5.22.07

Its approaching midnight and I’m sitting in one of the crappiest “Executive” airport lounges for KLM/Northwest airlines I have been privileged enough to grace.  Japan has the automated beer pourer complete with the glass tipping for bubble gentleness, and  a separate spigot on the same machine that deposits the perfect amount of foam. Not to mention a view out on to the main Narita runway with all of these flights – mainly 747 which I never get tired of seeing, constantly landing and taking off.  My home town of Minneapolis has a nice free bar – they all do actually – and good internet access.  This one has five different types of furniture (I’m not all that concerned, its just you get used to seeing a well designed and thought out place rather than comfy chairs being added giving reverence to each decade that they appeared in here), it has a great retro square pattern on the carpet – but it truly is the real McCoy, from the 70's it seems.  The carpet is a great place to center on.  We are in Delhi.  Its 90+ outside and its almost midnight.  Air conditioning even in the lounge has that "I’m about to die" feeling to it, sort of like the air its pumping out is alive, but not out of choice.  That same carpet that absorbs the fetid smell of the moldy musky air also serves as a sponge for the sweat of the somewhat huddled masses that - after their trip through Delhi - consider this lounge to be refuge.  That same carpet does a great job of absorbing the smoke from the cigarette lounge that I can reach from the non-smoking section that I am currently sitting in. by merely extending my right arm out to my side.  There – I’m in it, now I’m not.  I’m in it, now I’m not, all from the comfort of my own sweat supported  chair.  I’m not going to stay here long.  Its actually a great joke played on all of us that traditionally walk proudly by all the non-Platinum or non-first class/business class people at all the other airports and disappear into the sweet seclusion of the afore-mentioned restricted access lounges.  The world outside of this lounge is relatively the same temperature as inside, however there is no smoke, no fetid furniture, (really the matching or lack there-of was not a big deal to me, just added to the overall age picture of this place for you the reader),  no carpet with some sort of airport hoof and mouth disease brewing in it, and the air seems to actually be moving out there.  On the upside, I am sitting next to the old Hindi woman wearing all of her jewelry and nice sari.  Obviously someone that travels – if not lives overseas, but still very much India.  She was reading this dog eared little hardcover book in Hindi, singing along as she read.  It was very cute.  I took a photo of her which she may have found a bit off putting, what with me being two feet away from her and using a flash. . . . I didn’t really do that, but it would have been a great photo.  And of course now, not having a picture, its going to be a thousand words that you have to wade through.  

Listen,  its been a long day, a good day, but a long day.  Travel since 11am and its going to last another 20 or so hours.  That stuff you just read is as funny as I’m going to get, so either get out while you can or pour yourself a drink and revel in the fact that someone else out there is more on the margin of insanity and dull wittedness than you are.

Anyway.  As I mentioned in the last entry, this morning was my last part of the buying trip.  Literally three hours to finish things up.  I did get that great oil lamp from the guy I was haggling with.  I got it for a price that we were all happy with.  I finished up buying all the old print blocks, cleaned up some loose ends with Sunny, and was on my way.  An hour ride from the islands of Cochin to the airport, choked with diesel transport trucks and busses and garbage haulers pumping exhaust into your window, which at certain points actually seemed to cool the car down it was getting so hot out.  Once you get out of town and close to the airport, things start looking like a rainforest should:  a few great rivers with green trees billowing out over their banks, more and more people walking and on bikes, and then a tain track that leaves one long trail of garbage and human refuse, then the trees and water again, then the airport.  One and a half hour flight to Bombay (with a good meal – on Kingfisher airlines – the beer company over here that started up a very good airline), an hour layover in Bombay and then another hour and a half flight to Delhi.  I took a 45 minute cab ride from Delhi to the truly four star Taj Mahal Hotel in the middle of the grand houses and embassies of the city and managed to weasel my way into their gym to take a long steam bath, shower and change into fresh clothes and had a nice meal.  Then the 45 minute cab ride to the international airport.  After a long conversation with the cabbie about how much he makes, how it works driving a cab, how its tough during the slow season, he tried to rip me off by doubling the price and claiming things were different coming to this airport.  I got out of the cab, ignoring him,  and went into the airport.  That is now where you find me.  Actually I have had my fill of the lounge and should probably get up and walk off some of the dinner before I get on the 9 hour flight to Amsterdam and the 8-9 hour flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis.

Now I am on the flight somewhere over Greenland or Novascotia two and a half hours out of Minneapolis.  The flight from Delhi to Amsterdam was cramped but ok.  There were four babies in my row, three of whom were good, the fourth not so much.  It really only takes one.  But to tell you the truth, now that I have a 8 month old son who we have traveled with, my sympathy levels are certainly higher, but it still sucks having a screaming baby next to you on a flight for 7 hours.  Schipohl, Amsterdam’s international airport is a big enough place to wander around in if you have a few hours worth of layover, so after a brief and small breakfast in the KLM/NW airline lounge (a dramatic step up from Delhi), I just wandered around for an hour until the flight.  Other than a lady not being allowed to fly, and therefore pulled off the plane, it has been an uneventful flight.  

India is always an interesting trip for me.  I am always looking forward to going there, but I am also always quite happy to leave.  It’s a fantastic place – in the full meaning of the word fantastic.  You go from the highs of exotic spice markets, big courtyards covered with ginger drying in the sun, the grace and ease of Indian women in beautiful and spotless saris, fresh mangoes, food with well infused spices – almost as if whatever you are eating was fed or grown on garlic, chili and ginger.  Then the other side.  The garbage choked rivers and canals, the amount of well below the poverty line people, the pollution, the sweat, the lack of personal space, the largest slum areas in the world.  India is easily the most impactive place I have every been to – by a long shot.   Kerala itself hold a special place for me.  It is, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, quite different from the rest of India.  The highest literacy and educational rates, different food, different traditions, different language.  Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Christians all living within a couple square mile neighborhood in perfect harmony.  Much more laid back – for India – than anywhere else in the country I have been to.  Less poverty, less garbage everywhere, green forests, water everywhere.  You can walk through the streets without being accosted by beggars and vendors and three wheel drivers – that is until you get to the market, but even there its markedly less than the rest of India.  For my business its great.  Unusual artifacts that are particular to this part of Inida, with a strong influence form Asia, Africa and Europe as a result of the long standing trade routes to here.  So I am glad to be going home, but I always welcome the chance to go back to Kerala.