So I’m packing for my trip to India when Rocky my wild raccoon friend drops by. “Going somewhere?” he asks, then jumps into my backpack. “I’m coming too!” he says. “No, you’re not,” I say. “It’s hot and humid. Customs and Immigration have never even seen a raccoon, let alone allowed one into the country. You’ll be quarantined. You’ll hate the spicy food...”

“Cookies please,” he says, while digging himself deeper into my backpack. He refuses to take “no” for an answer. A couple of days later we take the Peter Pan Bus to Boston’s Logan Airport. Along the way a middle-aged blond woman wearing micro-mini shorts, boards the bus. She reclines with her bare legs raised straight up. Her unwashed feet rest on the headrest of the seat in front.

Rocky wants to know why the man in the seat behind the woman is sitting forward like a dog on point. “He looks hungry,” says Rocky, with interest, “like he wants to eat her up.” The passenger doesn’t notice the man behind her because she’s sound asleep. Her mouth is open and she’s snoring. “I didn’t know that humans could purr,” observes Rocky. “Travelling broadens the mind,” I tell him.

At the airport I’m worried about the security screening. “You’ll go through a scanner,” I say. “The X-rays will fry your whiskers. Then you’ll be confiscated and relocated to a wilderness area.” But Rocky sneaks out of the backpack, creeps under the tables, scampers between the legs of the security personnel and waits for me on the other side, pretending to be a stuffed toy. “You worry too much!” he says with a cheeky grin, as he returns to my backpack. “C’mon! Let’s buy me a Starbucks strawberry frappuccino. Extra cream, large size.”

A short while later we’re on the flight. First stop, Frankfurt. My seat companion is a professor of economics, originally from Czechoslovakia. Rocky chats with him about the sad state of the world while I watch a ridiculous romcom called Table 19. “You humans are cruel towards the planet,” says Rocky, “but you produce excellent garbage for scavengers such as me.” The professor is too delighted to disagree. He has apparently never met a talking raccoon before.

The flight arrives late in Frankfurt. We run to reach our departure gate. German security personnel think that Rocky’s a dog and scratch him between the ears before letting him through. On this flight, my seat companions are a buffalo couple in human form. They sneeze, snore and emit stinky gases while talking non-stop in an earthy twangy dialect. When we reach New Delhi, Rocky masquerades as a furry neck-cushion and the immigration officer doesn’t even notice him.

At baggage reclaim the suitcases take an hour to appear while Rocky “purrs” inside my backpack. Bins is waiting to receive us. Joyous reunions. We all eat idlis at 2am from the airport stall. “India’s cool,” says Rocky, before falling asleep once more.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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