I left India on a hazy December day in the late nineteen seventies, on a plane named Rajhansa. In Sanskrit Rajhansa means a ‘royal swan’. And on that day the name felt so apt to me! It was the first time that I was inside an airplane; it smelt so fresh! And it glowed crisp under the bright lights – so much brighter than the dusty drab, fly infested lights just outside. Beautiful air hostesses, as shiny as the smiling pictures of them I had seen on glossy magazines before, were helping us passengers. And I was inside that airplane!
I have seen this airport many times before through the bus windows, from a distance, traveling down the road just outside: a plane running on the runway preparing to take off. Many days, I stretched my neck as much as I could to see it airborne. But the bus would take a turn before the plane could take to the air. And the airport remained far away from me behind the high boundary walls, with barbed wire on the top. Till that day.
Before then, I was a shy quiet student in Kolkata sharing a room with three others in a mess on College Street behind Harkatta Goli, where cheap prostitutes lived wretchedly during the day and plied pitifully in the evening. From there, in the thicket of a million man’s milieu, I never quite dreamed that I would get on a airplane one day. So it was a happy news for many of my well wishers. And for me! Except that my Marxist friends were not so cheery. They detested American colonialism. And the American bourgeois society of their imagination. “Pochonsheel samaj (a rotting society),” they sneered!
However, they all pulled together for my upcoming go-away to America. And arranged for a good-bye party in the student dormitory. They chipped in to buy me a bouquet of tuberose from one of the many flower stalls underneath the mess. My friends recounted the happy memories they had of having me among them. It was touching. I could feel that the boudees, the married ladies from the adjacent building, were also secretly looking at us from their dark open roof on the other side of the narrow street. Over the last several years I came to know of the joint family and its members; though only through my window views. We never talked. Nor did we ever smile or nod to recognize our acquaintance. That was the custom. It is not like in America. In Kolkata we never nod to unknown people, nor do we smile.
But yet, I could feel, we had an intimacy of some sort. An unspoken intimacy that grows of shared existence and even in absence of any vocal or visual recognition. Emotional, you can say. If I did not see any dada or boudi come to fill up their water pitcher from their roof top tank in late afternoons, I would anticipate a cause. Returning from a break at my home, I would feel a similar feeling from their look on the other side of the divide, as if asking me, “Kee go kothay cheelay (Where have you been)? Ko-din tomake dekinhi keno (Why did I not see you for a few days)?” There used to be an emotional resonance of some sort – invisible and ethereal – that permeated the distance between us.
That evening, after a dinner of flat Indian chapatti with tasteless thin lentil and watery fish curry, common mess diets, we hired a taxi to drive us to the airport. It was evening and the road leading to the airport was chocked with smoke, from burning cow dung, used as fuel in aach, a stove for cooking. I was to join a Midwest university in the winter semester. The usual practice is to leave from India around middle of September to join in the fall semester, which is the beginning of an academic year. But for reasons that will come later, I had to start late, in the winter semester. So I used the winter days shopping and arranging for my departure abroad. And I had endless requirements to get done before I could apply for the visa or buy the plane ticket.
A new suit was a must for going abroad. “If you want to take a suit to America,” some of my ‘wise’ friends brazenly declared “go to Hasan-Ali”. It’s a store at Chowrangi, the glitzy downtown. I walked past many of these brightly lighted stores before. They had wide swinging glass doors, thick but transparent, with shiny brass handles. In many summer days, walking down the hot concrete footpath, I would often smell puff of air-conditioned cool air, as well heeled customers came out of the stores with their chirpy plump children. They sipped frosty cold drinks with fancy looking straws. I stepped aside, though I wished I could stand a little longer to enjoy the cool air. I liked the cream colored pretty mannequins with bindis, displaying saris in glass cases on each side of the door. I always felt humbled.
But I had never been inside a ritzy store before. And felt intimidated. So I asked a friend to accompany me. We went there to select the fabric and the style. The tailor took my measurements. “He will be going to America” my friend proudly told the tailor pointing at me; as if to tell him that he better be extra careful when he stitches my suit! The tailor expressed his astonishment by widening his eyes and stretching his thin dry face. Though he looked sincere, I could feel that he was in hurry; may be his boss was keeping an eye on his tailor’s time. But I was feeling something more! An empty aloofness wrapped in crusty customer service. I felt I did not belong to the level of the store! Several weeks later, I went back for a trial. To change in to my new suit, I had to enter inside a small lighted room with a label “Trial Room” glued to its door. The letters were in red Arial font, on a glossy white melamine plate, shiny and sturdy. I had never been inside one like that before! There were mirrors on all four walls inside and a dim electric light was on the top. There I changed into my half finished suit and coat. The tailor put chalk marks and stitched pins all over. Another week later I went back to collect the finished suit.
Thirty American dollars were the only money the government allowed to carry with me; and not a cent more. To convert my rupees to dollars I had to go all the way to the head office of the bank, because none of the nearby branches dealt with foreign currencies. Seven rupees and fifty eight paisa gave me one dollar. The bank teller, a young man sitting inside a large cage, with steel grills, within the bank, took care to count my green dollar bills, bills that I had never seen before. He counted the cash seriously, several times over. And he glanced at me with genuine respect. I could feel the faint warmth of my newly attained glory! When I dashed out of the bank building that day, a grayish city sky looming above me, an uneasy invincibility seemed to enamor me !