Back on US soil again...it feels good and immediately we expect that everything will work since we were back in familiar territory. Better think again! Travel home started on Friday morning with us getting up in Kolkata and having a quick breakfast with Chii, Katerina (from Slovakia and soon leaving for Darjeeling), Father Donald and others at BMS. Taxi to the airport then a two hour flight to Delhi...Himalayas in the distant north looked like low clouds on the horizon. Villages below appeared to be very close together with only a few fields separating one from the next. How else can 1,000,000,000 people fit in this country? Arriving in Delhi we were met by our driver who took us around to see a few more sights before arriving back at the travel office where we met up with the owner,Baljeet Singh, a Sikh. He had invited to his house for dinner. Baljeet introduced us to his daughter, Simron (14 and happy to practice her English with Jane). She brought cokes and tea then started bringing plates and dishes of food for us. Rice, dal, chick peas in spicy sauce, and sliced cucumber and tomato as well as raita (curd spiced with more onion and cucumber). For dessert there was a honey sweetened treat made from ground chick peas. Baljeet's wife stayed in the kitchen and appeared to be too shy to do more than smile and say "Hello" or was it just unacceptable for her to visit with the men and guests during the meal?. Baljeet's brother-in laws (Manj from New York and Tony from Delhi) were also visiting and we talked about conflict in the world and agreed that since war has been a constant in the hisory of the world and even though we hope for a better future there is little reason to believe it will change. Meanwhile, Jane and Simron went to another room to play with Simron's little cousin. She wants to be a fashion designer and when Jane asked if she thought that women in India will someday adopt western clothing as the men have, she said, "They don't wear sarees in America?"
Soon we were back on a plane chasing the night from Delhi to New York. Our flight left at 1 AM and arrived in NY at about 5 AM the same night/morning (early Saturday). We flew through the darkness for about 16 hours as we dozed, watched movies, read, ate three meals, and tracked our progress across Afghanistan, the Aral Sea, western Russia or Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, Norway, North of Iceland, across Greenland, Labrador, and finally the USA. It was a very long night...
Arriving in New York we were excited to be home and enjoy the comraderie of our fellow Americans and enjoy the luxuries that we now appreciate a bit more. One of the first Americans we met on the plane loudly complained about how she was sick of "all the Indians cutting in front of her all the time". She also generally described India as dirty and the people lazy. Did she not realize that most of the people around us were Indians that were fluent in English and were simply too polite to argue with her. We found her to be an ugly American and were not interested in being associated with her. This experience made us appreciate the Americans that we had met in Kolkata who were cut from different cloth.
After boarding the last plane for the flight to Detroit, our captain informed us that there was a problem with the flush handle on the toilet and management had decided that since it was unreasonable to expect the passengers to "hold it" for the one hour flight to Detroit the flight was being cancelled. Having just arrived from India where it was common to see busses held together with twine, overloaded transportation of all types, bamboo scaffolding constructed on the sides of high rise buildings, and leaking boats that were considered OK as long as water being bailed out was keeping up with water coming in...this toilet flush button didn't seem like it should be a big concern. But this is how it is in America. They put us up in the Sheraton and here I am using their computer and enjoying our accommodations at the expense of the airline that cancelled the flight. It is good to be home. Rog
