An American Germaphobe Returns to India, Part 1
They say fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I don’t know who “they” are but I’ll bet they were visiting India.
THE SAGA BEGINS (again)
It is April 2015, and, like that proverbial fool, I have returned.
Perhaps that’s over-stating it a bit but for an American Germaphobe in India it’s tantamount to saying that I feel stranded behind enemy lines with no means of extraction for the next several days. Hiding out as I am now in my hotel room, even now the enemy is afoot. Or “a-wing” might be more apt. There are enough insects of unusual size (IOUS’s) flouting about on the other side of the thin barrier of suspiciously unclean glass I’ll generously call a window to evoke unwanted memories of watching the movie rendition of Stephen King’s The Mist.
Indeed, in spite of having not left the hotel room since I arrived, I am fully camouflaged with “100% max super-deet” insect repellant. So much so that I find that I am leaving greasy footprints on the wood floor of the room and my wrists keep sticking to the laptop as I type. Ok, yes: “yuck,” but I feel a bit comforted that to the mosquito scouts I must look like Pigpen from those old Snoopy cartoons.
And for those that might be tempted to think that I’m being a bit overdramatic, allow me to point out that this morning as I looked out through the jaundiced glass of my hotel window, there was a crew hard at work (well, one guy was working hard and the other guy was watching really well) digging a grave — presumably mine. Hopefully this adequately drives home the severity of the situation to even the most skeptical of readers.
Ok, so why go to Bangalore? Perhaps a vacation to immerse myself in new experiences, exotic foods and rich culture? Ha! (Read on and you’ll see why that’s funny.) No, this is a trip not for pleasure, but for “casual business,” as I told the Indian customs officer upon arrival into Bangalore. I know I risk losing you as a reader in telling you that, thinking this is gonna be a tediously boring rant about work-related travel. Stick with me, though — it’s not about that at all. I only mention this as context to explain why I’ve put myself in this perilous situation. Instead, let me try and see if I can get you to experience India through my eyes: the eyes of a spoiled, scared, slightly germaphobic, solo American traveler whose most adventurous food experience entails accidentally eating the pickle sliver hidden in his McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese.
It’s not about why I am here. It’s about what happens along the way.
The joy is in the journey, as they say. (Again, the proverbial “they.” I bet “they” were in Hawaii when they said that.)
Shall I start with the flights? They are long: roughly 7 hours from Washington, D.C. to Frankfurt, a 5 hour layover there, then another 8 hours from Frankfurt to Bangalore. Pretty routine. Not much more to say about it.
No, that’s a lie. Any other germ-conscious reader will note that 15 hours is an exceptionally long time to be trapped in a sealed can of stale air, said air getting staler with each germy exhalation from the cattle crammed into the plane. Oh, and the farts. Let’s not forget about those, as much as I wish we could. Like those unnervingly suspicious “warm waters” you occasionally swim thru in the public pool, these flights are notorious for their wandering clouds of weaponized sewer funk. Each waft that envelops me is an asphyxiating reminder that with each reluctant breath I ingest countless numbers of dicraposulfphuric monoxide molecules (that’s the scientific name for these molecules) that someone’s unholy orifice has expelled and are now attaching themselves to my nasal passages, throat and lungs. When I die a few short years from now, it’s a good bet that the cause of death will be “Brown Lung” — an ailment far more insidious than Black Lung that coal miners used to get.
But I digress.
AT THE AIRPORT
So, I started off explaining how I awoke in my hotel room late on the morning of my first day in Bangalore, and like a proficient scout newly arrived in a strange and dangerous land, I began cataloguing the threats, but this jumps ahead in our story. Indeed, these late-morning encounters were not my first brush with danger here in the Dusty City. For that, we must travel mere hours back in time to my arrival at Bangalore’s Kempegowda International airport.
The Bangalore airport seems nice, as airports go. Not too crowded, either, at least at 2am in the morning local time there were not a lot of people other than the ones coming off my plane. Some of the terminal hallways are thickly carpeted, which makes dragging a wheeled suitcase a little harder than it needs to be, but the ambiance created by what seemed to be the Indian version of Kenny G’s music playing throughout the terminal was quite nice. Even customs and immigration were a breeze, but then I had just been sitting in a flying petri dish for more than 15 hours so my sense of proportion could have been somewhat skewed.
After getting my checked bag I went to currency exchange. I had $480 USD bloating my wallet just itching to be misused. That worked out after outrageous exchange fees and some suspicious mathematics to 28,000 rupees. Holding that much cash at first gave me a feeling of power like I was a cash-hoarding international drug smuggler, but this faded quickly as reality set in. As the saying goes, “mo money, mo problems.” Or as Yoda would have put it: “When 28,000 rupees your wallet gets, fold so good it will not.”
So with an obvious bulge in my back pocket and an even larger wad of tempting dough sitting in the most accessible pocket of my backpack, I grabbed my suit case and started off to the airport exit.
Then I came to my senses and switched my wallet to my front pocket, thinking that if asked, I would just tell people that yes, I am happy to see them.
Heading toward the exit, there are the inevitable (but in this case also innumerable) folks loitering about with signs for those people special enough to have had drivers hired for them. Knowing I am not so special, in spite of assurances to the contrary from my mother, I trekked on toward where I anticipated the exit doors might be.
My plan was simple: find a taxi.
This is an airport — a major one in a major city — and so I was not expecting that to be a problem. What I was expecting to be a problem was whether and how much to tip the cab driver. I know what you’re thinking: a smart boy would have looked this up prior to arrival. Well, mister or missus smarty pants (if that is your real name), I DID look it up. I found several sites that all amount to the same conclusion: there are ranges of expectation depending on variables so numerous that at 2:30am in the morning after 15 hours of mostly sleepless flying and while trying to do the math to convert rupees to dollars to figure out how much American money such things were amounting to, well, it just wasn’t an easy problem to solve in my head, that’s what I’m trying to say.
And so, distracted by all this computational load, I made my first mistake: I made eye contact with someone trying to pull weary travelers to their doom.
Ok, I’ll give you this one: doom is indeed a bit overdramatic. I made eye contact with someone trying to pull money away from weary travelers.
“You need a taxi?” I was asked.
Um… yeah.
Several years ago I was traveling with my wife and daughters in Paris. On our first day, upon exiting a train station in search of a taxi, we were approached by a large man in a dark suit who asked us the same question: “You need a taxi?” It was spoken in a French accent, so why wouldn’t he be legit? Our naïve acceptance of his offer resulted in us being lead AWAY from the flock of obviously-marked taxies waiting by the train station and around a corner to a suspiciously dark-looking sedan with no markings. As this French kidnapper opened the car’s trunk to put our suitcases in, and I observed that there was room in the trunk for the suitcases and at least three out of the four of us, the wrongness of the situation finally pushed me over an edge and I chickened out. It took several anxious minutes of arguing with the guy to get our luggage back, after which we bravely fled back to the relative safety of the real taxis.
Now here I am in Bangalore, this time alone, faced with the same question. At this point I’ve got a lot going on in my mind: there are taxi rates to anticipate, foreign exchange calculations to make, tipping ranges to rate, warp field parameters to reconfigure, etc. I’ve only got so much brain power in the best of circumstances, and now with this Paris memory also screaming for mental bandwidth, the best response my brain can come up with is: “Um, yeah.”
But why worry? After all, that was Paris, this is Bangalore. Surely this is different?
Banking on the fact that this guy was still inside the airport AND he was leading me to a kiosk within the airport with an official looking sign, I caved and followed the guy. We established a destination and he quoted me a price. Being a man of culture and cosmopolitanism, I thought to myself that this is India, the land of haggling and price-wrangling, and so I said, “sounds good, let’s go.” He then pointed toward a hazy window behind him that looked outside at the airport drop-off and pickup lanes, and said “pay me and then go see him.” Sure enough, standing out there in the dark Bangalore night, staring in at me thru the not-quite-transparent window, was a kid I hadn’t noticed until now. The kid showed me a predatory smile as our eyes met. I would swear there was a brief animal shine to his eyes but that could have just been the powers of hell.
Or maybe some passing headlights. Hard to tell.
I found my way outside the airport and the kid found me. “Eyesh” is what he seemed to be telling me his name was, but it was either that or he was referring to his animal eye shine and I wasn’t hearing it right. It was noisy and he talked quiet. Really quiet.
He led me AWAY from the taxis. This made me nervous, but I figured that since I’m like three times his weight and have advanced training in martial arts from watching Karate Kid several times (many years ago, admittedly) I would see where he was taking me.
As we walked away from relative safety, a pack of feral dogs ran by, too busy on their own errands to pay us any respect.
Fortunately, our destination was not too far, nor was it to a place around a corner out of the line of site from potential witnesses. He walked me to a parking lot containing a plethora of same-looking vehicles, which made me think this might actually be legit.
“You wait here,” he says and walks off toward one of the cars, seemingly chosen at random, since they all look alike. Well, almost all, except for the one NEXT to the one he chooses. That one has someone in it and the windows are open. I can see that the dude is smoking as every few seconds the glowing tip of his cigarette brightens whenever he takes a puff. But that’s not the one Eyesh chooses. Eyesh’s car of choice has closed windows and looks empty as far as I can tell.
Eyesh starts banging on the window. Again. And again.
And again.
After about 30 seconds of this, someone rises into view like Dracula sitting up out of his coffin. He rolls the window down and is clearly rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
Well, ok, it is like 3am local time now. Finding him sleeping is not too far into the realm of unexpectedness. Probably he’s a union guy on a mandatory nap break.
A longer-than-necessary conversation ensues between Eyesh and the driver dude. I get the distinct impression that obedience to Eyesh is life for the dude and his family, and indeed, as the dude pulls the car out, Eyesh accompanies the vehicle like a master walking his dog, bringing the “taxi” over to me. Once they pull up to where I am complacently waiting, Eyesh grabs my suitcase and says, “you come.” Unlike the feral dogs running around in the airport parking lot, I obey.
He puts my suitcase in the back of the car, and I hop into the back seat and close the door. The driver has been given the paper with instructions as to where to take me. He seems just a little too intently focused on memorizing its content, staring at it intensely almost as though he is intentionally ignoring all other forms of sensory stimuli.
Eyesh is standing right outside the door and staring at me.
And staring.
I notice this but am busy getting other stuff situated like finding my seatbelt, pulling out my battery-starved phone, pulling my bulging wallet out of my front pocket so that I can sit like a normal human being, etc., taking my time and making every effort to avoid eye contact. Or Eyesh contact. (I’ve heard it both ways.)
Time passes. He’s still staring.
Ok, so I’m in India and clearly an outsider. I may not be as culturally savvy as I had pretended (you know, so I could blend in). But I think I know what he wants. And ordinarily I’m happy to oblige and tip for good service. But I really don’t like the staring. And plus, the smallest bill I have is 100 rupees. That seems like a lot and I certainly don’t want to be the sucker who over-tips due to either ignorance or faulty arithmetic. So I am most definitely not interested in slipping him a cool 100.
Time passes.
Suddenly, like a troubled manual transmission being prematurely shoved into reverse, the gears of calculation grind in my head. Wait a sec… 100 rupees… that’s like $1.40. Well, crap. That changes everything.
I open my window and look Eyesh in the eyes. Those staring, haunted eyes. And I realize two things. This dude doesn’t blink. Ever. Nor does he avert his gaze like a polite human being would. The second thing I realize is how much he reminds me of one of X-Files’ more exotic bad guys: a small, legless, Indian man on a squeaky-wheeled cart, propelling himself using his arms as he relentlessly stalks his victims. He had a creepy stare, too, just like Eyesh. They could almost be the same creature.
Well, except that Eyesh had legs. And didn’t squeak when he moved. But that stare of his was pretty darn creepy.
I figured I had to be bold. Weakness is death.
“Are you waiting for something?” I ask.
Silent stare.
Time for a more aggressive tactic. “Are you expecting something?” I ask. I figured with this I’d get him to feel shame for staring at me like my dog does when I’m juggling hotdogs.
Mistake #2: don’t ask a question if you’re not prepared for answers you’re not looking for.
“It is your decision,” Eyesh informs me.
I’m trapped: decisions are choices. Choices have consequences. “Consequences” sounds bad. I don’t like bad.
So I guess I’d better pay the lad, plus a little extra to buy insurance for my safety. I hand him 200 rupees which ought to put a smile on his face and STOP THAT INFERNAL STARE.
It does not.
And what the hell is taking this driver so long to get started?!?!?
As if on cue, once the money has passed over the threshold of the window, the driver, until now sitting idly in the driver’s seat staring out at the open road, returns to life with a jerk and starts the engine.
And so finally, with a sputter, a few toodles of the horn and some flashing of the high beams, we’re off.
But to where???
Part 2 of the series will continue the saga…
