Читать книгу India Journal - Mark McGinnis - Страница 4

rural landscape near Bodhgaya

After more than 30 hours in planes and airports I arrive in Mumbai. It is a city of 12.5 million people and the only thing I wish to see here is the airport. Before I left Aberdeen my travel agent found out that my first internal flight to Patna had been canceled and she had switched my flight from Sahara Air to Indian Airlines, but Swiss Air would not reissue the ticket until I arrived. When I arrive Swiss Air tells me I am not in their computer for the flight. I protest and they say, “OK.” They say I am on the flight, so off I go to Indian Airlines domestic terminal. At the terminal I find I’m not on the flight I am on a standby list. Indian Airlines is run in a basically 19^th century manner with much hand stamping of things and rude glances. The woman who handles the standby passengers and relegates who will get seats and who will not sits in the center of the counter area. She is surrounded by people yelling, shouting and thrusting their tickets at her for her blessing. Occasionally she looks up at the screaming mob and takes a ticket and stoically looks at it a while and then either blesses it with a seat or thrusts it back at the would-be passenger. I was never blessed and it was the only flight to Patna. I remember the Swiss Airlines agent saying that the Sahara Airline flight had actually not been canceled and possibly I could get a seat there. I ask Indian Airlines to call Sahara Airlines and see if I can get on. They refuse, they cannot call, and I cannot either. I decide to flee this strange place and I gather up my bags and rush out and grab a taxi and ask to be taken to the Sahara Airlines terminal.

My first inclination that things are not as they should be is when I notice we are in a hotel area and not an airport area. I ask what is going on when the driver pulls up to a kiosk with Sahara Airlines and the names of a bunch of other airlines painted on the side. He says the man here can call and the airline will then hold a seat for me. Well, I reluctantly say “OK.” The man at the kiosk calls and talks for quite a while. He then hangs up the phone and says everything has been arranged. I have a seat and the ticketing charge will be $49.00, and I’m to pay him. Right. I tell him to undo what ever he did. I will handle it at the airport myself. He is furious and says he can’t. We are surrounded by his cohort of young Indian men. I don’t back down. I tell my driver, who is of course part of the scam, to get into the taxi, we are going. He does and the screaming man follows us. He wants $20.00 for the phone call. I give him a dollar and he screams at us as we drive away. The driver finally gets me to the airport and tries to gouge me on the taxi fee. I give him about a fourth of what he asks for and he screams at me as I walk away dragging my bags behind me. At the Sahara Airlines office I find the flight has been canceled just as my Aberdeen agent had said. They can put me on tomorrow’s flight in the afternoon but I remember that Indian Airlines has an 8:00 a.m. flight. I find their office and book the flight with them.

Now I need a hotel room for the rest of the day as it is only about 10:00 a.m. although it feels like 10:00 p.m. to me as I’m half way around the world and haven’t slept on the 30 hours of flights. I look in my travel books and find a hotel that is close to the airline that I need in the morning. I get an auto rickshaw to take me to the hotel that is only about six to eight blocks away because my bag is too heavy to carry. The driver tries to gouge me again - the word must be that stupid Americans will pay whatever is asked. I give him what I was told at the airline office would be a fair rate to get to the hotel and he is very unhappy. I get my bag to the hotel office and two clerks who alternate between being rude and disinterested get me an overpriced room. I’m exhausted and I take it. I get my stuff into the room and collapse on the bed and finally get a little sleep.

I wake mid-afternoon and check my travel book for interesting things to see in Mumbai. The only place that really interests me is too far away to get to before dark. I decide to stay in my room and hide from the kind of people I have met so far in Mumbai. I notice a construction site out my small window. It is very strange. It looks like a cross between construction and archeology. The project looks as if it has been going on for decades. Building materials lay in rusted masses and all the along the rear there is a long row of make-shift shanties where the construction workers live with their families. This was my first big clue that, as Dorothy once said, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” People are eating, bathing, urinating, and occasionally what may be working at the site. I decide to break out my paints and do a couple of quick sketches of the shanties. I also notice a strange large crow-like bird hanging around the construction site. It is very similar to our crows only maybe a bit bigger and a combination of black and a grayish-brown color. I do one sketch of the bird and then a flock of them settle down on some scaffolding and I do a sketch of them as well. The painting was fun and I feel a bit better. I order dinner from room service. It’s OK. I’m sleepy again and take another nap. I wake at 10:00 p.m. and am not sleepy – my body, of course thinks it is morning.

At about midnight very loud yelling begins in a nearby room. It is very angry, hostile and violent. It goes on and on. I finally call the desk fearing someone is going to get hurt. The call has no effect. The yelling goes on for hours. At about 4:00 a.m. it stops. It doesn’t matter I can’t sleep anyway. I finish reading The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre, a 500 page book given to me as a travel gift by my colleague in the art department, Bill Hoar. The book is a very well written documentation of the poverty of Calcutta in the 1970s. It is a very good priming for the trip.