My departure date is upon me. Instead of taking the shortest route to Boston’s Logan Airport I have planned a detour via my sister’s home in Syracuse, NY. That’s like going to Mumbai’s Santa Cruz airport via Ahmedabad or Delhi’s Indira Gandhi airport via Udaipur — more than four times the distance from where I need to be! But that’s the only way I’ll get to see my sister before leaving for India.

My pack-down procedure is always intense. Living alone means having no one to blame for all the things that get forgotten or overlooked. My greatest terror is that I’ll leave the electric stove on or one of the taps running or a window open. In the final half-hour I always find myself looking around, wondering what extremely vital thing I have left behind. An international journey is especially fraught. There’s all the travel gear that’s got to be easily accessible — the correct ticket, a valid passport, house-keys for both homes, phone, travel chargers, credit cards and oh, gels and liquids in a see-through plastic bag! Antihistamines. BP medicine. Hand sanitiser… the list is endless.

Muriel has very kindly consented to drop me off at the bus terminal at 7.30am. Warm farewells! Then the Peter Pan Bus sweeps me off at eight. I send texts to home in Delhi and home in Syracuse: I’m on my way. There’s WiFi on board and I can check for messages and play an online version of Scrabble with Sister Syracuse. In Boston, there’s a wait and a change of buses. At 12:30, I’m on the Greyhound Bus that’ll go all the way to Syracuse, taking the northern route. The weather news on my MP3 radio is grim: Buffalo, NY, the next stop from Syracuse, is under eight feet of snow. All in one day!

But I arrive on schedule at 7.30pm, with only a light sprinkling of snowflakes in my hair. Then I’m in my sister’s warm and welcoming home for four happy days. The price of this happiness? Leaving on the 6.30am bus for Boston! My sister drops me off and I have one final pat down — yes, bus ticket, air ticket, passport, cash. It turns out that we were right to get to the terminal at quarter to six: Thanksgiving is two days away and the nation’s families are on the move. There’s a long, snaking queue to board the bus. If I miss this one, I won’t get to Logan Airport in time for the Air France flight exactly 12 hours later.

All’s well, however, and I board the bus. Two transfers later I’m at the airport at three o’clock. There’s early check-in, hurrah! I can go through at once. The moment I have released my two small suitcases I relax; whatever happens now, it’s not my responsibility. Twenty-six hours, Amsterdam airport and seven movies later, the second great bird in whose belly I’ve been cradled, begins its long sloping descent. A bounce. A jerk. And we’re down. It’s 1am. My first year in Elsewhere is over. Hello, Delhi. It’s good to be back.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist’s stories of life in Elsewhere, US, will appear in a new form in 2015; marginalien.blogspot.in

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW