers going outside the airport to take left upon alighting and
those with a connecting flight to take right. As Emirates provided a night
accommodation, I somehow guessed that it must not be outside the airport, and I
must have gone in the wrong direction, had the lady professor, who came via the
same route one month ago, been not there to correct me at the last moment. We
were brought to the hotel at about 1:30 in the morning, and quickly allotted
rooms. They said that the breakfast would be ready by 3:00 AM, and they would give
us a wake-up call at 5:30 to get us ready for check-out at 6:00. Sweet wonders
awaited me in the next few hours – first time calling home from abroad,
inserting in the key card to turn the lights on, staying alone in a big double
room, enjoying a view of Dubai at the dead of night through the window, getting
lost in the array of delicious dishes at breakfast the next morning and admiring
the vastness of the Dubai airport as we had to walk a long way and even take
the elevator to reach the boarding gate for the connecting flight to Houston.
As we were waiting in the boarding area, I met a couple of fellow Indian
students going to US to join grad school. We bought calling cards to call home using
payphones before getting ready to board another gigantic aircraft and fly –
this time for a ceaseless 16 hours!
S-i-x-t-e-e-n
hours may sound long, but thanks to the Emirates crew who made it shorter by
providing ‘entertainment, entertainment and entertainment’ – a stereo system
equipped with at least a couple of hundreds of films and songs in different
languages, listed in not less than six pages. My co-passenger this time was an
old South Indian lady whose son is a researcher again at another Houston
university and lives there with his family. She was not that outspoken compared
to the professor who sat next to me in the earlier flight, but what surprised
me was her ability to sleep at ease in such a long flight, particularly when
there was broad daylight outside – as we were travelling through changing time zones,
the sun was always overhead! When I asked her how she managed to sleep so well,
she argued that my choosing a window seat is the culprit. I would normally
never trade a window seat with anything, but this time I should have done so,
for we were instructed to put the shutters down thanks to the high altitude
that made me see the brightest ever sunlight. Driven by curiosity, I touched the
window, which was ice-cold reminding me of ‘stratosphere’. There was one point
of time when I, like many other passengers, opened the shutter to see the
scenery somewhere near Greenland above the Atlantic; however, the view was
never clear enough to recognize what we were looking at. As usual, I was
looking constantly at the map on the front screen and discovered that we took
the route via Russia, Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland and Canada to enter the
United States. This taught me a new aspect of long flight routes – as we
project a spherical earth onto a circle, places close to the equator appear at
a closer mutual distance than they really are; therefore, the flight, instead
of traveling straight from east to west (or vice versa), travels an actual shorter
distance by taking the ‘great circle route’ that passes through polar regions. I
felt asleep finally once we were above Canada and woke up when Houston was just
an hour away. We landed at 3:45 PM, 40 minutes ahead of the scheduled arrival
time of 4:25.
Getting
down at Houston, my paranoia woke up once again, as this time I would have to
clear the immigrations and retrieve my three checked bags out of a supposed ‘mess’.
However, it did not take long to get back to normalcy. The queue at immigrations
was long, but the officials, as perceived by a new entrant like me, looked
really friendly. By the time I, along with a few other visa holders, reached
the baggage claim area, the ‘mess’ was by and large cleared, thanks to the US
citizens who were relieved of the immigration checks. When I came out to the
terminal area, it was 5:30, and I still had to wait for another two and a half
hours for the shuttle to College Station. However, there are certain things
that I could do, and I did, including buying a bottle of drinking water from a
shop. I picked up a large one and asked the price to the lady running the shop.
“Two – fifty”, she said.
“What! 250 dollars!” a stupid
first-timer, I tried hard to suppress a scream.
“No sir, it’s two dollars and fifty
cents”, she made me heave a sigh of relief.
The next task was to call home and my
room-mate to let them know of my arrival in the US, and someone told me that I
need to purchase a new calling card to use the payphone. By chance I found
passing by an Indian, who quite strangely approached me and said, “Here, use my
phone.”
After I dialed the two numbers, including
an international one, I said, “Thanks a lot. How much did the calls cost?”
“Forget the money. Thank you”, and
he disappeared with me staring hard to locate him in the crowd. The first thought
that came to my mind was whether he stole any of my belongings while I was busy
talking on the phone – no, I double-checked, he did not. He was a good fellow;
did I do the same if I were in his position and a helpless Indian in mine? It
is not easy to be that good, but may be living abroad brings changes in the
mindset of people.
Well, now was the time to move on to
another terminal of the same airport where the shuttle comes. I went to the
Airport Help Desk and asked an old man sitting there, “Excuse me, can you tell
me how to reach terminal-C from here?”
“Oh t(h)urm’ul C! Sure”, and he went on explaining every single detail
of where I need to turn left and where I need to turn right. I felt really bad
that I could not get a single word uttered by him.
“I’m sorry, but can you please
repeat what you’ve said just now?”
“Can I do w-h-a-t?” his ears leaned
towards me.
“Can you please r-e-p-e-a-t the
steps such that I can remember?”
“Oh sure, why not”, he put his hand gently
on mine, “Here we go!” He took out a map of the airport and explained in
greater detail every single step that he mentioned last time. When I finally reached
terminal-C by taking the elevator to go down, then the inter-terminal train,
then the elevator again to go up, I really felt like going back to him to say “Thank
you” for a second time!
As I went out of terminal C, I
realized my mistake of going out before the shuttle comes – it was 6:15 in the
evening and unexpectedly hot and dry! I heard of snowfall during winter in the
US, but spending so many hours in cool air made the heat sort of intolerable. I
went back into the terminal and met, after a really long wait, somebody
attending Texas A&M. We chatted for a while, and as we went out to see if
the shuttle to College Station has arrived or not, we saw one being parked.
“Hey,
check with the driver; I think it is going to Beaumont and not to College
Station. The one for College Station is yet to arrive”, a man said from behind.
“How
do you know that we are going to College Station?” asked we, astonished.
“Because
I see you guys are bright students! You must be Texas Aggies!” Wow! In case you
do not know, ‘Aggieland’ is a nickname for Texas A&M.
As
I reached my apartment that night and went to a rather long sleep to compensate
for the deficit during flight, I was wondering – over and over again – what a
memorable journey it was and will always be! Quite an experience, isn’t it?
…
to be continued
