December 28,2008
10.30 a.m. or thereabouts.
I boarded the plane in DC last night. Today, eight hours later, I've seen the sun rise over Amsterdam and I'm now waiting to board my nine-hour flight to India. I'm unsure of where I belong. I search the faces of my Indian fellow-travelers for clues of some sort and find none. I look toward the stray foreigner and smile. Nothing there either. All of a sudden Yael Naim's New Soul streams through the speakers. The world feels familiar again.
January 5, 2009
Sometime in the afternoon.
She looked at my backpack, then said. "You look like a traveler. Where are you from?"
"Here," I replied.
It's true my backpack looked big and heavy. It had two bottles of water, a Best of P.G. Wodehouse, music, an organizer, emergency toilet paper, and a hand towel.
"Who are you visiting?" she asked. "My mother."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
I was too.
The previous night my mother had tripped in the dust and rubble that's spread like a thin permanent film over Bombay and broken her ankle. In excruciating pain she was rushed to the ER -- also known as the casualty ward -- of one of the city's finest hospitals where she waited for close to 25 minutes as doctors pondered over the state of her ankle. She had broken two bones. They would have to operate as soon as the swelling went down.
January 6, 2008.
It's 5.30 a.m. and Wodehouse no longer appeals to my literary senses. Instead I pick up odds and ends of my mother's conversation with the nurse as she's being given a spongebath. They're discussing the state of the city's roads. Yes, they're terrible, the nurse sympathizes with mum. There are seven other fractures on this hospital floor. How many are the result of broken roads and a crippled system?
January 14, 2009.
8 a.m. local time, Amsterdam.
That was one of the heaviest cheese pizza slices I've ever eaten. I'm contemplating getting a coffee to clear the clogged arteries but the Euro intimates me so. Althought it's not all that much against the now weak and watery dollar -- a pleasant surprise that came with a euro 1.99 or $2.71 tulip-shaped-wooden-bookmark purchase.
Schiphol Airport is bustling with life even at 8 a.m. I've explored all discounted stores that are spread across this brightly lit marble coated floor. I'm dead beat from the nine-hour flight and exhausted at the thought of an additional 12 hours of travel. My brain is urging my body to crawl under a table -- any table -- and sleep the hours away. Social grace stops the two in time.
It's been a rough trip. I can't write anymore. I'm just too tired.
