Michelle Sindha Thomas
GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | SAN FRANCISCO 2021
I never told you because I knew you’d be mad at me for trying to fly during the pandemic, but 547 days into it, I was so lonely I couldn’t bear it anymore:
Papa survived Covid and Mama survived a blood clot that went to her lung. They had taken care of themselves and not given us a chance to help them, not even told us until the danger had passed. I wish I could have gone to India to help them, Cherie, I wish we would have known, but now that we knew, I wanted to see them before a second wave emerged.
Mama told me her friends had started traveling and that Air India had direct flights from SF to India. I was still working from home, pounding away through breakfast, lunch, dinner and into the night with no separation between work and home, time and space. I heard a rumor that we’d return to the office in June and thought this might be the last window of opportunity to work from India. I’m sorry, Cherie, but you just don’t make it easy for me to talk to you. You are the ant and I am the grasshopper, not that we would have it any other way.
I booked the ticket and spent hours on the phone trying to figure out the appropriate tests to take before travel and to identify any other hoops to jump through. I wanted nothing from this trip but to be with Papa and Mama and packed only a carry-on with a new phone for Mama, lots of chocolate, their favorite American vitamins and medicines, and my neck pillow. “Bring a sari,” Mama said, “What if there is an occasion?” Absurd. “We can take a road trip!” Papa said, also absurd; both oldies ready to party and entertain and gloss over the trauma they had just endured. “No,” I said, flatly, “I just want to stay in with you.”
The day of the flight, delay notifications began to trickle in and continued even as I headed to the airport. Still, looking at the sun setting over San Francisco, I felt snug, content, with my single bag and all-black outfit from socks to mask, compact, ready for a long sleep on the flight, thinking of what snacks to buy during the layover in Delhi, longing to reach Cochin and sit on the verandah in the heat with Mama in her polka-dotted housecoat, her legs swinging, Papa swatting at mosquitos and reading a Malayalam paper aloud to us or silently scrutinizing the overhead fan remote, the white noise whir of the fan, the thick blanket of heat imposing such languor I would not be able to do anything more productive than flip through the stack of Vogue India magazines Mama saved for me over the past two years, the chatter of kids having a hula-hooping contest in the neighboring courtyard, of horns and traffic on Seaport-Airport Road.
The Air India check-in counter was deserted. I wandered around looking for help. An airport cleaner told me all flights had been canceled. Another corrected her and said there were still a few departing flights, I just had to wait for the counter to open. I sat still for an hour in the silent terminal. A few Indian people started to drift in and sit nearby, all of them in family groups, and I felt my expectation gather and rise at the thought of seeing Mama and Papa and even Michael Percy and Mamiyamama. Fancy that!
The Air India staff began to appear in their modern-modern retro-futuro outfits, their not-quite-flesh-colored stockings and pumps that made them lean forward a bit, crisp polyester hats and sprayed stiff hair, thick flesh-toned foundation not intended for Indian flesh. They strode past and ignored us gathered travelers, humbly bundled and masked and shielded for the journey ahead, hearts hurt over various losses in India, drawn by attachments so powerful that we were risking our health to close the distance. As soon as the stanchion was put aside, I bounded up to the counter, ahead of the lumbering families. A local girl glanced at my documents. She took my passport, said, “One moment,” without eye contact and went to the back. Another returned, an Indian girl around my age who looked and sounded like our favorite sourpuss cousin. She took one look at me and said:
“Now is not the time for tourism.”
“What?”
“There is a pandemic. You have a tourist visa. This is not the time for tourism.” I don’t know if it was my name or the fact that she couldn’t see much of my Indian face in my Covid travel regalia, but she spoke condescendingly, as if I was a random American who decided now was the right time for an eat-pray-love.
“My parents live in India! I am going to see my parents.”
“No. You can only travel if you have an emergency visa.”
“What? You mean all those people standing in line have emergency visas?”
“Yes, or they are Indian citizens, with Indian visas.”
“I have to go to India,” I nearly shouted. “Why didn’t anyone tell me this earlier? I have been on the phone almost 24 hours over the past two weeks trying to figure out what I needed to do in order to take this trip!”
“It is on our website.”
“It is NOT! You have nothing on your website, that’s why I’ve been calling and calling and sitting on hold forever and now this?!”
She pulled up her phone and tried to find the requirement on the Air India site. Since nothing was there, she went to the Indian consulate website, and buried under many tabs and parentheses on a linked PDF there was an instruction about emergency visas.
“How was I supposed to see this? I registered my passport information early! How did I get this far along in the process? Why did I have to find out this way? My parents almost died, and there were no flights and now there are! I need to see my parents!” A supervisor arrived and repeated the disappointing news. I was sweating under all my travel gear and marched off angry, tears welling.
I flung myself down to call Mama and Papa and tell them I still couldn’t see them. When they picked up, I wept and cursed and ridiculed the modern-modern English of the ticketing agents and retold the whole conversation at top volume within their earshot and cried some more to the point of hiccups. I felt so trapped and so alone, prevented so roughly from seeing the two people I love most and who love us the most.
Of all the stories in the world, one belongs to you and me especially, baby doll. Without this story, there would be no you and me. This is the story of how we came to be.