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
