Caroline stepped off the plane at Madras International into what felt a soup of sweat. She had all but forgotten the heat, the humidity, the closeness of climate that clasped you the moment you set foot in India. And then the endless waiting in an endless queue while they checked your passport. And then another endless wait for her suitcase among a milling crowd of Indians and Westerners, all pushing themselves forward to be near the moving luggage band, grabbing suitcases and lugging them away, piling them onto rusty creaking trolleys. Remembering how long it usually took before the luggage started to be disgorged, she went to the State Bank of India counter to change her dollars into rupees. That done, she returned to luggage claim and was relieved to see movement: people, mostly Indians, wheeling or dragging or lifting their baggage out of the milling crowd.
Some people seemed to have mountains of luggage, piles of suitcases and boxes. Caroline had only one suitcase. She knew the value of travelling light, especially in India. And after all, what would she need? She wouldn’t be doing any sightseeing or going on any pleasure outings where she would need nice new clothes. She was looking for Asha. She had brought practical things, light cotton trousers and T-shirts and loose blouses: comfortable clothes, suitable for the heat, but nothing armless or skimpy, a concession to Indian modesty.
There it was, her small green suitcase leaning against a huge one wrapped up in pale cotton and tied with several bands of rope, an address scrawled in large letters across one side of it. A burly man barged forward, grabbed the large suitcase and lugged it off the band and, by the time he had dragged it away, Caroline’s suitcase was several metres away, chugging around the bend in the band and making its way back to the bowels of the airport. There was no way to push her way through the crowds to grab it; she would have to wait till it came around again.
At last, suitcase rolling smoothly along behind her, she was ready to exit the airport. Two uniformed agents checked her documents, wrote something on chalk on her case, and then she was walking along a corridor outside the airport with a metal barrier to her right and crowds and crowds of Indians behind it, many of them waving signs with names on them, names of passengers or hotels or companies, leaning forward over the railing, scanning the emerging passengers for the one they had come to meet.
Oh, it was all so familiar! India opening its arms and folding them around her, possessively, stealthily and yet blatantly, brazenly. Two-faced India, gentle and brutal, gloriously beautiful, hideously ugly. The India that kissed you on one cheek and slapped you on the other. The India that soothed your soul one day and ripped it to shreds the next. The India that nourished your senses and starved your ego, kicking it into the ground. The India she had embraced so eagerly the first time she had walked this very path, emerging from the sanctuary of the airport into the heart and the bowels of a culture she would never understand. That first time, so many years ago, her beloved Kamal had been at her side, and she had been in love not only with him but with his country, sight unseen. India. The India she had rejected so thoroughly, fled from in the throes of a debilitating illness, and then reluctantly returned to when Asha was five.
Now, the third time, this time almost senseless with worry. This time, to find her daughter and secure her well-being. This time, too, to meet Kamal again.
And there he was. Kamal. Waiting for her at the very end of the walkway. No sign in his hands; he didn’t need one. She saw him and all the building emotions she had been holding back so bravely for the last few weeks and days and hours, the mounting fears, all the worries and the guilt and now, on seeing him, the release and the relief burst forth from her and she flung himself into his open arms. They closed around her and she was at home.
Kamal’s taxi driver grabbed hold of the trolley and she and Kamal walked behind him. Suddenly, she felt shy. Kamal’s welcome had been – well, not as warm as she had expected. He had embraced her, yes – he could hardly not embrace her, seeing as she had flung herself at him. He had been forced to open his arms to receive her, but let her go just as quickly. And now he walked beside her, not touching her – really, they could have held hands, thought Caroline. They were still friends, after all – what’s wrong with a perfectly platonic holding of hands? But perhaps, as an Indian, Kamal was inhibited about touching her, a female, his ex-wife? Well, she thought, I’ll have to do something about that.