chapter 3

Raring to GoDid the U.S. have to be so far away from India? Imagine, having to fly nineteen hours to reach Chicago. Yikes! All because Christopher Columbus couldn’t sit at home and follow his father’s wool trade like a good boy. Ah, well, no point wool gathering about re-inventing history to suit your convenience. Now that we had our visas, we had to think of booking tickets. There’s no direct flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Chicago—you have to change flights at least once. We toyed with the option of going via Frankfurt since it would divide the journey into two flights of more or less equal duration, only to drop it in double-quick haste when we found it would be twice as expensive as going via Dubai.Emirates became the popular choice and we booked tickets to go to Dubai and thereon to Chicago. Though it meant one short flight of four and quarter hours followed by the much dreaded mega-long fifteen-hour flight to O’Hare International Airport, we felt ridiculously pleased we had saved a lot of money.We picked our seats too, paying extra for a two-seater row rather close to the back in both aircrafts, for we didn’t want people crawling all over us to stretch their legs or go to the toilet. We also hoped it would give us some privacy during the long flight and our cavernous snoring mouths wouldn’t tempt a brat seated close by to drop in a rolled paper napkin, chewed gum or something worse. On the advice of the admirable travel agent, we also took health insurance to cover the duration of our trip for health care costs a bomb in the U.S. And since we didn’t have an occasion to test it out, I can say it worked like a charm. The flight formalities done, we turned our attention to packing.Anyone who called would ask if we had finished packing—what on earth. Do people actually pack a month in advance? Apparently, they do; procrastinators like us are the exceptions. So, when we did start, we went into it with the enthusiasm of children getting ready for the new academic year in school—new clothes, new bags, new shoes, new umbrellas … Unsure of what clothes to pack, I appealed to Arpitha for help, and after some thought, she suggested six salwar suits for the forty-day visit. She hesitated before adding, ‘Maybe a pair of jeans too.’ She was probably unsure how the mother-in-law whom she called ‘Aunty’ would take that recommendation. The mother-in-law jumped at it—she had been waiting for a reason to jump into jeans. I promptly bought two pairs. I packed a saree too, for Arpitha’s graduation; I thought the special occasion warranted a formal Indian attire.With great reluctance, VK also got himself one. A pair of jeans I mean, not a saree. He isn’t a great fan of jeans and was determined to take only trousers to the U.S. but, sensing this, Amar called to reel off the recommending features of jeans—‘They keep you warm in the cold weather, they’re good for rough use and one pair of jeans goes a long way.’ That clinched it. We were going a long way anyway. But VK couldn’t find the perfect pair. Slim, skinny jeans that looked like jodhpurs or low-rise jeans that were sure to tempt fate and invite sniggers were the rage. He turned them all down.‘Distressed, sir?’ the salesperson asked, displaying a pair of jeans that looked like a tramp’s discard.‘Very,’ VK replied, looking unhappy. The puzzled guy backed off and we left the store to go on a ‘decent jeans’ hunt. Finally, we found a pair that met with his hesitant approval—it was okay, mostly, but he was unhappy about the elastic at the sides. ‘To fit well, sir,’ the salesperson explained. ‘Nice and secure at the waist.’ Ha, secure! The guy had no idea what he was talking about, but we’ll get to that story. VK also reluctantly got himself a pair of walking shoes and I walked off with a pair too.On Amar’s advice, we bought a couple of umbrellas, though VK looked askance at my fivefold umbrella. ‘Useless,’ he declared. ‘It’s fivefold now, but will become sixfold at the slightest threat of rain and wind.’‘But it’ll fit into any bag,’ I countered, pleased with my reasoning and purchase. VK decided on a solid twofold one with a curved handle that would surely take up half the space in his briefcase. I felt more pleased.As for bags, the salesperson displayed suitcases that he claimed would be perfect to carry the twenty-three kilos allowed by the airlines. ‘I worked as ground staff at the airport,’ he added.‘What if we packed them with huge stones?’ I wanted to ask, just to disprove his confident claim. I didn’t, of course, and, taking his advice, we bought four solid-looking, decent suitcases in pastel shades. VK turned down with horror my suggestion that we should go for bright colours since they’d be easy to spot. ‘Orange, purple, neon green, turquoise, magenta…’ He didn’t even let me complete my list. ‘We’ll lose all our friends,’ he said.There was something VK purchased last minute, and that was a pen torch. Robin Jeffrey, a close friend, historian and writer who had recently been to Boston for the release of his latest book, Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India, co-authored by Assa Doron, mailed us tips on how to prepare for our trip. It was bitterly cold there, he wrote, and Syracuse was probably more of a Shivercurse, though the weather would improve by the time we got there. Among the things he advised us to take along was a pen torch. VK was a little taken aback. ‘We are going to one of the most advanced nations in the world and Robin wants us to take a pen torch!’ he commented, but bought one all the same, and tucked it into his tote bag. And throughout the trip we remained grateful to Robin for this invaluable suggestion.A trip to the doctors’ remained, since one of VK’s key reasons for not venturing abroad was his asthma. Air conditioning never agrees with him and he would chuckle morbidly, to my uneasy distaste, that his destination at the end of a long flight would be a mobile mortuary. But his pulmonologist, Dr Arjun, who was also his former student, checked his lung capacity and brushed his fears out of the consultation room’s window. ‘You’re fine and you’ll have no problem, sir. In fact, you’ll be better off there than here—purer air and all that. Just keep yourself well protected from the cold wind, and your trip will go like a breeze.’Finally, we went for a routine check-up and the GP, Dr Krishna Kumar, certified us healthy to travel. So, we just took along the usual over-the-counter routine medicines that generally form part of travel paraphernalia. But, alas. There was one notable omission. More on that later.Now that there was no going back, VK confessed there were a couple of things in the U.S. that had always stirred his interest. One was Walden Pond, dear to him because of his deep admiration for H.D. Thoreau, the American naturalist, environmentalist and abolitionist, and his even deeper admiration for E.O. Wilson, the American biologist and naturalist who held Thoreau in high esteem. The other thing he was interested in was the Boston Whale Watch. Since both were in Massachusetts, a visit to that American state became a must. And slowly a rough itinerary of our trip began to take shape. Amar, in consultation with Abdul Nizar, a very close friend in California who had been inviting us to the U.S. for years, began chalking up the plans.