indira gandhi airport

what no one tells you is that the best place to hang out if you’ve got time to kill in the domestic area of t3 is the mcdonalds. no one’s there (is any indian stupid enough to pay ₹170 for a spicy mcchicken?), the eating area is spacious, clean, with large windows overlooking a plane-taxiing area. of course it’s the only time i feel slightly nauseous. i recover from mcgut with the most expensive g&t i’ve ever ordered but also a deliriously delicious one. i imagine the quinine killing all the malaria i contracted from the filthy ganga mosquitoes in varanasi, who are silent, small, and deadly ... like a good fart.

an equally chipper spot – and no nausea – is by gate d62 – an immense vacant bright space right by the runways. only distant humans visible. a superb place for frisbee.

this is a silent airport – there will be no flight announcements

is posted around. but bad music is piped everywhere.

there are prayer rooms, divided by the sexes; both are empty.

                right next to these is a medication room; perhaps – as the signs are only in english – everyone’s praying in it.

ubiquitous signage –

caring for mother nature

                                clean airport

                                clean india

have the signage people ever left the airport?

there’s more soap in this terminal than the rest of india combined ... why don't you export some to indian rail?

this has been awarded the best airport in the world 2 years in a row?

what makes it the best is that it smoothly instils happiness and gratitude in me despite or for being ripped off ... holy motherfucking ganesha, after surviving varanasi gandhi’s the blessed brilliant best for giving me the opportunity to pay ₹1,250 for a drink.

parallel travel notes –

a tuktuk driver thinks i’m japanese. i guess all non-indians look alike.

it’s not that air travel necessarily saves that much time over its land competition – certainly the former’s more suspect fiscally and ecologically – but air’s modes are more stimulating. getting from varanasi to bundi by train would have cost me $35 and taken 22 – 32 hours (1,000km), whereas plane+bus takes me 17 and costs 270 (not including the money i blow at airports and staying overnight in jaipur). but on the train i’m in a coffin-sized compartment, by air i have multiple stopping points, interstices of exploration. even in the sarcophagus of the plane cabin i’m relaxed, creative, amused, energetic. in the train-tomb i feel claustrophobic, numb, irritable, prehistoric. worth the extra $350? i’m working on the cost-benefit analysis that takes into account the psychic-aesthetic ledgers.

the dude in front of me on the flight to jaipur reeks so badly of cologne i assume he’s dying of some noxious disease and has to use a potent olfactory tactic to mask it. such autism, in endlessly diverse manifestations, everywhere. i continue to develop my brand and smell, having become indifferent to others branding their autism sanity ... intelligence ... virtue ... power ...

the contrast between the short skinny indian man (a ubiquitous type) and the tall enormous kind (not uncommon) is astounding (the female spread looks smaller) – the gap seems larger than other ethnicities, as if 8 or 9 of the skinny sort could fit in the enormous one. reminds me of the pharoah’s dream in the torah about the cows.

the amusements in indian railway stations – hindi, followed by a colonial female brit english voice – train 54639 to allahamabad has been cancelled. any inconvenience is deeply regretted.

                my asshairs it is

what do the 17,829 indians who have been waiting on platform 12 for 7 hours do now?

indians always seem to be almost walking into each other – aiming for other bodies. this isn’t simply that there are so many bodies – when there are obvious spaces for circumnavigation the other bodies still almost walk into me, avoiding my flesh at the last nanosecond (same with motorcycles and tuktuks). maybe it’s analogous to people clumping together in a largely empty theatre, a weird way to deal with our kenophobia.

i’d rather die in a plane crash than a train. in the latter i’d be mangled, tortured, severed, taking hours or days to die. a plane would be a few seconds or minutes. (i read recently of a united flight taking off from honolulu that blew a door and a bunch of passengers were sucked out with their seats [still strapped in] over the pacific – now that’s a good curtain, a ride worth the admission price.)

i picture the plane going down, some malfunction, some seed of genealogies of litigations, padding the otiose pads of lawyers, my colleagues in wisdom screaming, frantic – i’d be calm, even laughing, like major kong at the end of dr. strangelove.

taking off from delhi the western horizon at dusk looks like the earth’s smoking in a hammock of industry hanging from trees of forgetting. the sun drinks a bloody mary while the last metallic birds drop their young into time’s embers.

                like liner on god’s dark eyeball

                lava from lilith’s pussy at the cliffs of her mons