The awareness of being among strangers now coursed through my head. To my left, across the aisle, sat the only other Indian passenger on the plane. He was deep in conversation with the gora beside him, and every now and then they would turn to look at me.
When the plane took off, my eardrums were ready to explode. I’d felt a similar but much less painful sensation when I’d played on the swings tied to a tall old banyan tree at Bahowal. This was no mere swing, however, and the skies no banyan tree. We were in a colossal machine ascending to float in the air. There was no rope to hold onto, just the armrests of my seat.
To distract myself, I tried to memorize the features of each of the white people on the plane, including the hostesses, as they were called then. All the hostesses had pinkish skin, some paler than others. In the hormonal department, the sexual repression and prudery drummed into my young head were in full control; nothing to worry about there. When my gaze fell upon an English newspaper in the seat pocket in front of the Indian man across from me, I asked in my broken and previously untested English if I could borrow it. He smiled and handed me the paper. I was still looking through it when the Indian asked if he could sit next to me for a while.
He turned out to be a professor at the University of London. His gora friend in the seat next to him was also a professor, and he soon joined our conversation. The Indian quickly realized I was more linguistically challenged than my request for his newspaper might have led him to believe. We spoke in Hindi until the gora joined us, then we switched to English. The two men were returning from a conference in Australia, they told me. I wish I could recall their names, because I have never forgotten the kindness they showed me during that flight and all the way past immigration and customs at London’s Heathrow Airport. It was undoubtedly clear to them that I hailed straight from the village and was untouched by the sophistication of big-city life.
The Indian man took me to the back of the plane to show me how to use a flush toilet. One could not squat on it, Indian-village style, he told me. That aspect of my education completed, the men turned their attention to my table manners. Breakfast had just arrived, and they sat me between them to explain the use of a knife and fork. I had never come across these utensils, and my natural inclination was to hold the fork in my right hand to convey the food to my mouth. To my amazement, however, the fork was to be held in the left hand. Both men showed me on their own plates repeatedly how to cut a piece of meat and then carry the pieces to your mouth. Finally, a light went on in my head, and it was smooth sailing thereafter. (Years later, when my wife-to-be, Rami, had to tutor me in the art of chopsticks, I found my apprenticeship with the professors on the plane had lit the path. She was an army major’s daughter, and good table manners were considered a prerequisite for marrying into many a military family.)
Our flight made two stops: Karachi and Paris. At each airport, we were allowed to get off the plane. (Security was essentially nonexistent then; the hijacking or bombing of planes to make political points came much later.) Landing in Karachi reminded me that the city had once been an important and integral part of an undivided India. I recalled stories of the conferences Karachi had hosted during the freedom movement. Nanaji’s favourite had been the conference of the Indian youth society Naujwan Baharat Sabha on March 27, 1931, timed to coincide with the opening of the Indian National Congress the next day. The hanging of Bhagat Singh and his associates, on March 23, 1931, had galvanized the country. There were fissures in Congress, with Subhas Bose, a prominent Congress leader who became the party’s president in 1938, arguing for more aggressive action than Gandhi was willing to take. On both days, Nanaji was in charge of security around the perimeter of the conference and for Subhas Bose personally. Inside the Karachi airport, I looked into Pakistani faces for signs of longing — for what could have been rather than what was now. To be fair, many Indians had gone about their lives, oblivious to the larger questions of fate and history. Why should the Pakistanis be any different? We were one people by history, blood, culture and our place on earth, though we were taught the hate that stands now between us.
Back on the plane, the welcome instruction of the two professors continued. The Indian man even touched on the issue of how one viewed women in British culture. He himself had been an immigrant, and he told me in no uncertain terms that just because British women dressed differently and spoke with men freely, it did not mean they were promiscuous. He also advised me that spitting and littering in public places were regarded as horrible behaviours.
As we flew into Paris what came instantly to mind was the oft-repeated myth that Nehru’s clothes had regularly been sent to Paris for washing and dry cleaning. There was no question his family was rich, but in the twenties and thirties, the frequency of air traffic would have made that impossible. As the inhabitants of a former colony, though, many Indians had an exaggerated sense of Paris and London’s splendour. Perhaps that was why the Indian professor made a point of reminding me that the ancient civilizations of India had gone through periods of splendour still evident in the classical literature and the monuments of the various eras. He did not want me to drown in the vicissitudes of history and disown my Indianness.
I did not buy anything on my stops at Karachi or Paris lest I exhaust my three pounds before I got to London; if Biraji did not show up to get me, I might need those three pounds and more. The gora , though, bought a small box of chocolates at the Paris airport and offered some to me and the Indian professor. The chocolate had a very different taste from anything I had ever eaten.
It was now the last leg of our trip. We flew over clouds that looked pure white in the sun. At first I mistook them for snowy mountains. The plane pierced the clouds as we descended to land at Heathrow. We fastened our seatbelts.
12
AS WE DISEMBARKED in London, the gora professor planted himself in front of me, and the Indian behind. A customs and immigration officer stood at the only open wicket. The professor was cleared in an instant, and he moved aside to make room for me. The customs officer was polite to a fault, looking first at my passport and my acceptance letter from the college in London, then at me, a five-foot-seven, 120-pound turbaned Indian. “For what purpose have you come to the U.K.?” he asked. To date, my answer rings in my ears: “For higher studies.” The gora professor and I then waited for the Indian professor to clear. We had to wait for our baggage for a few more minutes, the professors bemoaning the time it was taking. I listened with the ears of my own experience; the slow turning of the wheels of government in India, in matters small or large, bred in people an unhealthy degree of patience.
While we waited, I noticed two neatly uniformed janitors in neckties mopping the floor in a corner of the large baggage area. What in the world? Men doing the jobs of the “lowest of the low,” the most untouchable of the untouchables, in ties and uniforms? I now understood the criticism that Mahatma’s effort to rebrand Dalits as harijans — “God’s children” — was a good beginning, but too feeble. The sight of these janitors had another life-altering effect on me. The Western suit, I realized, was just a form of dress, no better or worse than any other, including traditional Indian clothing. It wasn’t meant to be worn by “sahibs” only. Even the janitors could wear it. They were people too, dignified, as was their labour. It taught me the dignity of labour and the irrelevance in life of how one dressed, as long as one’s clothes were neat.
I was feeling the fatigue of my long trip and the newness of everything. I was worried, too, about Biraji not being there to meet me. But as we exited the baggage area, there he was in the huge crowd, smiling in response to my wave. Once the professors saw that I was safe, we shook hands and they said goodbye.
Biraji had arrived in England nearly a decade earlier, in 1956, successfully entering the U.K. on his second attempt. The first time around, he was stranded in Pakistan and had to return home. But within six months he had secured a passport to go to Indonesia, and from there he found his way to Britain.
My cousin had maintained his beard and turban; details I was surprised by, since I knew him to be a very secular