What if you held the world in your arms tonight?
I’m in a funny place. Physically, I’ve rarely felt worse than this; I had a cold, plain and simple, but thousands of miles in a hermetically sealed aircraft, running around knocking people out of the way and extreme culture shock on top of five days’ chaos have destroyed my immune system. In addition, the standard cold has been given greater definition by the fact my clogged-up ears, nose and throat meant the pressure changes upon descent were the most horrifically painful they’ve been in years. The first flight shouldn’t have been so bad – three hours from Delhi to Dubai, so not too high an altitude – but I was a whimpering, sobbing, screaming wreck of a human being by the time the plane levelled out. It is the most bizarre sensation – kind of like first your ears and then your head are going to explode with pain and then you’re going to drop like a stone from a clouded sky. Now, my ears are painful and only adjusting slowly to the fact I’m on the ground.
But I get ahead of myself, as always. I couldn’t sleep on Wednesday night. The boys stole in to get me, and we sat playing our last few rounds of poker in the small hours of the morning. We play an Indian variant called flash poker – three cards instead of five, and you can’t change your cards – and despite winning a massive pot in the middle, I ended up breaking exactly even, no money left. Shlok did well, quadrupling his money. I was impressed. At about two in the morning, I left the game and wandered to bed, coughing and sneezing enough to keep myself awake. I had to get up again at six, and immediately knew it was a bad idea to be conscious. I was feverish and ill and sleepless, and my mother immediately came over all maternal. “You have to go,” she said anxiously. “Take paracetamol.”
“I want to go home,” I said pathetically. That’s the thing, though – home was two flights, two continents, two exit visas and six thousand miles away, but I wanted to go. We set out in the twilight of morning, passing through Delhi as the city woke up. There was only room for Pedar, me, my mother, two of my uncles and the driver, so we left the boys at home. I’d promised to jump on the boys if they didn’t see me off, so they were there, sleepily sitting and waiting for me. Darling, darling boys, incapable of showing emotion. They gave me awkward hugs, best wishes, told me to call if I heard any news, and stood back looking uncomfortable while other people got emotional. I made Shlok hold out his hands, and when his eyes were closed poured the contents of my purse into them. It came to about eight hundred rupees, all told; enough to buy him some books or Game Boy games and tide him through the next week’s poker games. For Chicklu, I had the complete Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all five parts, plus short story Young Zaphod Plays It Safe. I don’t think he will get the joke, somehow (ie, that he is the Guide) but he should like the books. For Sunny, I only had good wishes and the fact I will miss him. And they all waved as we left, driving slowly to avoid the rickshaws and stray dogs and shouting vegetable sellers and people coming the other way.
My relationship with my country of origin is a strange one. The first couple of days I’m there, I hate it. Then I get used to it. After a week, I start to think in Hindi again, and enjoy myself a little. On the drive to the airport, through the city and its suburbs, I stare out the window and feel the endless regret that I don’t live here, because I could have. I really could. And then, I’m glad to be home as well, because nothing about where home is could ever be simple.
Delhi airport is unusual inasmuch only actual passengers can enter the terminal building. Goodbyes have to be said outside. Once they were over, Pedar and I went in to check in, and while I was waiting my mother and uncle (Australian, very cool) sidled up to me. “Hi.”
And before I could ask the obvious question, they showed me an official-looking piece of paper. “Since when are you two government officials of India?” I asked.
“Since this morning,” said my uncle happily. “I called in some favours.”
Pedar said, “Only here.”
I was glad they got in. My mother fed me coffee and paracetamol tablets, and after we’d said our goodbyes again, Pedar and I went through to departures. The security control was first, and it’s standard for everyone to be frisked, so I had five minutes’ conversation with a female security officer. “You are not Indian?” she said, peering at my passport.
“NRI,” I said. “British.”
She still looked puzzled. “Punjabi?”
I shook my head. “Delhiite. And half-Bengali.”
She nodded. “You are Indian. Have a good flight.”
I was thinking about it when I was sitting in the gate, waiting to board. Pedar was reading the Hindustan Times with a serious expression, so I didn’t bother him. That brief exchange made me wonder if perhaps this constant cultural angst isn’t permanent after all. It’s a start, surely, to know who and what you are. I don’t belong nowhere, I belong everywhere. Something like that, maybe.
That first flight was decidedly uneventful, apart from the fact it was late and my ears were ready to explode. I took a cutting from Pedar’s Hindustan Times, a wonderful article terribly reminiscent of the Daily Mail, talking about the delayed planes, gridlocked roads and increased disease caused by the coldest weather in years, with temperatures dropping to twenty point four degrees Celsius. Worth keeping.
In Dubai, the plane being half an hour late caused us a problem. Pedar and I ran though the gate, past the transit security controls, blatantly jumped three or four queues, knocked people out of the way on escalators, running headlong with trailing luggage to the other end of the airport to the departure gate for the Manchester flight. It was departing at two twenty. We arrived there, breathless, at eighteen minutes past two. I kid you not. They locked the doors immediately behind us and had us sit down in a hurry so the plane could begin taxi. In a stroke of irony, my ears equalised the moment we took off again.
Of course, this meant our luggage didn’t arrive in Manchester and for once it really wasn’t the airlines’ fault. They sent it across today, Christmas Eve notwithstanding, so I’m okay with it.
I’m okay with a lot of things. Physically, I’m in a bad place. Mentally, in a very very good one. Last night, I texted and rang up everyone who’d wanted to know, and got lovely texts off Mrs Colvin, Mrs Custard and Rice-Oxley. They were laying bets on me. I’m amused. Also told Patrick, who was so excited he stole his sister’s phone to text back with, and Sarah, who filled me in on everyone else. She got in, of course, for Chemistry at St. John’s, Laura got in for Medicine at St. Anne’s, and I met Becky in Tesco’s this morning, and she’s got in for History also at St. Anne’s. Helena hasn’t got in, and while she says she’s “not too pissed off”, I feel bad about it. She should have got in, she really should. Which leaves two people I don’t know about – Rola and Lizzie. As it stands, five out of the ten applicants have got in, which should make the school happy. The Cambridge people don’t find out until after Christmas.
My mother went to Chittaranjan Park this morning, so I didn’t call until after I woke up. Actually, I woke up convinced it had all been a fever dream, and went downstairs to find the letter still sitting on the kitchen table, read and re-read and coated with glitter from Hannah’s card. I jumped up and down a bit and called my mother and Dadu, who sounded ecstatic. I said later it was probably a good thing I didn’t call them last night, two am their time, for Dadu would have woken up his family and his household and all his tenants and the entirety of CR Park and probably most of South Delhi regardless. I’m happy I’m happy, but I’m so happy he’s happy too. His greatest ambition is to see me graduate, and to that effect he’s started exercising and eating healthily just to live another four years. I tell him he’s going to live three times that anyway, and love him for it.
My grandmother and the boys were the next to be told, and they’re holding a party in my absence, I know. Sunny had them practising their Mexican wave technique just so they could celebrate properly. I miss them. I do wish UCAS had updated with this, for if I’d known I really could have celebrated with all my family. They would have called Punditji too (he has a mobile!) so there could be religious celebration, as well. I miss all of them.
Nupur, too – it’s Christmas Eve and her fifteenth birthday. I’m going to call her now, tell her my news and listen to hers, and be happy.
But I get ahead of myself, as always. I couldn’t sleep on Wednesday night. The boys stole in to get me, and we sat playing our last few rounds of poker in the small hours of the morning. We play an Indian variant called flash poker – three cards instead of five, and you can’t change your cards – and despite winning a massive pot in the middle, I ended up breaking exactly even, no money left. Shlok did well, quadrupling his money. I was impressed. At about two in the morning, I left the game and wandered to bed, coughing and sneezing enough to keep myself awake. I had to get up again at six, and immediately knew it was a bad idea to be conscious. I was feverish and ill and sleepless, and my mother immediately came over all maternal. “You have to go,” she said anxiously. “Take paracetamol.”
“I want to go home,” I said pathetically. That’s the thing, though – home was two flights, two continents, two exit visas and six thousand miles away, but I wanted to go. We set out in the twilight of morning, passing through Delhi as the city woke up. There was only room for Pedar, me, my mother, two of my uncles and the driver, so we left the boys at home. I’d promised to jump on the boys if they didn’t see me off, so they were there, sleepily sitting and waiting for me. Darling, darling boys, incapable of showing emotion. They gave me awkward hugs, best wishes, told me to call if I heard any news, and stood back looking uncomfortable while other people got emotional. I made Shlok hold out his hands, and when his eyes were closed poured the contents of my purse into them. It came to about eight hundred rupees, all told; enough to buy him some books or Game Boy games and tide him through the next week’s poker games. For Chicklu, I had the complete Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all five parts, plus short story Young Zaphod Plays It Safe. I don’t think he will get the joke, somehow (ie, that he is the Guide) but he should like the books. For Sunny, I only had good wishes and the fact I will miss him. And they all waved as we left, driving slowly to avoid the rickshaws and stray dogs and shouting vegetable sellers and people coming the other way.
My relationship with my country of origin is a strange one. The first couple of days I’m there, I hate it. Then I get used to it. After a week, I start to think in Hindi again, and enjoy myself a little. On the drive to the airport, through the city and its suburbs, I stare out the window and feel the endless regret that I don’t live here, because I could have. I really could. And then, I’m glad to be home as well, because nothing about where home is could ever be simple.
Delhi airport is unusual inasmuch only actual passengers can enter the terminal building. Goodbyes have to be said outside. Once they were over, Pedar and I went in to check in, and while I was waiting my mother and uncle (Australian, very cool) sidled up to me. “Hi.”
And before I could ask the obvious question, they showed me an official-looking piece of paper. “Since when are you two government officials of India?” I asked.
“Since this morning,” said my uncle happily. “I called in some favours.”
Pedar said, “Only here.”
I was glad they got in. My mother fed me coffee and paracetamol tablets, and after we’d said our goodbyes again, Pedar and I went through to departures. The security control was first, and it’s standard for everyone to be frisked, so I had five minutes’ conversation with a female security officer. “You are not Indian?” she said, peering at my passport.
“NRI,” I said. “British.”
She still looked puzzled. “Punjabi?”
I shook my head. “Delhiite. And half-Bengali.”
She nodded. “You are Indian. Have a good flight.”
I was thinking about it when I was sitting in the gate, waiting to board. Pedar was reading the Hindustan Times with a serious expression, so I didn’t bother him. That brief exchange made me wonder if perhaps this constant cultural angst isn’t permanent after all. It’s a start, surely, to know who and what you are. I don’t belong nowhere, I belong everywhere. Something like that, maybe.
That first flight was decidedly uneventful, apart from the fact it was late and my ears were ready to explode. I took a cutting from Pedar’s Hindustan Times, a wonderful article terribly reminiscent of the Daily Mail, talking about the delayed planes, gridlocked roads and increased disease caused by the coldest weather in years, with temperatures dropping to twenty point four degrees Celsius. Worth keeping.
In Dubai, the plane being half an hour late caused us a problem. Pedar and I ran though the gate, past the transit security controls, blatantly jumped three or four queues, knocked people out of the way on escalators, running headlong with trailing luggage to the other end of the airport to the departure gate for the Manchester flight. It was departing at two twenty. We arrived there, breathless, at eighteen minutes past two. I kid you not. They locked the doors immediately behind us and had us sit down in a hurry so the plane could begin taxi. In a stroke of irony, my ears equalised the moment we took off again.
Of course, this meant our luggage didn’t arrive in Manchester and for once it really wasn’t the airlines’ fault. They sent it across today, Christmas Eve notwithstanding, so I’m okay with it.
I’m okay with a lot of things. Physically, I’m in a bad place. Mentally, in a very very good one. Last night, I texted and rang up everyone who’d wanted to know, and got lovely texts off Mrs Colvin, Mrs Custard and Rice-Oxley. They were laying bets on me. I’m amused. Also told Patrick, who was so excited he stole his sister’s phone to text back with, and Sarah, who filled me in on everyone else. She got in, of course, for Chemistry at St. John’s, Laura got in for Medicine at St. Anne’s, and I met Becky in Tesco’s this morning, and she’s got in for History also at St. Anne’s. Helena hasn’t got in, and while she says she’s “not too pissed off”, I feel bad about it. She should have got in, she really should. Which leaves two people I don’t know about – Rola and Lizzie. As it stands, five out of the ten applicants have got in, which should make the school happy. The Cambridge people don’t find out until after Christmas.
My mother went to Chittaranjan Park this morning, so I didn’t call until after I woke up. Actually, I woke up convinced it had all been a fever dream, and went downstairs to find the letter still sitting on the kitchen table, read and re-read and coated with glitter from Hannah’s card. I jumped up and down a bit and called my mother and Dadu, who sounded ecstatic. I said later it was probably a good thing I didn’t call them last night, two am their time, for Dadu would have woken up his family and his household and all his tenants and the entirety of CR Park and probably most of South Delhi regardless. I’m happy I’m happy, but I’m so happy he’s happy too. His greatest ambition is to see me graduate, and to that effect he’s started exercising and eating healthily just to live another four years. I tell him he’s going to live three times that anyway, and love him for it.
My grandmother and the boys were the next to be told, and they’re holding a party in my absence, I know. Sunny had them practising their Mexican wave technique just so they could celebrate properly. I miss them. I do wish UCAS had updated with this, for if I’d known I really could have celebrated with all my family. They would have called Punditji too (he has a mobile!) so there could be religious celebration, as well. I miss all of them.
Nupur, too – it’s Christmas Eve and her fifteenth birthday. I’m going to call her now, tell her my news and listen to hers, and be happy.
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