Monday 29th September 2008

Heathrow airport is perpetually grey. Greyness seeps from the pores of check-in desk stewards, from the temporary boards which unapologetically hide eternal ‘refurbishments’; from the sky in the outside terminal under which plumes of cigarette smoke arise from those desperately trying to inhale their last tar and nicotine before the long haul. Weary travellers traipse around the Duty Free, snuffling for substances to giggle at during their holidays, or to lighten the heavy transition home.

Air India flight AI0112 is almost deserted. Each of us could probably have an entire aisle of seats to ourselves. But sari-ed, elegant women glide trolleys through the plane as if it was their daily intention to serve only the select few. A few rows over, two thirty-something Indian men conceal a bottle of Johnny Walkers from the eagle eye of the silver haired, thick-waisted air stewardess. They giggle, and watch Bollywood. One turns a stubbled face to me, the blonde young white girl, as I pass on sporadic trips to the toilet and each time asks how I am today, with a grin. Half way through the flight he stands, leans on one of the seats between us and simply stares at me for a full ten minutes.

Being able to stretch out over several seats, with the aid of several blankets, makes the eight-hour flight pass much more quickly. A modern Bollywood – Shilpa Shetty on a journey from potential adultery to accepting the importance of marriage, accompanied by Hindi rock-ballads.

And then, before we know it, dark sky has spread itself out for the night, and on each side of the plane, below us, the bright halogen line that marks the border between India and Pakistan appears. So strange to think that the source of fifty years of bloodshed, inhumanity, and the largest single migration in history should shine so much from the earth.

And twenty minutes later, Delhi is below us, the clusters of settlements twinkling so clearly through the atmosphere. It’s as if the milky way were reflected on the land. The plane descends gingerly through black night-clouds. We hit the tarmac of Indira Gandhi International Airport just before midnight.

And here is the plane’s load disembarking: a few bemused white faces dotted amongst the Indians, bustling in saffron or rainbowed saris, or Sikh turbans of cornflower blue. Those returning home carry Primark bags, probably back to their original destinations, I think to myself wistfully. Their own social inferiors most likely made them less than a train ride away from here.

The heat hits us immediately outside, and the thickness of the air. It smells like the inside of a clay oven – all hot spices and heated concrete. There’s a driver to meet me, his sign bearing my name which is just about visible among the dozens of others that jostle for space. He takes me to a car, marked ‘press’. I grin, if only because in London that would be incentive enough for someone to cause you an accident.

Cars which are parked too close aren’t a problem in the car park: the answer is to push them out of the way; they all seem to leave the handbrake off for such an eventuality. And then we are zooming down the highway, weaving in and out of tuk-tuks covered with tinsel, and yellow and black cabs, which are all supposed to be less than 20 years on the road, but instead look like a lurid, rusty version of something that might have been chugging through Whitehall in the 1950s. At a traffic light, we pull up next to a man on a motorbike, his sari-ed wife riding sidesaddle and his young son on the handlebars. He is wearing the only helmet.

We speed past the patchwork of enormous compounds that house the international embassies, the politicians, the prime minister. Only the tops of the trees are seen above the barbed wire. And then to our guest house, which is a kilometer from the great India Gate, where I attempt to speak to the driver and then the houseboy, both of whom, I realise, know the English words to speak, but not to understand.

The boy quietly shows me my bed in the enormous crumbling building that will be home for three months. Every white wall is crumbling, and lizards shoot across them. It’s beautiful, even in the dark; the huge open spaces, lawns and trees that bow over them. The air smells of warm honeysuckle and the gentle chirruping of unknown insects seeps up the balcony and through the shutters. The boy smiles as he opens doors: ‘washroom,’ ‘kitchen’. He points to the bed and stifles a laugh, ‘single or double’? I choose the single and realise that the others, when they arrive, won’t be happy at the prospect of sharing for three months.

And then he is gone, but not without leaving water and a jug beside my bed on a silver tray. And I feel awkward about being served, but I also don’t want to make him nervous. So I accept gracefully, and realise I will keep having to accept gracefully for a while. A thank you is all I can say; there’s no means with which to communicate anything else. And then, after a moment on the balcony, smoking a cigarette as the smoke moves slowly in the thick, hot air, the ceiling fan murmurs a soft, droning lullaby, and I fall into bed.