Crossing Cultures: Hiking boots go for a ride
In early summer 1987 my cousin Esther and I embarked on our second trip to India, destination: Kashmir. We were excited about visiting the Himalayas and an entirely unique part of the country both culturally and topographically. We stuffed our ungainly convertible suitcase backpacks with all the things we thought necessary for trekking: waterproof ponchos, sunhats, handkerchiefs and bandanas, blank journals, iodine tablets, and plenty of antibiotic ointment. Unable to squeeze in my hiking boots, I tied them to the outside of my pack. Little did I anticipate how this would precipitate a crisis and uniquely Indian interlude.
We reviewed our strategy for exiting the airport early during our flight, knowing to take a taxi from the regulated queue and to avoid people approaching us to offer a ride. The men who cut the taxi queues were potentially untrustworthy, might take us somewhere other than our destination, and charge us large sums of money.
After countless Indian meals on Pan Am (delightful on the first round, but increasingly less appetizing as we succumbed to the discomfort and disorientation of so many hours in a small airborne tube), two flights and a long layover, we landed in Delhi. Clearing passport control seemed to take hours. And customs was arduous. We were detained in a claustrophobic thicket of passengers whose suitcases were splayed open and being rooted through by agents, revealing everything from packets of cookies and snacks to clothing, baby toys, drugstore purchases, and small electronics intended for family, friends, or perhaps for sale. My weathered second-hand camera caught the attention of the agent pawing through my belongings. He quizzed me about the camera, wrote a description in my passport, and issued stern warnings to have the camera with me when exiting the country, or face severe consequences.
As Esther and I made our way to the airport exit, I had the out-of-body sensation that comes with extreme jet lag and disorientation. I felt as if my head was disconnected, bobbing somewhere slightly above my neck. The air was heavy and stale, a combination of inadequate air conditioning and oppressive heat pushing relentlessly in from outside. Thin women clad in worn out saris stooped over like fiddlehead ferns, wielding their whiskbrooms. Esther pushed our laden luggage cart.
A sea of faces met us outside the terminal. We navigated through the crush of expectant drivers and tour guides holding up hand-lettered signs for passengers, families awaiting loved ones, and numerous touts jostling to get our attention. Within seconds, two men descended. One commandeered our luggage cart, pushing it onto my heels. The other tout offered us a cab and a tour of Delhi, requested payment in dollars, and inquired if we had a hotel. I was alarmed at this rapid turn of events and attempted to insert questions such as whether they had a meter that worked. Seemingly out of nowhere, a taxi pulled up to the curb and the two touts quickly loaded our luggage in the trunk and placed one suitcase on the roof. No sooner was the talkative tout asking our destination and entreating us to take our seats, than a third fellow appeared and reprimanded the two touts (we found out near the end of our adventure he was the taxi supervisor). Our luggage was summarily unloaded and placed back on the cart, with barely enough time to remove the suitcase on the roof before the taxi sped off. The tout who had loaded and unloaded our luggage began wheeling the cart toward a small station, the official taxi stand.
As we regrouped to properly queue for a taxi, I realized with considerable alarm that my hiking boots were missing; they had been left in the trunk. I contemplated how I was to spend weeks trekking in the Himalayas without my boots. I tried to convey this to the tout who had mucked with our luggage to no avail since he understood no English. My attempts to engage various men working at the taxi stand were waved aside; they were too busy coordinating rides. I turned to a Sikh gentleman in the taxi queue, related my plight, and asked him for assistance. After numerous conversations facilitated by the Sikh gentleman, the taxi supervisor began to mercilessly beat the luggage tout over the head and on his back. It was quite dismaying. As is typical in India, one is never alone: a crowd of onlookers was observing our unfolding saga.
I was instructed to seek out the airport manager and, leaving Esther amidst our belongings, set off to a far corner of the airport. I related my story to a bureaucrat in a small office. A square 12-inch hole in the wall revealed a somewhat bigger adjoining office where another bureaucrat sat behind a desk and peered through. Most of the time I could only see the other bureaucrat’s arm and elbow, but occasionally he would bend down and reveal his face while I met with his colleague. The small office bureaucrat suggested I should be more careful in future and announced there was nothing he could do. I was escorted to the airport police station, located in a fenced in compound. Flowering trees were planted in the dirt and small stones marked a walkway.
A guard inquired my business and waved me in. Police officers and other staff were lolling about and chatting with one another. My arrival was of little interest. A man reclining on a charpoy (a wooden frame strung with rope) propped himself up on one elbow and inquired what I needed. He told me to take a seat in a row of plastic molded bucket chairs. I repeated my story to various people several more times. I decided that recovering the boots, despite being many years old and well worn, would have no priority unless I valued them high. I placed a price tag of $100 on them, a fortune in India at the time. Eventually, a policeman wandered out and asked me if I could identify the man who turned out to be the taxi supervisor. The policeman began swinging his billyclub around and I became nervous imagining a line-up and more beatings.
The policeman accompanied me back to the taxi stand. Esther relayed that the taxi supervisor had departed on the back of a policeman’s motorcycle to hunt for the taxi. I wondered how the specific taxi could even be identified let alone found, but Esther told me the taxi supervisor knew the license plate number. The policeman who had escorted us chatted with several people, announced to us that all would be well, and departed. The taxi supervisor returned from his motorcycle escapade empty-handed and stated he would deliver my boots to our hotel once they were found. I declared I would stay until I could recuperate the boots in person and asked him to come with me to the police station.
The taxi supervisor assured us that taxis congregated in Delhi in a specific location and that the driver might be located and enjoined to return to the airport or would return eventually to seek more airport customers. To me it seemed an utter impossibility. In a metropolis of tens of millions with hundreds of thousands of taxis there was no way the taxi or my boots would ever return. I imagined the boots would be discovered in the trunk, sold, and tried to picture who might purchase them.
Back at the police station, I told my story for the umpteenth time to yet another police officer. I was asked to wait and was grilled about my age, whether I was married, and if it was true that sex was quite freewheeling in the U.S. The inquirer pressed his case, asking me to confirm that all American women had masses of unscrupulous sex before marriage. This would not be the first or the last time that being a young single American female in India elicited this kind of prurient interest, accompanied by uncomfortable sniggering and a glint in the eye. The 48 hours of travel, exhaustion, sweat, and mosquitoes biting my ankles were wearing on me. I wished fervently to be with Esther and worried about how she was managing with our luggage.
I was offered a cot or a cup of tea. The taxi supervisor headed off on the back of a motorcycle to search once more for the taxi. Another hour passed.
The taxi supervisor returned, swinging his arms. The taxi had returned to the airport! I hurried back to Esther and our luggage. As is her wont, Esther had charmed the surrounding crowd and was engaged in friendly conversation. The taxi pulled up to the curb. Onlookers who had been following the chain of events craned to watch what would unfold next. The trunk was opened and, lo and behold, my hiking boots were present. A wordless but audible exclamation arose from the crowd as the hiking boots were extracted. The taxi supervisor scrutinized my worn boots with considerable disdain; I’m sure they did not live up to their costly irreplaceable reputation.
We thanked everyone who had helped us and joined the taxi queue for an uneventful ride into Delhi. We never learned if the taxi driver or touts knew the hiking boots were still in the trunk, if the taxi supervisor was in cahoots with the touts, if the recovery was a one-in-a-million or a completely predictable outcome in a city and country where apparent chaos was often carefully choreographed. I was mighty relieved to have the boots and put them to good use in the mountains of Kashmir. It was not the first or the last time I would marvel at the tight web of connections between people on the Indian subcontinent.
