Well, it’s 5am and I’ve been wide awake for two hours at this point. The good news is that I’m in a bed, in Jaipur, in India, in mid-June. Forty-eight hours ago, none of these outcomes seemed at all probable. Let’s take the story back to Friday morning. The day before, I’d packed up my room in HGS and laboriously shifted a good portion of my worldly belongings into storage. Come 4.30am Friday, it was time to extract myself from bed, hop onto a shuttle to Hartford, where a plane carried me to Indianapolis via Detroit. Apart from dog-tiredness, this leg went fine: no great surprises, so far so smooth. And the next bit – the wedding of Mike and Sharon (now Dr and Mrs Richards of New Haven CT) – was a triumph in every way, shape, and form. I was ushering – ultimately a task I pulled off with no great elan, but there we are – so had an invite to the rehearsal plus barbecue dinner. A wonderful chance to get acquainted with some new people: Sharon’s very gracious family, Mike’s folks (whom I’d visited over Thanksgiving last November) and his groomsmen. My slightly excessive double-double-bed room [sic] at the Westin lay waiting; determined to make the most of it, Saturday morning and I didn’t come across one another. As it turned out, this was the best slumber I was to have for many days to come. The wedding itself went without a glitch. Outside the Indianapolis Historical Society, we assembled for the brief ceremony – picture-perfect procession, adorable baby flower girl, kind-talking minister, the works. Dinner was held in the grand main entrance hall. We came, we ate, we danced, we drank. As things there wound up, the after-party commenced. We moved to what’s apparently an “IU” bar (Indiana University) - Kilroy’s - downtown. More chat, more merriment. By hook or by crook I was back at the hotel ca 3am, that chapter of the odyssey complete.
Sumir, maybe against his better judgment, had kindly agreed to drive me to Chicago Sunday morning. Of course, we overslept. A James-Bond-like car ride/chase ensued. Plain sailing till we got into Chicago, followed by gridlock. Pulse reaching all-time highs – two and a half hours till the flight. We make it with time to spare. But it was for naught. The overnight direct to Delhi was canceled due to a mechanical fault (apparently a wing was about to fall off). We were bussed to a hotel and sternly enjoined to arise super-early for a 7am rescheduled flight, i.e. another 4am start. Further delays at the airport in the morning, yet eventually those of us aboard AA292 parted with the ground for a 15-hour sky-high trek into boredom, the likes of which I’ve never before experienced. Bad food, bad movies, air hostesses who clearly viewed passengers more as inconvenient clutter and the chief cause of the ruckus engulfing their beloved flying-machine than as paying customers (and human beings with basic food needs, for that matter). Kipping in coach ain’t so easy, nor is reading when you’re delirious from sleep-deprivation. So mostly I brooded over how I’d eke my revenge on the monsters of American Airlines and their collaborating minions: the stern words I would have with the pilot, the letters and pamphlets I would write for the national/international press, the Congressmen I would lobby – leading to a final, catastrophic collapse in the company’s share price, I predicted. Naturally, none of this happened, but it proved an effective way to pass the time.
Touch-down in Delhi. I was met by a driver from the American Institute of Indian Studies who informed me in sorrowful tones that the group had already set off for Japiur. All was not lost, though, for a six-hour bus ride could deliver me there by evening. Someone would meet me on arrival. I took the bus. No-one met me. Foolishly, I had no address, no number, no nothing. What to do? Hmm. Internet café! The internet knows everything, does it not. Accompanied by a swarm of auto drivers – who like nothing better than a tourist in distress – I tracked down a computer and induced Google to cough up an address. I arrive at this address. It’s not the Institute I was expecting. In fact it was one of the professor’s houses. His bemused wife took me in, sat me down in front of the Discovery Channel with a glass of water, all the while dialing frantically as she sought to get hold of her husband (understandably eager to get this lunatic unwashed Brit off her couch and out the door). It worked. He sends a car and I get to the hotel where my fellow classmates to-be (including three other Yalies) are stationed. At this stage I hadn’t slept in at least thirty-six hours. Now I did. And like Caliban, I cried that I might dream again.
As scripture tells us, however, there’s no rest for the wicked. Bright and early Tuesday morning we’re massed together for breakfast and a diet of Hindi proficiency tests – my performance on which, I expect, barely distinguished me from an Englishman speaking in an obnoxiously slow, loud voice to some uncomprehending European coffee-seller. I’ve been put up in a large, well-appointed house owned by an elderly couple who haven’t yet been sighted (back tomorrow). There’s a maid and a houseboy. (Cue jokes about neo-colonialism.) It’s very nice, and Mike Weaver – a guy from my program at Yale – is in the same place.
It’s 6am now and I guess I’ll be up in an hour. To be back in India is awesome, I should add. And once we’re settled into the groove, I’ll file another report.
