Thursday – October 18th – London, England
I fall asleep at 11pm and set an alarm to wake up at 7am so I can play with the girls before they head to school. Then it’s a shower and off to Alex’s office at Mortimer House in my favorite London neighborhood, Soho.
We walk through Chinatown and the theatre and shopping district. Everything is familiar from my last trip to London when I was directing an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? and I’m suddenly reminiscent and remembering how much I love this city.
We make an obligatory walk through Liberty, my favorite and most unaffordable store. The Christmas floor is open and running, even though it’s the second week of October, and the music and twinkly lights and decorations are everywhere. I buy nothing, but I’m high off the contact buzz of the consumeristic Christmas spirit.
After a few hours of work, Alex and his business partner, Tim, and I have lunch on the first floor of their office building where I eat Shashuka and eggs. DELICIOUS. Then I’m off in an Uber to the airport where they are VERY STRICT about the amount of liquids you are allowed to bring on the plane and I am having another panic attack at TSA trying to ditch the Evian face sprays I thought were going to be really important on these transcontinental flights. I blame Busy Philipps for making me believe it was all going to be face masks and spa days in Economy. The screening woman takes pity on me and I get through easily after all. I’m in the bulkhead on the aisle in the front on the flight from London to Mumbai. My seat mates are incredibly nice. Both live in London full time, and both are Indian. Both of them travel the world often. The woman in the window seat has a son in Silicon valley and a daughter in India, so spends a lot of time in transit. The man in the middle is in information technology security and has a business office in India as well as the US. They are thrilled I’m going to so many places in India and give me a few tips for what to see and look for while I’m there. They try to teach me a little Hindi, but it’s hopeless. The vegetarian meal on this flight is my first taste of India and then it’s a movie marathon because I am team no sleep.
Friday October 19th
When we land in Mumbai two things stick out to me right away. One, there are cardboard and tarp slums RIGHT OVER THE FENCE from the international runway. I note that this would never fly in the US, if for no other reason than optics and first impressions. We have slums and homelessness, but we would NEVER allow it right there. Second, I can’t SEE anything. The air is THICK. It’s about 7am local time (I think), so the morning sun combined with the poor air quality creates a barrier and I can’t really see anything beyond the immediate surrounding area. I have a two hour layover in Mumbai, but the word “layover” does not accurately describe what I am about to endure. First, I go through customs and immigration. It’s a long line, and when I get to the front, I’m told I’m in the wrong line for visa holders. Get in another line, get my entry stamp of approval and picture taken. Then it’s luggage retrieval. Customs scans. Then when I get to my new gate area, I have to recheck my bag and get my next boarding pass. Then it’s BACK through TSA, even through I never left the airport. Recheck passport. SIX boarding pass/passport checks before I reach my gate. I have not slept or used the bathroom in HOURS and when I finally reach my gate area, it’s ten minutes until boarding and the only bathroom in the gate area is closed for cleaning. None of the food or beverage vendors are open. I pace the terminal trying not to pee myself. There is a water feature that is also a musical instrument. It is beautiful, but not helping my current bladder state.
I arrive around noon local time in Chandigarh, India.
I walk off the plane and head into the terminal to collect my bag. This is the first time I actually look around and notice my giant whiteness. I am tall, I am a woman, and I am SUPER WHITE. I am the only white woman in sight as a matter of fact. There are a couple of white men, but I’m the only woman. As I wait for my bags, I really look at everyone. The security guards wear turbans on their heads. There are a couple of men pushing a cart that looks like it should be pulled by a horse or donkey. It’s a Chai cart and they’re hoping the passengers will buy some tea while they wait. They ring a bell and shout as they pull the cart through the baggage claim. Having been warned about street vendors and food safety, I don’t buy any chai—but I really want to.
I collect my bag and head outside where to my relief a woman is standing holding a sign with my name on it. I smile and shake her hand. Before I left, I sent the university personnel my version of the brown M&M test. Basically, rock stars request odd things—like a bowl of M&Ms without the brown ones—when on the road because they know if those requests are filled, the rest of the visit will likely go well. My brown M&M test was to have a woman greet me at the airport. I had been warned from others not to travel alone as a woman—so this was my test to put my mind at ease since I was traveling to India for the first time all by myself. Harleen works in the international affairs office at Chandigarh University and was incredibly kind to fetch me.
The drive to my hotel taught me everything I would need to know about India for my visit. Just getting out of the small parking lot at the airport was full of horn blasts, pedestrian near misses and traffic jams. Maybe it was the pure exhaustion, but to my surprise I relaxed into the chaos immediately.
The air in Chandigarh was worse than Mumbai. At high noon, visibility was at a minimum. The air was khaki, that’s the only way I can explain it. I usually notice the dirt in a place first. In the midwest hometown, dirt is black and brown and the richness of it is apparent at first glance. In Georgia, the dirt is red and clay filled. In California, the dirt is more desert like but not sand. It’s just dry, arid, granular dirt. The dirt in Chandigarh reminded me a lot of California. Sort of a light brownish gray color and dry. And it was everywhere. Dirt piles up along curbs and at the sides of roadways. It’s in the air and dusting everything. Coming straight out of monsoon season, everything was quite green and lush, but the roadways, medians and roundabouts are not manicured for the most part. What you see growing is what will survive in that particular spot. Darwinian landscaping if you will. The whole of it reminds me of 1970’s Pasadena.
The dust and pollution and smoke in the air combine to give the whole of the place a yellowish patina or sepia tone that is seared into my mind. At each major intersection on our trip to the hotel is at least one woman with a very small child begging for money and food. I was warned about this as well. I do my best not to make eye contact and don’t make any effort to give them anything. I know enough to know that it will create a chaotic scene, and I am not comfortable enough yet to allow my heart to make me take the risk. Harleen explains that most of the beggars make more money than the people who work at the university, that it’s their way of life. I wonder if this is true.
The other astonishing thing is the cows. In India, cows are sacred. I knew this going in, but I didn’t understand the way this plays into everyday life. Cows are just EVERYWHERE.
They are in the median of a highway. They’re on the side of the road. They’re at the bus stop. They’re outside a store. COWS COWS COWS. People just drive around them like it’s no big deal that there’s a random cow in the middle of the road or on the side of the street. Some of them are wearing bells or collars, but for the most part, they’re just everywhere. They’re not congregated and kept in fenced fields and on farms like in the U.S. Also, dogs. Everywhere you look are dogs. Mostly tan or brown skinny dogs. They are sleeping inches from the side of the road and in driveways and on sidewalks and in the dirt. If you are an animal rescue advocate, don’t go to India. Your heart will jump out of your chest and it will shrivel up and die of heartbreak.
I check in to the hotel and when I go to get in the elevator, the doors open and an Indian bride and her attendants step out and it was honestly an amazing experience to witness. The level of decorum and GOLD. The bangles and draped shiny clothing. I couldn’t even take it all in.
It’s not a glamorous hotel, but it’s sufficient. It has a room and a bed and a bathroom. There is a strange green oscillating misting contraption running in the hallway. I’m not sure if it’s a mosquito deterrent or just a deodorizing tool, but I decide I don’t care. My view from my room is of an industrial “strip mall” full of recycling vendors.
There is a scrap yard for metal and copper and other vendors of an industrial nature. In the distance I can make out a train track and some hills beyond that. Smoke rising from small fires everywhere. Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of neighborhood I can explore alone with a camera, but at least it faces east and I make a mental note to do a sunrise time-lapse when perhaps the air will be clearer. I take a short nap at the hotel. I wake a few hours later to the sound of drums. The wedding is in full swing and the drums are playing the couple out of their celebration. I decide it’s the way I need to wake up every day.
In the evening, there’s a small welcome reception on the hotel balcony for all of the delegates who have arrived. It’s a Hindu holiday called Dusshera (do-SHARE-uh), which to oversimplify is the celebration of good over evil. It’s a Hindu holiday celebrating the God Rama’s victory over the Ravana. Here in the north, they build giant replicas of the Gods and large crowds gather to celebrate and watch them burn.
We can smell the smoke and hear the fireworks from the celebrations while we sip our Masala Chai and snack on cookies and meet and greet one another for the first time.
There are professors here from Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, Germany, Holland, Scotland, England, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, Japan, and more. Finally, I decide cookies aren’t going to cut it and I go inside to the restaurant to have dinner. The only restaurant in the hotel features buffets for breakfast lunch and dinner. There are tiny cards written in English to name and identify each dish, but I can’t be bothered to remember what any of them say. I just take a little bit of everything and sit down starving.
THE FOOD IS SO GOOD. This region is mainly vegetarian as there is a very high population of Sikh people—the ones who wear turbans (more on that later). The food is so rich and full of flavor that it doesn’t bother me at all not having any animal protein. Unbeknownst to me, I started a movement and more and more professors from the balcony gathering decide to join me in the dining room and we meet and greet each other. I soon retire to my room to get some rest for the 5:45 am departure time for tomorrow’s cultural trip to Amritsar, the Sikh holy temple near the border of Pakistan.