‘Then home?’ asked my dad.
‘Then home,’ I concurred.
Not London but Ferozepure: my home in India, a place I was not born in, a place I had never lived in. But home, nonetheless.
I was beginning to wonder what home actually meant to me; what Britain meant to me; what India meant to me. I was doing a lot of wondering. I hadn’t even left Blighty and my mind was whirring with the potential of this journey.
In some ways I could have turned round and gone back to Cricklewood and my life would have already been affected deeply merely by considering these questions of home, identity, of who I was and where I was going in life. The fact that I was actually going to step on a plane and make this journey…. well, the mind boggled with opportunity. I know my dad felt the same way, too. I have never felt closer to him than when we were discussing planning this trip. His excitement and enthusiasm were infectious. I knew that he wished he could come with me, but he couldn’t. This was a journey I had to make alone. But he would never be too far from my thoughts.
Less than a month later I was standing in Heathrow airport. I’ve always loved Heathrow airport. Everyone in the world seems to have passed through this place at one time or another. And there I was, trolley bag in one hand, bacon roll in the other, wondering why I was undertaking this journey. What was I expecting to achieve from this quest? How exactly was I going to find myself?
The bacon roll consumed, my heart slightly aflutter, the departure board suggested that I make my way to Gate 32 and prepare to board my flight. I had one thing left to do before leaving for India. I dialled my dad’s number.
‘Dad?’
‘Son? All set?’ he asked.
‘Ready to go…’ I hesitated. ‘Just wanted to say thanks … ’
There was a moment. I could hear his mind turning. I could sense him searching the words, the phrases, the emotions. I knew he had something to say to me at this point, at which his dreams and hopes and fears became my hopes and dreams and fears.
‘Son … ’
‘Yes, Dad?’
‘Did you sign those documents?’
‘Yes, Dad. Signed and in the post.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Call me when you get there.’
I headed for Gate 32.
Ten hours later and I find myself in another airport, shuffling in search of my connecting flight to Cochin. The plush grandeur of the new domestic departure terminal at Bombay airport is an oasis of calming marble, steel and glass, a world away from the mayhem that exists but yards from the terminal entrance. The air-conditioned serenity, the gently ordered protocol of check-in couldn’t be more blatantly anti-Indian in its sensibility. Where are the betel nut-chewing fat men, their shirts stiff with days of perspiration as they attempt to wedge themselves between you and the ticketing counter? Where is the dried daal seller, chanting the words he has chanted a thousand times a day, rendering their meaning meaningless? Where is the teeming mass of humanity, struggling to fit its own circumstances?
The tannoy announcements beckon and lull and herd us travellers into some brave, new world of becalmed tranquillity. Our queues are orderly, our voices unraised as we wait patiently in our marble edifice to undergo security checks.
Although India has had a woman Prime Minister and beloved manifestations of the female form come in many of their polytheistic deities, one soon realises the sweet quaintness of Indian pre-feminist culture as one negotiates security. Women are siphoned off into a separate queue, off to a dedicated channel where they pass through the beeping security doorway into a small curtained area where the outline of their bodies is discreetly described by the handheld detecting machine. (Quite what it detects but harmless items, Ray Bans and the foil on chewing gum packets, one can only guess …) In fact, the women aren’t even called women. They’re ladies.
While the queue-less sari-clad ladies glide through their clandestine curtain check, we men (who outnumber our gender counterparts in this terminal by at least seven to one) shamble ignominiously to our communal and very public moment with security. There are several doorway security machines; once we pass through this initial check we are confronted by a uniformed guard with the handheld – beeping – detecting machine. At this point we are offered a small raised dais in order that we may elevate ourselves for our body check. This may be to save the strained backs and injured vertebrae of the security staff. It could be, but it feels much more as though they simply want the rest of the terminal to have a good view of us, legs apart, arms outstretched, in a pre-star jump pose.
I await my star-jump moment. Ahead of me I see the drunk man. He sways upon his dais. It’s a minor victory that he managed to uplift his lanky six foot three physique up to what (for him) is a challenging height. He is further impeded by the fact that the overwhelming majority of his six foot three frame would appear to be almost exclusively legs, clad as they are in static-garnering beige-coloured slacks. (So long are his legs I wonder whether he holds some junior ministry amongst those with silly walks.) Baby giraffe-like he steadies himself, as if unused to the world. He places his feet together, arms outstretched, perhaps more in an attempt to steady himself rather than to facilitate this particular security check.
The drunk man empties his pockets, and the small change, tissues and detritus of drunkenness spill and crash into the small metal dish. Very deliberately he returns his arms to their outstretched position. The irony that he looks like a three year old pretending to be a plane is somewhat lost on him … The most cursory of checks reveals nothing remarkable. His boarding pass is stamped, in the best traditions of Indian bureaucracy, and he is invited to alight the dais, the queue behind him heaving noiselessly in anticipation.
Trying his very best to maintain all the dignity that a lunchtime
