I was trying not to think, or possibly I was not in the mental state to think anymore. It had been 40 hours since I slept, arranging for my sudden flight to India. My father had died. He had been sick, and it was expected. Still, I was in disarray and had barely managed to find a flight on Christmas Day. I expected an empty O’Hare Airport, and it was—until I reached the Air India gate for my flight to Delhi.
The flight gate made me feel that I was somewhere in India. It was chaotic, people were talking on phone and with each other, and everyone jostled to find a seat near the boarding gate. We all had assigned seats, but even before the boarding announcement there was a rush to the gate. People clumped together with bags on their backs and suitcases by their side.
I sat down a little way from the gate, trying to doze—when someone jumped over my legs trying to reach the gate. The lady at the podium shouted, “Please be seated…please be seated.” No one listened. I might have taken a ten-minute nap, and woke up to the announcement. In that dizzy state of mind, I could only feel the buzz of people around me talking on video calls, a mix of languages, and the tangy smell of Indian home cooked food. A family was having their early lunch before boarding the flight: oily potato-paratha and mango pickle. I like these flavors but not in the airport.
Some might say that airports are mindful of “part hospital, part cathedral…always super clean.” And they are—but not at the Indian gates of the airport.
Boarding was about to start, yet unlike other gates where people stood according to the zone or seat numbers, here everyone was in the line. No protocols were followed. Mayhem bloomed at the gate as the agents were also taking passengers’ temperatures. This was in December 2023, not a peak Covid time—but still. People rushed, pushed, begged to go ahead. I felt like I was at a railway station in India, not in an American airport.
These are the same Indians who would not behave in such a way if they were travelling within the U.S., or travelling through other international airlines. Does Air India bring the Indianness out of them? The fliers suddenly become Indian again, their instinct for survival in a crowded country kicking in. They shouted, jostled, and shoved each other. I have seen the same thing unravelling at Heathrow Airport. They do not leave much for interpretation. Travelers will know: This is an Air India flight to India. The same travelers, returning to the U.S., will be a different lot: polite, and extremely respectful to each other once they deboard the plane in an American airport.
The airport in this sense becomes a space that changes immigrants, and especially Indians.
*
I walk slowly to reach the boarding gate. I am sleepy. I am thinking about my father. I have a small backpack, and I know that there will no space for it in the overhead bin. I make peace and sit in my aisle seat, for which I have paid extra.
I am trying to find my seatbelt when the lady sitting next to me asks, “Can you please change seats?” I look at her. She might be sixty or sixty-five years old. My eyes are burning red. She continues, “I am old. Please change seats. I want to sit by the aisle.” And she gets up as if it is decided. I don’t move, and put my seatbelt on. She is confused and looks at me in anger. I look at her. “I paid twenty dollars for this seat. Pay me fifty and you can have it. Please pay in cash.” She looks horrified. I don’t look at her. I put my headphones on, and close my eyes.
This audacity of commanding a seat is common in India. I have experienced this all my life in trains, buses, and while travelling with Indians on flights. I would have loved to get fifty dollars to change my seat, but she is stymied.
We do not talk at all on the fourteen-hour flight. She is talking to the fellow on the other side, “…people have become very rude these days.” I don’t care. I eat, watch a movie, get up ten times to give her room to go to the restroom. I try to sleep.
In Delhi, the same scenes are repeated in reverse. Everyone trying to deboard first. This is not new. Even Americans do the same on their domestic flights. At the immigration windows, the lines are long—travelers pushing, crossing the yellow mark, and immigration officials asking them to wait.
It doesn’t feel like an airport anymore. There is no discipline, no uniformity. Utter chaos. I disembark and enter in the shopping area. One can only see shops selling alcohol and salesmen in coats and ties offering discounts on liquor bottles: Johnny Walker Red Label, Glenfiddich, Bombay Saphire….
I walk past. The lady who sat next to me is in a wheelchair. I feel guilty for a minute for not giving her the aisle seat. She could walk fine to the restroom in the plane.
Out of the airport, I see the lady again walking comfortably to her relatives waiting with a big car.
We are out of the airport. We are in a different world. The stench, smell, and dust in the Delhi air welcomes me. I am out of that portal called AIRPORT that has transported me, and welcomed me to another place. I am suddenly sad.
The thought dawns upon me after all those travelling hours: I have lost my father. All this while, in the portal I could only think about metals, clean spaces, passengers, chaos, security, food, and a space I wanted to leave as soon as possible.
Jey Sushil is a bilingual writer and translator. His works have appeared in Rust Belt Magazine, Pittsburgh Review of Books, Invisible Culture, BBC Hindi and Outlook India magazine. His latest book is a memoir about his father. Jey is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis.
