The terminal

“Passengers travelling to Cairo by LH 782 are requested to come to the boarding gate. “
Names of cities, some distant some close, floated over the terminal through an echoing, disembodied voice coming from the PA system. Hundred of people were standing, waiting, reading books, fussing over their kids, counting their bags as they waited to catch their flight. In this place that lay in between cities, in between countries, where no visas were required – a transient space between destinations – Sameer felt a strange sense of comfort. He could identify with this feeling of in-betweenness.

He was on his way back from a 20 day trip to India. He could still remember the flight eleven years ago - it had been the exact same route - New Delhi to New York via Amsterdam. He had been excited and nervous – fascinated by the watches in the duty free shop. The flight had been half-empty, and this time there wasn’t even standing room in the flight, and the entire trip seemed very predictable.

It had been more than two years since he had last visited India and now he wasn’t quite sure what was home. On earlier trips, when fellow passengers asked him where and why he was going, he would reply, “I am going home to India – Delhi.”, but this time he found himself saying, “I am going to India for a vacation.” It hadn’t been a conscious change – the word ‘home’ had slipped from his replies silently and surreptitiously. T

Though Sameer had never intended to stay on America, one thing led to another and now 11 years later , he had bought a house and acquired the little green card. At 36, single and successful in New York, he suddenly was not as sure of himself as he had been as gawky twenty something fresh off the boat in America. Sameer had come to the US not as a potential immigrant wanting to settle down in a more prosperous land, he had come as someone who just wanted to explore another world. He often looked condescendingly on those Indians who clung on desperately to all things Indian – constantly went to Indian restaurants and had only Indian friends. He was also mildly amused by ABCDs – the American born Indians who went out of their way to prove their americanness. Though, in those initial days as a graduate student, Sameer had been struck by the alienness of this new land, he had never felt uncomfortable about himself or his identity -in fact, he had never really bothered to question it. Perhaps it was the transition from the cocky exuberance of youth to the mellow wariness of adulthood, but in the last few years Sameer had suddenly starting thinking about it.

Every time he went to India, he was amazed by how much it had changed and yet how similar it was to the country he grew up in. Most of his friends in India were now married, many had children and their lives were effortlessly mimicking the lives of his parents - though a little more decadent and irreverent. Servants milling around the house, expensive cars and wives laughing freely with their husbands – calling them by their first names – something he had never seen his mother do. He felt a little envious of their lives, of their certainty. His parents were also gently urging him to come back to India. “I see so many young people returning to India these days – with your qualifications, you could do anything you wanted, “ his father would remark while reading a newspaper without actually looking up. He wanted it to sound casual, and not as if he was deliberately trying to influence Sameer in any way. His mother and grandmother were also getting increasingly worried about the fact that he was still single. His mother desperately wanted to organize a grand ostentatious wedding, and be part of the conversations in her Bridge club where her friends criticized their daughter-in-laws.

Manisha’s proposal had fallen through. Despite her best intentions to keep it secret, word of her conversion spread. From a friend visiting to Boston to a distant aunt in Mumbai to a friend of a friend in Pune.- there was a brief detour in Indore by way of an errant uncle, and then it finally landed on the doorsteps of Sameer’s parents in Delhi. His mother was mortified and felt a little guilty for initiating the proposal but Sameer didn’t care since he had had only one desultory phone conversation with Manisha and was almost glad that he didn’t have to go through with it. But secretly, without Sameer’s knowledge, his mother had once again resumed her efforts to find a suitable girl for him. And Sameer, though he wouldn’t admit it to his parents, was also secretly yearning to find a suitable girl. In his middle years, straddling between two continents – he felt desperately in need of a destination. He was beginning to realize that being a citizen of a global village wasn’t entirely what it was cracked up to be.

As Sameer sat in the airport terminal waiting to catch his connecting flight - he watched the faces of people and listened to the sounds around him. Now more than ever, he was acutely aware of this feeling of in-betweenness.