Page 36 Spring 1995
Sweet
Sleep, or
The Bombay International Airport Gig By David Deeble
It
is a question few Westerners have to ask: "What am I doing in
Bombay?"
It
was hard to tell exactly how long I'd been
As
I entered the Bombay International terminal I got a quick whiff of the
sweltering April
on the way to Immigration. I filled out the obligatory forms and stood
in the line marked "All Others," as opposed to the numerous
other lines marked "Indians" (the irony of which
caused me to suppress a giggle). My passport was stamped and
returned, and I carried my belongings to the carousel.
My
rather extensive traveling experience has taught me, at least in
theory, to be heroically calm and patient as the endless stream of
other people's luggage arrives. So there I stood, practicing my
soothing carousel mantra (..my luggage is here... my luggage is here...
) when I noticed an airport employee holding what was almost
certainly my six-foot steel unicycle. He was smiling heartily, as if
holding a giant sailfish, freshly hauled from the Indian Ocean.
I
approached him and claimed my prize. By
this time, however, he had attracted the interest of several
beautiful Indian women, apparently fellow employees. What ensued was a
series of elaborate gesticulations on their part which I eventually
realized as the international symbol for "Ride the unicycle,
boy."
Now,
conveying this six-foot beast through airports is literally the worst
aspect of my job: the incessant stares, the mindboggingly stupid
remarks ("Hey, you're missin' a wheel! Haw! Haw!") and the
general affront to my privacy it entails. But never have I been
seriously asked, much less by airport employees, to actually ride the
damned thing through the terminal.
My
mind raced. If I declined their request, I might just attract more
attention (and of an uglier sort) to myself than if I were to simply
oblige my growing constituency and be done with it. Also, the
remainder of my luggage had not yet arrived so I was eager for any
kind of distraction. And, of course, the clincher - my insane desire
to simply ride a unicycle in India.
And
so, with the help of my swarthy assistant, I played "the good
little monkey" and mounted the unicycle. I was weaving my way
through the delighted throng of
onlookers, looking down upon all these smiling strangers so
far from home, when I experience... A
Moment.
I'm
too Occidental to write coherently about it, thought I'm sure our
Eastern friends have an ancient term for it: "Satori,"
perhaps. I can only describe it as a "Cosmic Smile," as if, looking
down upon these smiling faces, sleep-deprived in dream-like
silence, it seemed I knew in a flash that all was well in the world,
always was and always will be. The Universe as a Beautiful and Benign
joke.
Reality
(un-reality?) returned as
I found myself nearly running over various members of my
audience!
Once
outside, I spotted a man with a luxuriant mustache holding a piece of
cardboard with something scribbled upon it bearing a tenuous
resemblance to my name. I introduced myself and learned his name was,
conveniently enough, "Mike." Mike explained in that
beautiful lilting Indian accent that we must wait for the arrival of
two other entertainers to show up before he drove us all to the ship,
which was docked about an hour-and-a-half from the airport. He advised
me to place all my possessions into a neat pile (I'm paraphrasing now)
and not to stray from it until he called for me.
I
spent the next hour exhausting my entire coin-vanishing repertoire for
four boys who were
plying their trade, that of begging,
at the airport. After countless French drops I finally offered
the shiny English sterling coins to the
After
an hour I walked over to Mike to say, in effect, "Mike, buddy,
they ain't comin'." But no sooner had I left my belongings when I
was approached by a uniformed man with a rifle slung over his
shoulder. I felt compelled to listen when he ordered me to return to
my things and in effect, "hover." "What an odd
approach," I thought. "Forcing law abiders to create an
environment not conducive to
Another
hour passed. I practiced my hat routine (the classic airport
diversion), never straying from my belongings. I received numerous
requests to ride the unicycle, but I felt this wouldn't be compatible
with my recent orders. At some point, Mike came around to my point of
view, crammed all my things into the trunk of his cab and, as I'm fond
of saying, "drove to the gig."
I
was sprawled out on the back seat, thankful to have it all to myself,
when sleep began to set in. I felt its cool, heavy blanket gently
envelop me, coalescing with the soothing warm air streaming through
the cab's open windows. Then, in the comer of
my closing eye, it happened: Bombay.
I
am unable to do justice to the exquisite squalor of
this city. The masses live in what appear to be... Well,
imagine a human-size ant farm turned horizontally. In place of sand,
picture the largest gathering of refuse possible, mixed in mud (as a
bonding agent) and splayed upon acres and acres of corridors of the
same material forming a roofed, Kafkaesque labyrinth of human horror.
There goes the neighborhood!
But
time didn't permit me to "go native" and explore Bombay
outside the confines of the cab. We arrived at the ship only a few
hours before |