The Nomadness of the Trailer (as in appendage!) Spouse

Beijing

13th May, 2018

The Nomadness Of the Trailer Spouse


Pack, unpack, set up
Organize, arrange, hook up
Misplace, discard, goof up
Search, find, just when your time is up

Two hundred cartons hold home and hearth
Hundred to open, the rest stay apart
Open, repack, sort, and re-sort 
Mourn, moan over the shattered antique teapot

AC, DC, two point, three point
slanting, straight, round or flat
plugs, extensions, adaptors
We have them, I swear, but don't know where

Wo is where, wo is I
Neither Germans nor Chinese get me, I wonder why
Could it be my wires sometimes go awry?
Could it be I use where when I want to say I?

A life that is lived in short bursts
Memories boxed in world capital slots
Births, deaths, celebrations
Filed, stored in three year encapsulations

The dilemma of the trailer spouse
Will I just entertain and keep house?
Can I find work, can I not?
Will I just sit on my backside, will I not?

Bad hair days? No bad hair years!
Thinning, falling, breaking, I fear!
And what of the battleground that is my skin
Thanks to the many different climes it has seen

Mornings are for coffee, mahjong, bridge
Bazaars, charities, fund raisers and such
Now slap on your evening make up, dash out 
Do your wining, dining, mingling about

Bags and dark circles the eyes adorn
Just repair the night's damage, smile and carry on
Onward to another event, another reception
When all I want to do is watch television

Come along he says, we won't stay long
I need you there, saree, bindi and all
No second bidding needed, let's go, here I am
Let's do our thing, you and me, my man!

For Asifa

Does your head scream 
from the smash of that rock 
on Asifa's skull?

Does your chest hurt 
where they bit her and 
drew blood?

Does your vagina burn
like hot chillies from
six grown men's many brutal penetrations?

Do your insides cry out
for relief, release
from her agony of a million knives and needles?

Does your throat
scream her tortured cries of Ammi,
Abba, come take me away?

Do your eyes cry
her helpless tears of pain
of confusion at she doesn't even know why?

Chittapavan Brahmin Cuisine - the complexity of simplicity #FlavoursomeTuesdays

I rarely risk cooking the cuisine of my smallish community of Chittapavan Brahmins. Don't get me wrong - it's not because it is not delicious, or because it is difficult or time consuming. It is in fact simplicity itself. Yet its simplicity is what strikes terror in me if I have to cook it for someone else. Terror of not being able to keep the green of the beans green, the orange of the carrot orange! Terror of committing the cardinal sin of overcooking and mashing up the veggies in a dish! Terror of not being able to achieve the perfect balance of sweet and sour! Terror of not using the very few ingredients in exactly the correct quantities to produce a flavour that is exactly as it should be! I know that if I am callous with the cooking of this delicate cuisine, it could very well be insipid or even unpalatable. For myself however, I will take the chance if the craving gets to be too much, like it did the other day!

I had gone vegetable and grocery shopping the day before. I had bought some fabulously fat peanuts and some of the freshest spinach and green chillies, there was a whole potful of dahi (natural yoghurt) set just right to just the right degree of sourness, I knew there was enough besan (chickpea flour) and chana daal (yellow split peas) in the kitchen cupboard along with cumin seeds and turmeric. Why not make some Palakchi Patal Bhaji? I had all the ingredients and I was a little tired of the usual onion-ginger-garlic-tomato based heavy curries the cook produced every single day. But would it turn out like Mom's? Well I was going to give it a shot and hope for the best!

I shooed the poor cook out and got to work. Soaked some peanuts and chana daal in slightly warm water, washed and chopped up the spinach and green chillies, beat the dahi with a little water, besan, two or three pinches of turmeric, salt and sugar, got out my cooking oil and whole cumin seeds and I was ready! No grinding, grating, frying to be done, and just a meagre ten ingredients plus salt and sugar! How difficult can this be? 

Well, precisely because of the meagreness of the ingredients, the rocket science as usual was going to come in at two pressure points, one of which lay in making the tadka or phodni (tempering) flavourful and full of punch! I remember how my mother used to be, and still is at eighty one years of age, almost anal about getting this stage of the cooking of our special cuisine just right. The trick here is to get the oil to the exact temperature at which the tempering mix splutters immediately on hitting the oil, but does not get burnt! Well, I must confess I still sometimes burn it well into middle age and with a fair amount of cooking experience under my belt! This stage becomes a bit of a circus as the number of ingredients to be thrown into the oil increases, because different ingredients splutter at different times. As a result they are not usually to be added altogether, but rather in a certain order. My Palakchi Patal Bhaji luckily has just one ingredient in the tempering mix - whole cumin! 

I put the cumin into hot oil, followed immediately by the chopped green chillies. The drained, soaked peanuts and chana daal went in before the chillies lost their greenness, but after they had sizzled just a little! 

Which brings me to pressure point number two. We Chittapavan Brahmins are fixated on, among many other things, being able to see very clearly what we are eating. We hate our veggies to lose their shape, colour, firmness and distinct existence and identity in any dish, dry or  curried! It is an affront to the senses, no less! My senses are of course slightly deadened, having been fed as I have, mainly by cooks from other parts of India for the past three decades or so! Hence my anxiety in the face of such culinary challenges as I take on from time to time, when my tastebuds need to be cleansed and reawakened to the joys of subtle, light and delicate fare!     

And so, with pressure point two weighing heavily on my mind, I added the chopped spinach after stirring the peanuts and chana daal around on medium heat for a few minutes. I let the spinach sweat, then dried it up a little but not completely, added just about one eighth of a teaspoon of turmeric to the spinach, and then well before the spinach could lose its fresh greenness or even begin to shrivel up, I poured in the dahi, water, besan, turmeric, salt and sugar mixture, making sure it was well beaten and without any lumps. I brought it to the boil stirring all the time to make sure the dahi and besan were well combined and the dahi did not split, and then simmered it for just about two to three minutes. No more. It would be brought to the boil just once more and simmered for only a minute or two when heating it for service.

The lighter green of the chillies is quite distinct from the darker green of the spinach!

I was done! The whole exercise had taken about 20-25 minutes, from prepping to cooking. It was only about 11.30 am when I turned off the heat. A quick check before I walked out of the kitchen told me it was absolutely delicious, and I was not sure I could wait till my usual lunch time of about 1 pm. I barely made it to 12 noon that day, rushing the cook to make me hot chapatis, a spot of rice and a roasted papad to eat with the Patal Bhaji!

Ingredients to make Palakchi Patal Bhaji 
2 cups chopped spinach
2 green chillies chopped into half inch pieces
1 cup slightly sour, medium thick, beaten dahi
3 cups water
3 level teaspoons besan
2-3 pinches turmeric for dahi mixture
salt to taste
3 level teaspoons sugar or to taste
2 tablespoons raw, shelled peanuts
2 tablespoons chana daal
lukewarm water to soak the peanuts and chana daal 
2 tablespoons sunflower or refined oil
2-3 level teaspoons whole cumin seeds
1/8 teaspoon turmeric


Slightly more complex recipes for this dish exist on the internet but they are not entirely authentic. Several of them have ingredients which their respective authors think ought to be in all dishes in Chittapavan Brahmin cuisine! This here recipe is honestly the simplest, quickest and much more than adequately delish one! Enjoy it piping hot and by the bowlful!

Linking back to Bellybytes and Shilpa


  

A temple in Pakistan - some random, trivial thoughts!

I have been in Islamabad for five months now. It has been interesting to see and slowly get to know the other side of the fence, a more or less unknown quantity until I stepped across it into Pakistan - an adventure, no less!

The thrill of that crossing notwithstanding, it paled a little and was replaced by the adventure of meeting scores of Pakistani people, of learning first hand about the living, breathing linkages between them and their families still in India, of hearing about those who grew up in India but came across and made Pakistan their home after marriage, of experiencing complete ease of communication in a foreign land.... 

It was not long before I visited one of the main tourist attractions in Islamabad - a temple and gurdwara complex that stands in a prominent position on a slight elevation in the tiny village of Saidpur, just 10-15 minutes out of the capital, in the shadow of the Margalla Hills! Not more than seventy-five meters away from the complex stands an old mosque, making this tiny piece of land in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan rather interesting and thought provoking, and bringing a multitude of quite random thoughts about how things used to be, rushing to my mind ....

The temple

 

The gurdwara

The tiny temple (top) has had no deity and the even tinier gurdwara (above), has lain empty since the Partition of India in 1947. This did not stop my imaginings taking me on an instant journey to a time when this tiny village was obviously inhabited or frequented by a sizeable number of Hindus and Sikhs along with Muslims ... sizeable enough to warrant the construction of these holy buildings. The emptiness of both the places of worship was food for more imaginings - which Hindu deity was worshipped in this little temple?  Was there ever enough space to keep the holy Guru Granth Sahib AND have devotees step inside the miniscule gurdwara? Every internet source I looked at revealed that Lakshmi and Kali were the temple's presiding deities.  

The temple and gurdwara stand opposite each other, flanking a dharamshala or sarai (hostel) for pilgrims, all three structures being confidently identified by our enthusiastic guide. The dharamshala has a single, huge, high-ceilinged hall on the ground floor - ideal, I thought, for a fairly large number of tired pilgrims to spread their beddings and grab some rest (the pic above shows the arches on the porch outside the large downstairs room of the dharamshala).

While the temple as pointed out by our guide is quite clearly a temple, judging by its architecture, there is a little confusion with regard to which building exactly is the gurdwara! Our guide and the internet clearly are not completely in agreement on this! While the latter source claims that the building in the above picture is the gurdwara, I took at face value our guide's information that the picture is of the dharamshala. Anyway, this difference of opinion is not of any importance to this blog. The fact is that the complex comprises of the two places of worship and the dharamshala.

Upstairs, one level above the big hall of what I call the dharamshala, and accessed by an outdoor staircase, is a more private part of this building. This part was presumably reserved for families with women and children, judging by the set of two rooms (now kept under lock and key), one of which has an embedded memorial stone complete with writing in Devnagari and Urdu and the auspicious Hindu symbol of Om above the door frame. The brief message on the stone is still completely and clearly legible ..... it goes thus "Yeh kamra Shrimati Ramkali Vora - suputri Lala Prabhu Dayal Khanna, Rawalpindi nivasi ki yaadgaar mein banaya gaya".

So what is the story of Ramkali Vora, the woman mentioned in the memorial stone and in whose memory the upstairs room was built?  Thoughts about the young (presumably) lady came unbidden - was she sick, did she die young, was she happily married or had she been abandoned by her husband, is that why she was cherished by her doting father and not her husband? Did she have children? Was her father a rich man? How many years before Partition was this room built? Why did her father decide to donate towards the building of this room in this dharamshala? Did he pray for her here at the little temple in Saidpur? Were his prayers answered? Did he leave Rawalpindi at the time of Partition, or did he stay behind? Did he leave Pakistan with his beloved daughter's children? Did he survive that tumultous time? Was he a victim of the savagery of that time? Where are his descendants today? Do they even know about the existence of this stone and the story it tells? So many questions, all completely devoid of any importance now, yet so fascinating to me, these stories of ordinary people written in stone for posterity. 

For these are not just the workings of my overactive imagination....people do not just disappear without a trace into thin air .... somewhere in India, or in Pakistan, or in the world at large, are people related to Ramkali Vora or to her father Lala Prabhu Dayal Khanna, who would probably be intrigued to see this engraving in a slab of marble set in the wall of an obscure building in a little village in Pakistan! 

An old fashioned verandah shelters the two upstairs rooms from the harsh sun...a lovely, airy space with privacy, where women would come out and sit perhaps, while their children played and ran about after a tiring journey! 

 The fact that the dharamshala was taken over and turned into a government school after Partition is not at all surprising, considering its size and its graceful and fairly impressive architecture, which looks to me like a style from the 1920s or 1930s perhaps. The more intriguing question is, why was this tiny temple and gurdwara in a tiny village on the outskirts of modern day Islamabad (which of course did not exist till well after Partition) so important that it attracted so many devotees as to warrant the building of a well appointed dharamshala? Weren't there bigger, more important temples and gurdwaras in nearby Rawalpindi, a big, important and old city? Or was pre-Partition Saidpur itself a thriving, bustling and important enough village to attract pilgrims from all around?    

While I do not have or plan to find the answers to these questions, it is clear that this was a village that had a healthy respect and tolerance for religions other than Islam, and that it was home to and visited by considerable numbers of Hindus and Sikhs, who lived in harmony with their fellow Muslim villagers. That is something to aspire to once again, if only to honour the memory of the human stories contained silently in the marble plaques embedded in the floor and walls of the complex! 

How long does a "No thank you" take?

I am not sure if this bothers you as it does me. May be you haven't noticed it happening, may be you have but haven't given it any thought, maybe it just doesn't bother you, but it happens all the time.

I am talking about how people who are deep in conversation with someone at a reception or party just don't acknowledge the presence of a server standing beside them holding out a tray of food or drink for them to help themselves. Could it be they don't realize that the tray is being offered to them? Maybe at first, but not when the server has been standing there a whole 20 seconds or more. Could it be that they do not want their train of thought to be interrupted when they are having a serious or important conversation with someone? Again maybe, but frankly how long does it take to say "No, thank you" or make a gesture, any gesture of the hand or a shake of the head that indicates you don't want what is being offered. For God's sake this person is a human being, who is trying to be unobtrusive while doing his/her job, who is standing there silently, waiting for you to acknowledge his/her presence so you will help yourself from the tray being held in front of you, and who is probably afraid of being admonished by you or by a superior if it looks like he/she rushed away.

There are smart servers who move away quietly when they realise the guest does not want any food or drink but is not going to say so, there are those who are bold and draw attention to themselves so the guest cannot ignore them, and then there are those who are so deferential they will stand there and be ignored and yet not move away or say something to attract your attention. I saw this happen in my own home the other day and because I was near enough I quietly called out to this extremely polite, efficient and soft spoken member of my household staff and gestured to him to move on to the next person in the group. I am not sure how he felt as he stood there apparently invisible to the two people beside whom he was standing, and who were deep in conversation with each other, but I felt humiliated and demeaned on his behalf and could not stop myself from intervening as discreetly as I could to help him keep his dignity.

Am I making a big thing out of nothing? I don't think so. Notwithstanding that the tribe of servers and waiters themselves must become immune to such experiences and carry on doing their job, telling themselves not to think too much about them, this is human dignity and self respect and pride we are talking about, and I must confess that in my book this kind of a dismissive, disrespectful and demeaning demeanor becomes the mark of the man or woman who exhibits it, no matter how wealthy, influential and intellectually superior he or she may be!  

    .        

Is there such a thing as the evil eye and should you be afraid of it?

My father was a good man ......he was kind, gentle and helpful, but he had his doubts about ritual and was dismissive and thoroughly disparaging of superstition, godmen, and the cumbersomeness of religion. He cared deeply and tenderly for those close to him. How much he cared for those nearest and dearest to him really hit home the night he did something most unlike him - he turned to superstition as an answer to a problem for which he could find no other solution. That was the night my three month old collicky offspring brought the roof down with his three hour long non stop crying marathon! That was the night my father surprised me by telling my mother in dead earnest, "Do whatever it is you do to ward off the evil eye, do that ridiculous ritual, do something, anything to stop whatever is bothering the baby". His grandson was the most beautiful baby on earth and he could not bear to see him in some inexplicable and unstoppable pain.

Desperation and helplessness in the face of distress bring out the "nazar lag gayi" or "nazar utaro" instinct in us. In our fear that what we hold dear and close to our hearts is going to be harmed or destroyed, we blame the evil eye. In our our anger that our beautiful bubble of complacence has gone bust or might be about to be busted, we convince and flatter ourselves that people are casting an evil eye on us.

While my father's bowing to the "nazar utarna" ritual was a one off thing, an aberration (thank God), one for which he ridiculed himself the very next day when his grandson was his normal smiley, gurgling self again, there are those who really and truly believe in the evil eye and the potential harm it can do - think chappals and black dolls tied on the back of trucks, black dots smeared on the faces of cute chubby infants, nimbu-mirchi (lemon-green chilly) charms tied on shop entrances, among other crazy things.....

At the bottom of all of this is our supreme vanity, don't you think? In our vanity and self satisfaction, we presume that we have everything that everyone else covets. In our narcissism, our self-absorbedness, we fail to see that everything, every single thing in the world is relative - wealth, beauty, brains, good luck, good health - whatever we have, there's always someone who has more of it. So why would anyone cast an evil eye on us and not on those others who are better endowed than us? Why would anyone covet my wealth and not the Birla's or the Tata's millions?

Why do we never stop to think that the busting of our bubble is just the 'down' that must come after the 'up' in the endless cycle of ups and downs that define life? Why can't we see that what we assume to be the evil eye that has been cast upon us is just a Malthusian type of theory busy at work bringing balance back into a skewed world! Or as some would say, your bad karma from this life or an earlier one coming to bite you.....

Frankly, any explanation would be better than to be trapped behind the fear of the evil eye. I can't think of a more pitiable way to live than that. How liberating it must be to be able to say to oneself, "I am what I am, I have what I have, I have earned it without harming anyone, I am thankful for it, I value it, I cherish it, but I am humble in the face of it", and be able to enjoy it without any fear of it being taken away by the evil eye!

Of course, the part in bold font is the most important condition to enjoying this feeling of liberation, and is there anyone in the world who can truly satisfy it? And if not, then is the fear of the evil eye just good old guilt in addition to good old vanity. Something to ponder I guess.......

   

June 30, 2014, Flight AI - 047

Ok this is nothing if not blogworthy! So here goes....

It was the last day of work for me before my husband and I relocated to the place of his new assignment. I had just conducted the last workshop of my five year stint as a teacher trainer back home in India. What a memorable evening that was on my flight home to Delhi after the workshop in Kochi! It opened my eyes to many unexpected truths, big and small about myself and others!

After a completely predictable one hour delay (nothing out of the ordinary, nothing amiss......it was an Air India flight), as I finally boarded the aircraft, if I thought the state of disarray of the stewardess's saree, hair and makeup was unprofessional and visually distressing, in hindsight I think this was her way of preparing us for her near meltdown a while later! We took off after she had bullied, ordered, and shouted at me and my fellow flyers to straighten our seatbacks, fasten our seat belts, etc. She practically dumped the dinner trays in front of us hapless and meek victims. She would have thrown them at us like frisbees if she could have! Then suddenly just about an hour after takeoff, as dinner was coming to an end for most though not all of us, we heard her ask on the PA system if there was an EOD expert on board. There was a medical emergency on board and the stewardess from hell was asking if there was a doctor in our midst, and EOD referred to some special branch or degree or specialisation in the medical field. I thank the good lord above that that was what I and many others on board thought. To find out why I am grateful for our ignorance and misunderstanding of the situation read on...... It would spoil the fun (I can call it 'fun' now that it is over) if I gave it out just like that in a sentence or two!

I am not sure if the captain had asked her to make that announcement or if she was being proactive and taking the initiative of her own accord. Well, the announcement made, she hung up the PA apparatus and then came her quick downward slide into panic (at this stage thankfully only for her). Without warning she swiped the dinner trays off of the passengers' tray tables, surprising those who were only halfway through their meal, and almost yanked the cutlery out of the hands and mouths of some of them!

We could sense that we were descending and were perplexed. Our flight which had originated in Kochi and was headed to Delhi, was not due to land for over an hour more. What was going on? A young steward showing exemplary calm (again in hindsight - at that time I don't think any of us really appreciated his demeanor or brilliant handling of a difficult situation, because we did not know it was difficult!) in complete contrast to his much senior colleague, passed by me as he made sure everything was stowed away and secured. I asked him if we were landing. He answered in the affirmative. Then when I asked him why we were landing he said very politely but firmly "Let's not go into that right now ma'am". I asked the guy seated in front of me if he knew what was happening. Turns out he was an ex-Indian Air Force officer. He said EOD stood for Explosive Ordinance Disposal, he thought there was probably a bomb on board, which is why we were making an emergency landing, and that the stewardess from hell must have been out of her mind to make that announcement earlier! It is unimaginable the panic that would have ensued had this man not kept quiet or had any of the other passengers on board understood what EOD meant. As the plane touched down, the wonderful young steward briskly, yet calmly asked the passengers seated in the Emergency Exit row (Row 11 or 12 if I am not mistaken) to open the doors. The poor passengers had frozen with shock and terror at the implication of his request, so he once again calmly instructed them how to turn the handles to release the locks, and asked them to step out and evacuate the plane as soon as possible using the chutes which had inflated and opened up.

That's when I heard a little bit of screaming among the women passengers, many of whom were traveling with very young children and even infants but without their husbands, and saw a bit of jostling as everyone rushed for the same emergency exit. Once again the young steward quietly informed them that there were other exits further back as well as across the aisle, and that they should not all rush to the same one. Thanks to his composure, the screaming ended within seconds as people started evacuating.

I am pretty amazed at how calm I had felt in that moment, probably thanks to this remarkable young crew member we had in my part of the aircraft. I could hear the crazy frenzied stewardess somewhere at the back yelling at passengers to move on and get out of the aircraft using the emergency exits at the rear.  I undid my seat belt, stood up, quickly thought that I could and should carry my laptop case which had my cell phone and wallet containing my Pan card, credit cards, boarding pass, bills from my trip that I would need to submit to my office in it. Then listening to the screaming behind me and sensing the jostling that was happening, I decided to take only my phone and wallet to make for an easier and faster exit. As it happened I was wearing slightly high heels and a saree (dress code for the training I had just conducted in Kochi) and funnily enough (now that it is over) the first thought that occurred to me as I stepped out on the wing of the aircraft to go down the chute was, "will my sari ride up as I slide down?" I took one step onto the chute and before I knew it I was falling on my butt and my wallet was flying out of my hand (hope you never have to find this out for yourself but the evacuation chutes are extremely bouncy!). I could see some papers (not sure what they were in that instant) fluttering out, and some cards falling out of the wallet. The wallet itself landed on the wing of the aircraft. Knowing that I just had to get my wallet back, believe it or not I scrambled back onto the wing and retrieved it, cursing myself for not bringing my laptop case with me - if I had had it this would not have happened! Anyway, my phone and wallet clutched tightly in my hand once again, I slid down the chute at a tremendous speed with no control at all over my body (for obvious reasons the chutes allow for no friction with the body which will slow down the evacuation). I landed in a heap on the hard tarmac with one knee folded under me. Judging by the stinging sensation and the bruise I saw on my shin in the split second before I scrambled onto my feet and started running to the edges of the tarmac to put distance between the aircraft and myself, I realised my fears had come true - my saree had ridden up during that roller coaster ride down the chute! The tarmac was crawling with Anti Terrorist Squad, Intelligence Bureau, Dog Squad, Police, and Airport personnel and their vehicles......had anyone seen me being unceremoniously dumped on the ground by the treacherous evacuation chute, with my saree hitched up God knows how high?!!!!! Such a vain and frivolous thought in such a potentially dangerous and serious situation, but there it is, it happened.....ha ha ha!

As I half brisk-walked, half ran away from the aircraft I checked to see if all the important contents of my wallet were still there. Oh no! my Pan Card was missing and there was no sign of my boarding pass either. A quick backward glance showed me something lying below the wing, near the wheels of the aircraft. Should I dash back and see if it was one of the things I was missing? Stupid, I told myself, there might be an explosion any second now, just get away from the aircraft! Joining my fellow flyers who had by now evacuated the plane and were standing at the edge of the tarmac (some without any footwear but with their entire cabin baggage (smart guys!), others with nothing except their babies and toddlers - no handbags, no wallets, no phones, nothing at all), I waited for the airport coaches to arrive. What was I going to do......I had no Pan Card now and no boarding pass. Whether or not the plane exploded in the next minute was the least of my worries now that I was safe.......I could foresee the hassle of applying and waiting for a new Pan Card just when we were about to start packing to move house and relocate. More important and of immediate concern was the fact that technically since I didn't have my Boarding Pass or the only ID I had been carrying, I had no proof that I had really been on flight AI - 047, and that I was therefore entitled to a seat on a plane Air India would put us on to go home, whenever that would be!

With this on my mind I clambered onto an airport coach, which after what seemed to be hours, transported us to the airport terminal, where we found out that we had landed in Bangalore! We were herded and kept close together in a holding area so no one could wander off...... there was the added complication of having amongst us foreigners who had completed their departure immigration formalities in Kochi and whose passports now showed them as having exited the country! An important looking man with an ID card round his neck, who seemed to be listening patiently to individual concerns and complaints from the hapless passengers, and from whom various airport personnel seemed to be taking orders, came close to where I was standing. On an impulse, I went up to him and told him about my lost Pan Card, and that that was the only ID I had with me on this journey. Incredible though it seems to me now, considering the much much more important things anyone in a position of authority would have had to deal with in that situation, the man asked me where I thought it had fallen, assured me that he would call his men who were at that moment out on the tarmac sanitizing the plane to make sure it was safe. He would ask them to look for the card. I thanked him and went and found a place to sit, thinking that I had done what I could but that there was very little hope of finding the card. I could hardly believe my ears when an hour and a half later the man informed me that my Pan Card had been found exactly where I had said it had fallen. Thirty minutes later, I watched as the sanitizing staff carefully passed the card under the locked plate glass doors between the tarmac and terminal building. My saviour received it, and casually handed it to me. This man I later found out was in charge of Airport Security in Bangalore!

Ridiculously, after spending five or six hours being held in the airport terminal, (during which time we were allowed to go on board the sanitized aircraft to pick up the cabin baggage we had abandoned as we evacuated), we were transported to a hotel that was 45 minutes away, and then transported back to the airport to catch a flight after spending barely 90 minutes in a hotel room that each of us had to share with a complete stranger!

I finally got home exactly 12 hours later than I was supposed to, tired and annoyed that we had been put through this ordeal on the mere suspicion of an explosive on board, yet grateful for the steps that had been taken and of course relieved that nothing had been found, and that we were all safe. I also came home that day enlightened about many things, namely that age and experience do not add up to expertise or professionalism, that some people in positions of authority will readily do little things that are well within their power to do for little people, no matter how many other important things they are responsible for, that women can be amazingly stoic and strong and calm for their children, that no matter how often you fly you must NOT peruse the in-flight shopping magazine when the safety and evacuation procedures are being demonstrated ;), and above all that I can be super calm under pressure (hopefully because of my inner strength and not because I am in shock) and have very mundane thoughts even in life and death situations:)!!!!