Numb

I've been sitting in front of my monitor for twelve and a half hours without a break, searching for single-pixel misalignments.

Eight hours ago, one of my sandals broke. And then the other pair, the pair that I wisely keep stashed in my car for days such as these, gave way as well. I have been limping around the office for the last four hours, dragging one foot painfully behind the other like Quasimoto.

For the last three hours, individual regions in my body have slowly started to grow numb - first the back of my arms, then the base of my neck and shoulders and now, inexplicably, my tongue.

This is what a stroke must feel like.

Limbo

Is there anything on Earth that more closely resembles Purgatory than the terminals of international airports? Particularly African international airports? The fluorescent lights and stale recycled air; the bleary eyes and two - day old stubble of other marooned passengers; the endless cups of bad coffee / local beer in a vain search for a stimulant; the aimless rambling through cookie - cutter shops?

A contemporary interpretation of Dante's Purgatorio could quite easily be set in the Nairobi international airport. The slothful would be purged by running endlessly between departure gates as their gates got constantly rescheduled; the gluttonous would be consigned to a ceaseless supply of airline food; the wrathful would be reformed through an endless wait for a connecting flight.

While on the subject, I decided to let this hitherto unpublished post see the light of day.

Sunday, 6th November.

I am now officially ensconced in Hell. Which is to say, I am in a cyber-cafe in the Jomo
Kenyat(t)a International Airport on a day when the powers-that-be considered it judicious and desirable to set the thermostat at a toasty 43 degrees celsius. Suffering this heat after Lusaka has just turned 'cloud to cloud', in the words of the inimitable ZNBC weathermen, makes me bitter, oh so bitter. Lusaka has been unseasonably warm for the last few months, and the highs are now between 5 and 6 degrees higher than they were a few years ago. The unbroken warm weather over the last few weeks also means that I have now lived through an eight - month long summer. And after that long, long, dry summer, the rains finally broke in Lusaka last night, on the eve of my departure. Meaningless, of course, because instead of sitting in our courtyard with a steaming cuppa, I am seated in an over-heated, under-staffed internet cafe in the middle of Kenya, despondent that the warm weather seems determined to adhere so lovingly to me and never let me go.

What I should do is wander over to the Kenya Airways transfer desk and make enquiries about my connecting flight. However, I'm not sure where the KA transfer gate is, exactly. I only know that it is up a flight of stairs, and I have no desire to lug my forty-kilos-or-so of hand baggage up forty stairs, so I'm wandering around the lower levels of this particular Inferno, waiting for an announcement about my departure gate.

Once the departure gate is announced, I drag my weary self to Terminal B16, only to be informed that there is a change in gates and the flight will now depart from Gate 2c. Once I cross the stampede at security, I manage to nab one of the last few available plastic bucket chairs at the gate. In doing so, I find I have positioned myself next to a couple who are intent on fornication. I avert my eyes and try to think pure thoughts.

Close to the scheduled time of departure, a delay is announced. There were technical difficulties and the flight had to stop in Lilongwe for an hour before it could come to Nairobi. The huddled masses at the departure gate are served assorted nuts and beverages to keep them quiet.

Six hours later, we have finally departed from Nairobi. Shortly after, lunch is served. I find myself presented with a fish meal. When I object, the steward removes the fish entree with a flourish and disappears into the depths of the plane. I devour my roll of bread and dessert (a cup of pudding) and hungrily await further developments. I realize the folly of this ten minutes later as the steward slides the vegetarian option in front me - airline-patented "yellow-powder curry" and rice that resembles old nail clippings. I avert my eyes and try to sleep.

Through the duration of the flight, I am marooned next to a lady who is irate because is unable to stretch out across all three seats and sleep. She mutters angrily every time I fidget. I am a fidgety person in general, so her protests last through most of the night, but fall on deaf ears. I have no intention of moving, and she can't make me.

Upon landing in Bombay, however, things start to look up. There is a rather kitschy Indian spin-off of the American Idol show that I have been following for weeks now and , over a period of time, I have started to nurture a minor crush on one of the participants. My delight knows no bounds when I find that self-same participant sitting barely a few seats away from me . So delighted, in fact, that when I go to pick up my luggae from the carousel, I cannot tear my eyes off him long enough to pick up the right suitcase.

As I wheel someone else's Samsonite suitcase toward the Jet Airways counter, all un-mindful, I reflect that many moons ago, I was a salaried member of society. Then I travelled the world chasing a dream. Now I am back where I started, except a little higher.

Emptiness

As the plane circled downwards, I looked out the window. I felt suffocated by the weight of all my failures. There was so much I had run away from - a broken engagement, an abandoned job, an untold number of projects left incomplete. It had been a period in my life when everything I had essayed turned to ashed under my un-Midas touch. My family attributed it to planetary misalignment. They visited temples, lit lamps, said prayers to ward off the influence of Saturn in the seventh square of my astrological grid. They asked me to wear an amulet. They consulted dozens, scores of astrologers. Each astrologer without fail predicted one exact day in the coming months and years when my luck would turn. My friends explained my problem away as a quarter - life crisis. A well - meaning co-worker told me I was suffering from depression. I didn't know what to call it - I just knew that a chasm was opening before me that refused to be breached by the mundanities of daily routine. When the pressure of living from one day to the next became too much and the loneliness started to eat a cavity into my soul, I decided to leave. Looking down out of the window of ther plane, I felt soothed by the barren landscape. Looking down at the dusty trees, the scattered handfuls of dry grass and the impossible remoteness of this foreign country, I felt like I had come home.

*Daily rant*

I'm sitting here drawing on a large, cold coffee, trying to slurp past the ice slush, trying to alleviate this boredom.

So what do I write about?

Describing the pangs of guilt about my long, long overdue set of video library DVDs? ("Yes, I'll bring them back this weekend. I'm sorry, I've been out of town.") And the set of books that my lending library is resigned to never seeing again? ("Yes, I received your reminder. Yes, I'll bring them back this weekend. I'm sorry, I've been out of town.") Writing about it will only induce further pangs of guilt.

Writing about my joy at downloading the five final episodes of the teen TV show that I watch furtively, obsessively? This will just deepen the pangs of guilt about the overdue library books and overdue library DVDs.

Writing about the creeping caffeinated bliss of my most excellent cup of coffee? Analyzing it will only ruin it.

So, casting all this aside, I'll do what comes best. I'll rant.

Here's a question for the pedestrian proletariat that flood the streets and bylanes of this fair city.

When you attempt to dash across a busy four-lane road, occupied by seven-and-a half lanes of traffic, and you hold out your hand, indicating that the oncoming traffic should stop and allow you to cross, what exactly are you hoping to achieve? The drivers you are trying to hold off are people who are dismissive of traffic lights, and indifferent to road rules. These are drivers who will swerve dangerously around a wobbly cyclist and then rant at him for occupying even that modest space on the road. These are people who are venting the pent-up, accumulated frustration of their collective lives by stepping on the gas. People like me, who are impatient and jaded and need to get wherever they are going very, very quickly. So, pedestrian, do you really hope to check this wild impetus by sauntering across the road with your hand extended?

And should the drivers choose to ignore you, as they often do, then what? When a large body of steel and glass is hurtling at you, horns blaring, are you really that willing to trust your life in the hands of the driver behind that wheel? As I ply my way through the relentless chaos by IIT Madras every morning, this leap of faith never cases to amaze.

*End rant*