During summer of 1999, I was returning to US from my six months vacation back home.I was travelling thru Singapore airlines via Singapore from Chennai.
Majority of the Economy class travelers from Chennai to Singapore usually are people from rural areas of south India working in Singapore. It’s entertaining to watch their behavior in the flight.I have seen some of the merchants from Tamil Nadu mostly Muslim folks bringing “Briyani” with them. They sat together and ate Briyani as if they are on a bus/train just few minutes after the flight takes off. The rural guys pestered the flight attendant for alcohol/drinks the moment they board the flight.
I had a difficult time with one such guy who sat next to me. I was on aisle seat and he on the window seat. He was this huge guy who kept drinking free alcohol glass after glass and dozed off to sleep. He was snoring like a dog and falling on my shoulders. I was such a soft naïve girl at that time, I didn’t even complain about this guy to the flight attendant. I never closed my eyes fearing some bad behavior from this guy. I almost applauded when the captain announced that we are about to land in Singapore.
The next leg of journey from Singapore to Hong Kong was eventless. A good-looking Delhi girl boarded the flight in Hong Kong and seated next to me. I was kind of relieved to have female co passenger for next stretch of long flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco. But I was too quick to judge her since she had such an attitude right from the start. She refused to speak to me, even when she spoke she had such arrogance in her tone. I am known for my patience but one thing which totally gets me is the egoistic and arrogant behavior of some annoying people. I refused to tolerate such people at any point in my life.
Just an hour into the flight the delhi socialite (so-she-is-lowlife) started ordering drinks. I had little or no knowledge about type of alcohol drinks or name of the drinks at that time. She started ordering drinks like “Blood Mary” .For a catholic convent educated girl it was rather shocking/uneasy to hear such name. Next came Margaritas. The only Margarita I’ve known at that time was my school senior (my sister’s classmate). Madam happily drank all the free alcohol to her heart’s content (or should I say till she blacked out). I have my seen female colleagues drink at office party but this was my first encounter with a hard-core female drunkard. I refused to sleep this time fearing that she might throw up any time. I had to push her head from shoulders for a long 9 hours. She made the previous drunken male passenger look like an angel .
When she woke up she spoke sporadically. She enquired my background and my destination city etc. I did the same and found that she was visiting her sister’s family in SFO for the first time. She openly expressed her disgust about other passengers and wondering their purpose of visit to US. One such passenger was an tamil woman wearing a Kandangi sari..
The old woman kept talking loudly (her natural voice) to a girl she befriended on the flight. She spoke like any typical innocent village women but I could sense her courage .Her dress explained her humble background. From her conversation I came to know that she is visiting her son and this is her first time visit to USA. I could not stop wondering how much hard she would have worked in her life to educate her son. She should have saved all those tiny change in her “Anjarai petti (grocery bin), for her son to get an education that too an education which landed him in USA. To me ,her mere journey to US was a success story of a mother who did everything in her power to give a good future to her son thru education.
Well my Delhi socialite thought otherwise. She spoke and looked at that old woman like an outcast. She went back to her routine of eating and drinking more alcohol and slept happily . While she slept the flight attendant distributed the immigration forms.
The old woman got the form and enquired about it to the tamil girl sitting next to her. She got the help of her co passenger and filled the form ASAP. She had all the information needed to fill up the form. She did that effortlessly like a frequent flier. Even when I travelled for the first time to US, I had to get the form second time since I made some mistake. Her life experiences were far more superior to my academic knowledge. I realised she would have tackled other difficult situations in her life with such ease and common sense.
An hour before the flight was about to land in SFO, the delhi girl got up from her sleep. She looked around and saw many passengers filling up the immigration forms. She asked me about it and I directed her to the flight attendant. When she started filling her form , she went into a panic mode. She did not have her sister’s address but only phone number. She cursed her sister for not informing about this in advance. I was wondering which idiot would travel around the world without a destination address in hand. She was a nervous wreck. I suggested that she make a phone call to her sister from airport phone and get the address else she will not clear the immigration.
When we disembarked the flight I rushed to get my luggage since I had to catch my flight to Portland Oregon in an hour’s time. The old woman stood in the same line with me ( I didn’t have my green card at that time) and cleared the immigration quickly. She spotted her son standing upstairs behind a glass wall and waved at him with such joy. I cannot forget that moment.
I did not see the Delhi girl at all in that 30 minutes we stood in the immigration line. Probably she was trying to figure out how to use the US public phones to make a call to her sister.
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