7 April 2017

Starting with an intersection point

I could see the gentleman walking towards where I was near the luggage conveyor belt from a long distance across the other side of the airport. It was supposed to be a complete secret trip to Kolkata to see my parents. Except that I had told this gentleman beforehand.

In January, when I called this very old school friend of mine (he left school in the ninth grade) to wish him a happy birthday, I found out that he works at the airport that I use to go see my parents!! Then and there, I had promised to see him when I was going to be in Kolkata airport next.

“George Williams Pratap Singh Bara”!!! That was the gentleman with a clean shaven head like me who was approaching me with that unmistakable permanent smile on his face!! “How long has it been?”, he asked. A quick math in my mind pointed to 36 years!!!

I still remember his wizardy on the soccer field. In fact, together with the curly hair he used to sport those days, “Pele” was his common nickname that was not hard to guess. I learnt today that has he kept up with his passion for soccer. He has played at a pro level in Kolkata – the Mecca of soccer in India and that is how he scored his first and only job with India Airlines (now Air India). He has represented his employer and other clubs in various tournaments in Europe and Africa. “But never in the US”, he told. Might be some day though! Because he still keeps up with his soccer!!

But most of the time was spent discussing his kid. When I had called him to wish him on his birthday, we talked about his twins. One of whom is completely autistic with high ADHD. I had thought about sitting with him and understanding how they deal with it as parents.

Today was that day. I had a lot of questions. The first thing was to even find out how do you realize that a young child has autism? As first parents, how do you know “normal”? Turns out that was easy for them – since the other twin was a convenient control experiment. The rest was very tough though.

Both the kids are 20 now. But when some body says that one of them has finally learnt how to manage himself in the bathroom, you can only begin to understand the journey of the parents for 20 years. Hearing from him some of the long, tedious process they had to follow to get a hyper active child with no ability to concentrate and because of autism, very limited ability to converse to sit down when told to sit down was eye opening for me. And they had to go thru this just so that the child would sit down for a moment to take a few bites of his meal before he would run away again.

What was amazing thru all those descriptions was the realization how much sacrifice he and his wife has made to raise this child and continue to do so. His wife gave up her job. And he wakes up at 3 am every day to come to office by 4 am so that he can leave by noon and give company to his kid and give some relief time to his wife. Apparently, one of the daily routines for dad and son is to go out for a ride on his motorbike – come rain or storm.

And just when I thought I might have started to understand the tip of the iceberg, I realized another perspective. And that is thru all this, they had to continuously balance the other kid and ensure that he got as much of a normal upbringing as he possibly could.

When we finally hugged each other to say good bye I had to tell him the following:
“Pratap, you are a good man. A really good one. After hearing your whole story, you know what I find the most amazing part?”
“What?”
“That you always have that smile on”.

We hugged each other one more time and left for our days…

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7 April 2017

Post lunch session

After having lunch together, we sat down to chat.  That would translate to he again sitting down on the bed and complaining incessantly about current politics in India and me just throwing in a question here and there.

At some point, he concluded that democracy is not a good system. His basis of arguments was how he feels the populace in India is voting increasingly on the basis of religious extremism and how he feels money is driving votes.

As an aside, I was wondering where else have I heard those debates 🙂 But I asked him “What other system would you prefer”? That got him to talk about communism, dictatorships, military rules etc and then he finally concluded “nah! Democracy-tai thik aachhey!!”

Coming one full circle to the old adage that democracy is a terrible system except that there is none better!! Finally he got tired of arguing against himself and went back to sleep.

And I went off to catch up on my jet lag…

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7 April 2017

He gave it a shot…

Dad’s first reaction when he saw me standing next to his bed? “Chaakri chherey diye choley eli”? Since I had not let him know beforehand that I am coming, his first reaction was that either I quit my job or list my job. His instinctive confidence in me can be bothersome.

His second reaction “Bangalore-e kaajey esechhis?” At least it was a little more logical for him to think I am on a business trip.

Finally, it sunk into him that this is one of my usual trips – except nobody knew about it. He tried a few times to get up. Could not get beyond sitting down on the bed. He complained of lung pressure every time he tried to walk.

 

Category: Family in India, Vacations | 7 Comments on He gave it a shot…
6 April 2017

Shhhh!!! Do not let anybody in my family know…

Nobody in my family in India knows that I am coming to check on my parents and inlaws. Dad and mom had been asking for some time when my next quarterly trip would be. I kept pointing to the fact that I have an important office project going on and that it would be difficult for me to predict when I might get a few days to go visit them.

Which is entirely true. I was mentally getting prepared to skip this quarter totally and shoot for a June/July visit. Then a couple of weeks back came the news that my dad got some bad lung infection. As it is, he has only 20% of lung capacity left – thanks to all the smoking he did in his life as well as working in a polluted environment of a steel factory. It seems he caught some kind of infection which brought his lungs to their knees. We have gone thru this before and know the procedures to be followed – including putting in quite some steroids in his system to get the lungs cells to revive and fight back. He still does not have the strength to get up from bed and go for his evening walk – which is usually the litmus test of normalcy for him.

When that happened, Sharmila suggested that I look for the cheapest tickets I could find and hop onto a plane. And that is how a few days later (yesterday), I got on to a flight to see my parents. My trips are usually short – this time it is extra short. But the most exciting part is – they do not know that I am coming. Only the driver who is to pick me up from the airport has any clue. Sharmila is half afraid that upon seeing a sudden visage of mine in front their door (or for that matter her parents’ door) they might get a heart attack and beat the purpose of why I go there.

Doing it with this level of secrecy has its own downsides. First, I will miss my brother. My constant companion in India will be in Hyderabad for his office work. I did not want to tell him anything lest he upsets his office schedules and tries to rearrange them. Second, my reception committee at the airport comprising of the two nephews will not be there since do not know either. In any case, this is school time for them. I will go see them for an evening but I will not be able to spend any more time with them. And finally, my brother in law won’t have much time with me either since I did not give him enough time to rearrange his hospital duties.

But I am excited about seeing my parents for three days and my inlaws for a day. And of course, since I am making the long haul there, whenever my parents get busy or take rest (by now you know, we need to get my mother to sleep for over twelve hours so her psychiatric conditions do not flare up) I am going to scoot off by myself to create more intersection points.

Whatever little time I get, my priorities will continue with the same themes I had for the last two trips – first, I will try to meet up with some of my teachers that taught me in my childhood and say Thanks to them. The next priority would be to meet parents of friends and other elderly people and give them some of my time. And finally, see if I can meet some of my old friends that I have not seen for a long time.

Three days of journey and five days of meeting people. Seven flights, four different airlines, eight different airports. Should be interesting…

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6 April 2017

Unique exercise inside an airport

Well, first of all, it was not a run really. Although, after I checked into the Skyclub in the airport – weary from a 8 hour translatlantic flight – and realized that I had a lot of layover time, my first instinct was to take out the running shoes and clothes from my carry on and go for a run inside the terminal.

A few minutes later, it dawned upon me that a brown guy like me running up and down Schipol airport without any apparent reason (or luggage for that matter) would undoubtedly get the carbine-toting security guards on my heels in a jiffy. So, decided to do the next best thing – go for brisk walking.

I think technically, the difference in brisk walking and running is less of speed and more about both feet being ever off the ground at the same time or not. But today, my walking speed varied between 14 minute mile to 18 minute mile depending on the crowd in the terminal. At the end, I had finished all the 6 terminals I was allowed to access (the other two required me to go thru immigration). A little over 5 miles, about 11,000 steps in about an hour and 20 minutes.

Now for a little glass of the bubbly and wait for my turn for the shower…

 

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6 April 2017

Now, which airport am I in? #8

The airport has a big library right in the middle. You can pick up any of the books all around you and sit there and read. The second picture might be a dead give away – chairs and sitting places ensconced in tea cups and kettles.

This airport was also made famous by my friend Narayan Venkatasubramanyan who seemingly visited it every other day to miss his flights for ten years or so. Everybody here knows him by his first name. Of course, any of them who tried to remember him by his second name landed up with their tongues twisted up like pretzels!

Category: Vacations | 1 Comment on Now, which airport am I in? #8
2 April 2017

Driving on the other side…

Today was the pinnacle of my driving on the “other” side. The goal was to take wiperless turns. It took me some time to get used to changing the transmission drive with my left hand and that short left turn and looking to the right at the roundabouts and all that. But try as I might, I never could program it in my mind that the indicator light controls are on my right.

Every single turn, I would go – “Okay, I am turning left. That is a short turn. I need to look to my right. Got it. I am prepared. Now, let’s get everybody else prepared.” Then I should have gone “here is my left turn indicator blinking……. and….. and …..here I turn”. Instead it went something like “here is my left turn indicator …. and… WHOA! Where did the wipers start swinging from?”. Total confusion!! Not that having the rain wipers on on a bright sunlit day is  not ridiculous enough. I would be panicking at that moment – “where is the danged turn indicator”?

A quick fraction of a second later, senses would come back to me. Swift push up on the stick out on the right of the steering wheel and a swift push down on the stick on the left and the world ostensibly would be alright again.

I would pull up to the intersection, the left indicator flicking merrily and I looking to my right with that “I got this one” attitude towards my fellow passengers when that imbecile of a wiper would sweep again! What do you know? I had not pushed the stick all the way up. So, the wipers were still operational – just with a slower speed.

After three days of driving thusly, today’s sole goal was to make completely wiperless turns. And I might add, with great satisfaction, that when I pulled the car into the rental car center, I had successively done so.

Now watch for all the fun once I reach Atlanta and pull our car from the parking lot 🙂 🙂

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2 April 2017

It is not like the Grand Cayman Island was not beautiful…

… it was in fact beyond beautiful. Back in New York, Natasha, rearranged her schedule to fit Nikita and her UN program activities and then visited her. In fact, she took her around New York a bit and even took her to her dorm. What is more, the rumor on the street has it that they talked about boys!!

Then they sent this picture to us. Cayman Islands lost all its beauty at that point to me. I really wanted to be in New York. Watching the two girls get together as siblings without the parents and bond with each other (for the record, I am not insisting it had to be about boys 🙂 ) – somewhere, somehow I felt that Sharmila and I might have done a few things right…

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