chapter 27

Back in WisconsinShaheeda served a delicious breakfast and I gave a satisfied burp as I bid the lovely provider of great food a solemn goodbye. Nizar drove us to the airport, accompanying us in, and left only after he saw us safely in the line for security. What a warm, caring, perfect host. Wistfully, I watched him move away.My attention was drawn back to matters at hand when a security guy shouted, ‘Over seventy? Come to this line.’ I thought he was looking at me and was quite miffed. Over seventy and me? Why I was barely … A Chinese woman who was behind me immediately moved to that line, and I gawked. She didn’t look a day over thirty. Lucky Chinese. They never seem to age.We were taking the United flight this time, to Minneapolis and from there to Appleton, and it turned out to be much better than Delta, which isn’t saying much. When I went to collect my hand baggage after security, I found my handbag sitting in solitary splendour on a side rack. My heart sank. What now? I thought I had been very cautious with its contents, but turns out I wasn’t. The culprit was fished out—a packet of samosas Shaheeda had given us.‘Ah, food!’ the guy said, in a tone that implied, ‘Indians!’ He gestured to me to claim my bag.The flight was on time. And we actually got something to eat—a packet of almonds, a cup of coffee and water too, which all added up to a lavish spread, by domestic flight standards. There were three airhostesses, all looking over seventy, definitely not Chinese, and very nice, especially the one whose attention we drew to an overhead luggage cabin that wasn’t closed properly. She smuggled us an extra packet of almonds.At Minneapolis we put the clock forward by two hours and during the flight to Appleton, when nothing was served since the flight was short, I drank in the sight of the sturdy Black airhostess chewing gum non-stop and occasionally blowing bubbles as a diversion. It came home to me that I might not see a similar sight for a long, long time. This was our last domestic flight in the U.S., and our trip was coming to a close.The final week was a leisurely one. We kept things easy with only two actual outings. The rest of the time was spent watching movies or crime serials, going on long walks in the evening and eating out at times. It rained occasionally, once again reminding us that bar a few dry days, the rain had been our faithful companion all the way.In the three weeks we had been away, Neenah seemed to have re-invented itself. When we had left, the weather was cold and the trees had looked shamelessly bare, denuded of leaves. But Neenah welcomed us back with gentle warmth, lush hedges, trim, green lawns and trees richly canopied with healthy leaves. This made our evening walks very enjoyable, and with days being very long, our walks became long too. We’d return home at 9 p.m. when it was still bright.We hardly saw anyone else walking, but people in cars would nod, smile, and if we wanted to cross the road, would stop for us to do so. Walking was so stress-free—unlike at home where even if you were on the pavement, it wasn’t a walk as much as a challenging steeple chase, what with slabs missing, occasional mounds of garbage, heaps of sand or gravel, dry twigs, confrontations with two-wheelers or cycles, cats that dash across, dogs that play dead, not to mention dog poo that doesn’t have loving owners to clean it.One of our two outings was an afternoon visit to the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Aviation Museum, one of Amar’s favourite haunts. He hadn’t missed any air show there when he was in Neenah. Amar and VK’s passion for aeroplanes is amazing. I remember VK taking Amar to the airport when he—Amar, not VK—was a little child, as if they were going on a picnic, with water, chocolates and some snacks, to spend the whole day there. The new stringent rules at airports don’t allow that any longer, but by then these two had spent any number of blissful days there.Arpitha booked an Uber for VK and me; they would join us in the evening. The Uber arrived and wouldn’t you know it; it was Gary again. Gary, we learned on our last ride with him, had spent all his working years as a ‘water engineer’ in California. Unlike Wisconsin and the states near the great lakes, California had a problem with water and so had to conserve the little it received and use what it had carefully. Gary ran filtering plants, largely for agriculture, different from those for potable water, he pointed out.Perhaps Gary would help VK solve the problem of dead fish around Neenah. For one last time, VK asked about the dead fish in Lake Winnebago.‘Well,’ said Gary, after mulling over it a bit, ‘I am not sure I know the correct explanation, but I have a theory. Lake Winnebago is an artificial lake, a reclaimed swamp.’ True. I remembered the exhibits in the natural history museum at Milwaukee about that and the life of the indigenous people around it before the White man redesigned the marshes and the swamp. ‘So, no part of Lake Winnebago was deep; probably the deepest part was around 15 feet. This year was exceptionally cold and the cold extended to early spring. Winnebago froze over and stayed frozen longer than usual. My guess,’ said Gary cautiously, ‘is that this year the layer of ice extended deeper than usual. That would have decreased the amount of oxygen in the water. The fish probably died because they did not get enough oxygen.’ He added that one had to get this confirmed from a scientist who knew more about fish and their life cycles.VK listened almost open-mouthed. He had asked so many people; most of them had brushed off the question with a shrug or a brusque, ‘Don’t know.’ Now here was a suggestion that seemed not just plausible, but correct.When we got off at the EAA Aviation Museum at Oshkosh, a twenty-minute drive from Amar’s apartment, we wished Gary and his mother well and thanked him for all the rides and his friendship. He smiled the way conservatives in America do, in a manner that combined warmth and distance. Not like Sue’s smile. But he was a really nice man.I had been so focussed on waving Gary goodbye that I left my black sweater on the car seat. I discovered the loss only when I felt cold inside the museum. I called Arpitha to tell her. I thought it would be a mere formality getting it back, but I learnt later that it entailed a long, protracted process. You have to pay 15 dollars to recover anything left behind in any cab, after establishing your bonafides. Daylight robbery.I bet I could have got a decent new one for much less, but I would still have loved to get back my old sweater; it had been my most faithful companion all the way. Besides, I still had all those dollars in my wallet. However, the lengthy process and the trouble I’d put Amar and Arpitha through made me gulp and give it up for lost. I consoled myself with the thought that when Gary found it, he’d be happy I had heeded his advice to always take a sweater along, though of course he never advised me to leave it behind in cars.A doddering old man, who appeared as ancient as the Wright Flyer, volunteered to show us around but my not yet doddering companion, whose eyes had lit up at the sight of all those planes around, hastily declined the offer. ‘No, thank you, we’ll make our way about.’‘Sure,’ the man smiled, happy to vanish from our lives.Whatever VK might have paid for the tickets, the museum experience was worth much more. You have to hand it to the Americans, to have created this phenomenal storehouse of aviation history with such meticulous care. If I, whose knowledge of planes begins and ends with their ability to fly, could find it so absorbing, it was no surprise that an aviation enthusiast like VK was beside himself with child-like excitement. The replicas, the actual planes and scale models all got their deserved share of attention.‘There.’ VK pointed. ‘An F-100 Cockpit Trainer.’ And I learnt it was a plane, not a person.‘Look.’ He dashed to a Fokker triplane replica.I dashed after him and read the history of the triplanes, regarded as the dashing ‘knights of the air’ during WWI. ‘How romantic,’ I trilled.‘Not when they were shot down,’ VK said matter-of-factly, throwing cold water on that fanciful thought. He rushed to a Blériot XI monoplane and gushed, ‘Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel in 1909 in a Blériot monoplane! And do you know what the press said?’I could read, so I said, ‘“England is no longer an island.”’ He laughed and we moved to the next plane.We saw the fabulous collection of historic airplanes, with replicas of the Wright Flyer, Charles Lindbergh’s ‘Spirit of St. Louis’, the WWII planes, the war artefacts, pictures of war heroes and their stories stoking special interest. We saw in passing, the KidVenture gallery and had just stepped into the store for some mementos when the store attendant asked us to hurry; the museum would close at 5.VK and I were surprised. Almost 5? We hadn’t realised how time had flown. When we left the museum, I began to feel the cold once again. A&A arrived to pick us up and Amar, the Bostonian turned Wisconsinite, gallantly gave me his jacket. We wound up the day with dinner at Olive Garden restaurant.