Airport Encounters - Strangers' Confessions

"Do you mind if I sit here?"

I looked up at her. I was really engrossed in my book, the glass of tomato juice almost forgotten on the table. It took me a moment to understand her question. "Sure", I nodded, moving my bags to make place and removing my jacket from the other chair, putting it at the back of my chair.

She seemed to be around thirty, a big round red bindi in the middle of her forehead and wearing a crumpled pale chicken kurta. She took off a big black bag from her shoulder and then removed the big ruck-sack from her back. Sighing deeply, she sank onto the chair. I went back to my book. She sat there cupping her chin in her hands, her elbows on the table, looking at the queue in front of the cash counter, persons waiting to give their orders. I couldn't concentrate on my book but tried to go on with my reading, forcing myself to not to look at her.

Finally I looked up and took a sip of the juice from the glass. She was still sitting there with her chin in her hands, looking at the queue, lost in her thoughts, unaware of every thing else. Then her telephone rang. She moved slowly, bending down to pick up her black bag and searching inside for the telephone. By the time she found it, the telephone had stopped ringing. She looked at the telephone screen, pressing some buttons and her lips tightened. She put it back in the bag and closed it, placing it on the ground.

The telephone rang again almost immediately. This time she did not move. After a while it stopped ringing. I was suddenly embarrassed. As if I had trespassed into her privacy. I looked at my watch. Perhaps, it was time for me to move. My flight was from the northern terminal and I had to take the shuttle train.

I picked up my jacket and the bag. Then I nodded at her but she was lost in her own world. As I walked away, her telephone started ringing again. I stopped briefly to look at her. She still sat there with her chin resting on her hands, her eyes closed.

 

I wonder if she would have liked to talk about it. It is easier to talk to strangers, to tell things you would never tell to others, because you know that you are never going to meet them again. She had looked so vulnerable. I sighed, it was too late to think about it and I had my flight to catch!

***
I had put on two shirts, one over another but I was still shivering. I was almost tempted to wrap the woollen blanket in the room around me as I went out for dinner, but I resisted. Outside, it was still raining.

 

After the Concord crash, all the flights had been cancelled from the Paris airport and we had been taken to a hotel inside the Asterix World theme park. The only problem was that it was much more cold than what I had been expecting.

In the dining room, I was looking around for a place when I saw him. He smiled at me and nodded, pointing to the empty chair in front of him. I vaguely remembered him as we had waited at Bologna airport for the flight to Paris. He had missed his connecting flight.

He seemed happy to have found an "Italian" co-passenger and he was a little suprised when I told him my name, that was clearly not Italian - it made me happy because it meant that I looked sufficiently Italian!

I slowly sipped a glass of red wine, hoping it would warm me up. It was July and yet so terribly cold. In the mean time, he was gulping down big sips of a dark liquid, that was surely stronger than my wine. Emptying the glass, he raised his hand at the waiter for a refill.

I am not much of a drinker and after a little wine, I tend to become silent, if not downright sleepy. He was the other kind, the type who opens up after a few glasses. Soon he was telling me about himself. He lived in Reggio Emilia, about 30 km north of Bologna and worked for some factory that exported machines.

He didn't ask me any questions and I was content to listen to him, feeling the wine take away a bit of that chill that had seeped down to my bones. Soon he was telling me about his wife. She was anorexic and refused to eat. She was worried about gaining fat and in the process, had become thin as a skeleton. She had been admitted in hosiptal twice but nothing seemed to work. He said that he was stressed and not too sure if he could continue much more with this stressful life. In front of him, she tried to eat but he was sure that afterwards she went to the toilet to vomit.

I was horrified. I knew about anorexia but I had never thought about living with someone anorexic.

Soon he was crying. Big tears coming down on his cheeks. He was catholic he said, and divorce won't be right. But he had no other way. It was destroying him and he couldn't bear it any more.

We walked outside and the rain drops probably helped in stopping his crying.

"Good night, I am really tired, must go back to bed now!" I said. "Good night" he mumbled after me as I walked towards my room, thankful that it was in another wing of the hotel.

In the morning, when the airport bus came to pick us up, he didn't even nod at me. It was as if we were strangers. That is the beauty of confessing to strangers we meet at the airports. I hope that talking to me had given him the courage to make decisions about his life.

***

Crumbling Papers and Vanishing Memories

I am transcribing old articles of my father in Hindi for my website, Kalpana.it. Those articles written by papa, when he was alive, during 1960s and early 1970s. There also some articles written about him, after his death, by other writers and journalists.

Mummy, my mother, she collected all of those writings and made neat packages. Mankind articles here, Kalpana articles here, stories here... All his life's work collected into yellowing, crumbling papers. His and hers. He did it for living and she did it for him.

She is retired, let her do it, it will keep her busy, I'd thought.

Then she wanted them to be printed. Collected works of Om Prakash Deepak... all his essays on the students' movement of Bihar during the 1970s guided by Jai Prakash Narayan (JP), all his articles on the famines, on Gandhi, on socialism, and so on. She has made the photocopies of the files, sending them to this or that person.

An old friend of papa said, "Why don't you pay to get them printed? Two of you (I and my sister) are living abroad. All of you earn good money. What does a little money mean to you? Pay to get them printed, they will be useful."

Pay to get them printed? I felt a little offended. Print it because only you want it, no publisher wants it because it won't sell any way. It hurt me, because I thought it was true.

And my mother, her memory is becoming fleeting like the RAM memory of my computer, it gets erased quickly.

Give them to me, few at a time, I will transcribe them, I offered. And then I will put them up on the web at Kalpana, I thought. We went together to the old cupboard, that once used to hold the medicines in my clinic. It is full of rotting papers. Old files smelling of crumbling papers. She hardly remembers, what is there in which file, and gets worked up when I ask her. I can't forget watching her sitting there on our old sofa with old papers strewn all around her, the pain in her eyes.

And so, these days I sit here at my computer. Slowly learning how to type in Hindi, transcribing his articles in Hindi for internet. Writers, journalists, socialist leaders, friends and colleagues of papa, they are all there in these papers.

 

It was his world, that I knew about but I hardly stopped to look at. I was there, but I was too busy living my life. Now I read about them and fragments of memories come back slowly. Kishen Patnaik, Ashok Seksaria, George Fernandes, Jai Prakash Narayan... names and faces. His old papers are introducing my father back to me. I realise that he was gone too soon and I had no opportunity to know him as a person, I had only known him as my father.

 

In his papers, he is not my Papa, in his papers he is himself, Om Prakash Deepak, journalist, thinker and writer.

*****
Additional Note: There was a comment yesterday.

I treasure them since they are so rare. It is from someone called Arundhati. Could it be ... for a moment I thought of the fleeting meeting at Delhi airport, a few years ago. No, it is not. The name of her blog is almost an answer to my "Jo Na Keh Sake" - "Leave it unsaid".

 

It is another Arundhati, who writes about silences to answer declarations of love, and about becoming one, merging together with her loved one. She has written:

"Huh!

I prefer being myself and her being herself. That way it is more fun. I suddenly think of how little time we actually spend together, we are too busy in running all the time. Or in writing blogs (only me!).

She will wake up soon and come smiling for the first hug. And then she will bring me coffee. That is how we do it, I sit in front of the computer and she brings me coffee or prepares sandwich for taking to work. And the day starts.

And she doesn't like silences for answers. Nor do I, while I come to think of it."

 

I think that perhaps she is talking of her mother? Is her mother also losing her memory, I wonder, probably not!

***

Does Blogging Matter?

How many persons read, what I write? That was the question, I was asking myself. I mean, is it worth spending time writing things if no one reads it? There are hardly any comments to what I write in English or Italian.

 

However, in Hindi, there is a close network of persons encouraging each other to write in Hindi, so my Hindi blog "Jo Na Keh Sake" (That I was unable to say) is most satisfying since it gets me lot more feedback. So I finally decided to link all these blog pages with an Italian tracking programme to see how many persons read these blogs.

After a week, I am surprised about the results of this tracking. The Italian blog has been read just once by one person this week. The English blog, this blog, has been read by 139 persons and only 8 of them are regular readers of this blog, means they come back regularly to look at the updates. The Hindi blog has been read by 85 persons though 28 of them are regular readers and overall they look at more pages and spend more time reading what I write.

This morning, while walking in the park with my dog, I was trying to reflect about these results. Does it mean that I should not waste my time writing the Italian blog? I mean, I know the one person who reads it regularly and why not send her an email? When I started to write, I used to think that I am writing for my pleasure and it does not matter, if someone reads it or not. And, now I am thinking that perhaps it matters?

 

If I start worrying about who reads my blog and why, etc., is it not going to influence the way I write and the things I write about? I am still reflecting! I think that they joy of writing is worth it, even if very few read it. Another aspect is that I only started blogging a few months ago and it would take time for people to find out about it.

***
There was an anonymous comment for my post about Ramlila, which I had written from Delhi in October. The post asks if I can explain "what is written above". I am still wondering what does it mean? Does it refer to the sprinkling of Hindi words used in that post? Or is it asking I explain the comment in Italian?

I don't want to explain the occasional Hindi words I use in my posts. I think that I want people from India to read my blog and if others can't understand these words, too bad for you.

 

Then I think of our Indian association in Bologna. With members from Karnataka, Kerala, UP, MP, Maharashtra and Delhi, often we end up speaking Italian since many of those who came here long time ago, do not remember English so well. So I ask myself, am I writing only for Indians? I am still reflecting, though I would say that I write for everyone who would read me.

***
While thinking about self-expression and if my father would have liked reading my blog, my thoughts went off a tangent in another direction.

 

I hardly spoke to my father about so many things that interested me. Fathers and sons didn't have that kind of dialogues once. Respect and obedience were important qualities of father-son relationships!

 

I prefer todays' fathers and sons, who can be less bound with the chains of respect and obedience, and have a good time together. I love seeing fathers with their small babies or playing with their children.

***

It is a bit sad to see places that were once happening places and that are almost forgotten now. Like the Antica trattoria (old eating house). Not very far from our house, on one of the old tracks that leads to the river and an abandoned old port, this place was in once a key location, right next to a busy port, where travellers and boats carrying goods crowded it. Now it is forgotten except for some old persons who still go there for their glass of wine.

 

I want to write about it and other such places in my blog - reading about them in the blog, someone might try to restart them?

***

Iraq Documentary on the TV

This morning I saw a documentary done by Italian news channel Rainews 24 on the use of chemical weapons in the allied forces attack on Falluja in November last year. The documentary showed satellite pictures of use of napalm-like phosphorous bombs called MK77, interviews with american soldiers confirming use of chemical weapons, a letter of someone from British defence ministry to their labour party MP Linda Riordan saying that it was true and such bombs have been used and finally, shots of burnt up bodies with their faces contorted in ghastly rictus smiles of agony. I almost puked.

My first thought was, how can they show such pictures while people are having breakfasts and getting ready to leave for work? A bit later, I could appreciate that without those pictures, it would have been just another story on "false accusations" against the "pro-liberty and pro-democracy liberation forces" of Bush and Blair.

OK, so you can say that I am a tubelight and that so many persons had been already saying it for months. So, wake up and welcome to the real world.

 

Yet to think that USA did use chemical bombs on a city where it knew that lot of civilians were present, and these are banned by Geneva convention (though the Americans never signed that convention), was like a sobering cold shower. Of course, the Americans were cynical, they were selfish, they were doing it all for their personal gains but they would stoop so low?

A colleague who had seen that documentary this morning said, "Even if Berlusconi government was perfect for everything else, just for this thing, for having dragged Italy into this war and for making us all accomplices to this shame, I won't vote for this government."

Another colleague said that this means that there is no difference between Bush and Bin Laden and terrorists are justified. I don't agree. I don't think any terrorists are justified, whatever their name, nationality or cause. At least the American soldiers who spoke during the interviews, or those who must have passed the satellite images for the documentary, did not agree with it and could act by sharing those images with the world. That is much better than the dictators on the other side, where no voice of dissent seems to come out. But that credit goes to individual Americans and certainly not to those in power.

Yet, even today the Indian news papers are still talking about the report of some American commission expressing concern about the atrocities against minorities in India This report also mentions the role of Al Qaeda in the chemical attack in USA ... and I think that these guys are real hypocrites.

In the end, I ask myself if killing twenty or twenty thousand makes any difference? If killing by gunfire or a sword or a chemical bomb makes any difference? You are dead any way. It is just that your dead body is more hideous and puke-provoking and so people can't easily forget your image and salvage their conscience by saying "it is just collateral damage"?

For me, killing even one person for war or for terror, is one person too many. I am against all terrorism, including when it is justified as "they did not have any other option" - suicide bombers killing innocents are brain-washed into believing that they will go to heaven.

 

Soldiers knowing killing civilians are another kind of terrorists, the ones who follow the orders blindly.

***

Geneva Days - Morning Alarms and the Sex Workers

For so many years, I have been going to Geneva (Switzerland) for work. Usually it meant short trips, reaching the hotel late at night, going for a meeting at the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the next day and then, take a train back to Milan as soon as the meeting finished. I hardly ever went out and Geneva seemed a clean, orderly and dull Swiss city.

Every thing changed in 2001, when I was working at WHO and stayed there for 5-6 months. The first month was passed in a hotel, but it was very costly so I looked around for a room. Almost all the weekends, I would travel home to Italy as my son was in school and my family had stayed back in Bologna.

 

This post about my days in Geneva - I want to record my memories about this stay, so that In future, I can come back and remember them.

My Room in Geneva and the Morning Alarm of My Neighbour

I found a room in Rue Sismondi, close the Geneva Central Station, it is one of the roads going towards the left bank of the Leman lake.

 

My American landlord, had an apartment at the top floor. She had occupied the stairs going to the top floor, putting there her book-racks and knick knacks. So the only way to go to the apartment was through the elevators, that opened in a small corridor. On coming out of the elevator, on the right was the part where my landlord lived with her Tunisian boyfriend. On the right we were three guests in three rooms, sharing the bathroom and the kitchen.

I think of those days as the days of silence or more precisely, as the "days of not talking". You respect the privacy of others, you don't look at them or talk to them, was the rule of the house that I quickly learned, these are also the Swizz rules of living.

 

If by chance I ever met the other guests, I would mumble a slow Good day or Good evening, the other would nod and that was it. In those four months, I saw only one of those other guests, a sad man in worn out clothes.

 

The other guest's presence was felt and heard, but I never saw him. He lived in the room next to me. Some evenings, I heard him through the wall, talking on the telephone in German. He sounded like a young man. And, I heard his alarm clock in the morning every day. It would start ringing every morning at 4.45 AM and it kept on ringing for about 15-20 minutes, till he finally woke and switched it off.

 

My first few days in that house were really traumatic. In the quiet of the morning, the alarm bell seemed to be ringing just under my pillow and it made me wake up with my heart thumping. Evidently, his sleep was deeper, since it went on and on. Then, even I too got used to it. When it started to ring, I would get up, eat some yogurt, read some book, listen to the old man in the other room wake up and shuffle around. When finally our neighbour woke up and the alarm stopped, I would switch off the light and go back to sleep.

I had heard that Swiss are very particular about noise, pollution, order, etc. but no one ever said any thing to that guy about his alarm!

Sex Shops and the Sex Workers in Rue Sismondi

Rue Sismondi is the area of the sex shops and prostitutes. I was very curious about the things displayed in the sex shop-window, but I was also embarrassed to go in and look at them properly. The use of most of the sex-toys was easy to understand, but there were some strange looking things as well, and I would look at them from the corner of the eyes and wonder how they were used!

The prostitutes lived in the houses in that area, and after a few days, on my return from work in the evenings, I was mumbling "Good evening madam" to them also. The prostitutes mostly left me in peace, hardly bothering to stop their chatting and laughing when I passed. Once I did have a closer encounter with two of them. I was coming out of the supermarket, when one of them, tall and dark, wearing a flaming red gown, that was open on the side till the top of her legs, she raised up her leg in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. Raising her eyebrows, she smiled provocatively. I panicked. "Je suis marieé", I blurted out, I am married. She laughed loudly and said that she didn't mind. Thankfully, the other girl standing next to her, said something to her and they allowed me to walk away.

One of the prostitutes on our street was an old lady of about seventy-eighty. A loud gash of red lipstick on her lips, blue coloured eye-shadow around her eyes and snow white hair, she looked like a witch, in her spindly legs and a brown-leather mini skirt. Who would ever go with her, I wondered but perhaps elderly men preferred her? One early morning, I was supposed to catch a train and it was snowing and really cold. I saw her in her miniskirt, standing under a doorway, shivering and yet, hoping for a client in that terrible cold morning. It was one of the saddest things that I have ever seen.

That stay in Geneva has changed my relationship with the city. Every time I go back, walking along the lake, the science museum, the wonderful botanical gardens are my favourite activities in every visit.

***

Families - Picture Exhibition by Uwe Ommer

I am back in Geneva, Switzerland. A few years ago, I stayed here for about 6 months, when I was working with the Disability and Rehabilitation (DAR) unit of the World Health Organisation (WHO), so the city is very familiar to me. I am here for a DAR meeting on Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR).

 

One evening I went for a walk along the Geneva lake and found a beautiful photo-exhibition on families by Uwe Ommer. This post is about this exhibition. The image below has a Sikh family from India.

 

 

The left bank of the Geneva (Leman) lake is a well-known exhibition area, with public sculptures and photo-exhibitions. Since the city hosts many U.N. organisations including the Human Rights Commission and the agency for refugees (ACNUR), often the exhibitions are related to some U.N. theme.   

Introduction

October has been so hectic for me, full of travels - coming from somewhere, unpacking the bags, only to pack them again with clean clothes, and going some where else, five cities in three countries in last three weeks. The travel to India, just ten days ago, seems like it was last year.

In all this running around, there is big family new, Marco's marriage is fixed. He will get married in Delhi on 2 January.

It seems he was born only yesterday. To think of him as married makes me feel relaxed, as if an important milestone has been reached. Perhaps that is why, I found the photo exhibition of Uwe Ommer in Geneva (Switzerland) on 60th anniversary of United Nations so moving.

 

 

Uwe Ommer lives in France and she had travelled to large number of countries around the world to take pictures of families. 

India in the Family Exhibition 

India is represented by two families. The family of Phoolwati in a village near Udaipur. She is a widow and lives with her brother's family (in the image below).

 

 

And Lucky's family from Delhi, a sikh businessman, is in the image at the top. Lucky's son proudly holds a bat with name of Sachin Tendulkar in their picture.

Families from Other Countries

Below, you can look at some of the other families in the pictures clicked by Uwe Ommer.

***

The Invisible Indians

GK II and Alaknanda are among the posh colonies of south Delhi. Every house has cars, some have guards outside and the houses are big and beautiful. There is an army of invisible persons, running around like ants, opening doors, collecting refuse, cleaning cars, taking out the dogs to walks, cooking dinners, selling vegetables, repairing all kinds of things, etc. that holds up this world of well to do. If you stay here long enough, you stop seeing them too. I am here only for 5 days and I see them all around, these invisible Indians, with hope in their eyes, an occasional envy and a rarer anger.

 

Do the poorer Indians accept much more easily and placidly, this living in close vicinity of the rich? Why? This is the question I have been asked in countries like Brazil and Kenya, where the rich need to be afraid when they venture out of their homes.

 

I have been to slums in many cities in India, including in Delhi and Mumbai, but I don't recall ever feeling afraid of being attacked or robbed at gun-point. OTH, going out to slums in Brazil or South Africa or Kenya is scary. A few years ago, I was coordinating a multi-country research project on persons with disabilities living in slum areas. I remember that persons working in slums of Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai, were really shocked during our visit to a slum in Salvadaor do Bahia in Brazil, we needed to move in a group and surrounded by persons from that slum community.

 

So probably, it is in Asia, where people are more accepting of inequalities while in Africa and Latin America, people react to inequalities with violence? Is it a cultural thing or because of our histories or because of religions? What do you think?

***
I was at the Bookworm in Connaught Place, when I saw her. She must have been fifty. Slim, her eyes lined with kajal, her greying hair in a single plait, a tatty worn out purse in her hands. She seemed to be speaking to me. I looked around, I didn't know her.

 

"Pagal hai saab", the boy at the bookshop told me.

"Buy me something", I think that is what she said, in English. "She is educated", the boy in the shop said. She started to dance, moving her hands gently, nodding at me, listening to the music coming from the shop next door.

I came out and she came forward, "Come on, buy me something. It is festival season, everybody is buying something, I also need to buy. I need some shoes. Look at these, these are completely worn out."

I was afraid of her and I hurried away.

"It is disgusting, every body can buy and I am left like this. No one to help me", she called after me.

While I walked away, I was talking to myself. Stupid. Why can't you help her? It is so little for you. Offer her an ice-cream, perhaps? I turned back, but she was gone.

***
I was in auto-rickshaw on Barakhamba road. The construction of a metro line is going ahead furiously and the traffic moves in bits and pieces, getting stuck after every few meters. At one such stop, she came to me. Light blue sari, middle aged. "Please help me buy medicines for my child." She held a paper in her hand. "I am not a beggar. I work here but I don't have enough money to buy medicines", she began to cry, "my child will die."

I gave her a ten rupee note. "It is not enough for buying medicines", she said,"I don't want money, help me buy the medicines for two days."

"That is all I have", I said, lying. 10 rupees is just 20 cents. May be I can ask her to come in autorickshaw and go to a chemist shop, I thought. The traffic started moving and the auto moved. Her face streaked with tears looked at me, as I left her behind.

 

It was my fear of being called a stupid.

 

When people ask for help, how do you find out if they are genuinely needful or they are conning you? Play-acting that you are in great need to con people is the worst thing anyone can do, because it means that when someone is in real distress, people do not believe them.

 

  ***