Indians who lived abroad, Indians who traveled abroad, richest and poorest, the back-and-forth ones maintaining green cards. The Indian student bringing back a bright blonde, pretending it was nothing, trying to be easy, but every molecule tense and self-conscious: "Come on, yaar, love has no color…" He had just happened to stumble into the stereotype; he was the genuine thing that justhappened to be the cliché…
Behind him a pair of Indian girls made vomity faces.
"Must have got off the plane and run for an American dame so he could get his green card and didn’t care if she looked like a horse or no. Which she does!!!!"
"Our ladies are the most beautiful in the world," said one man earnestly to the Indian girls, perhaps worried they would feel hurt, but it sounded as if he were trying to console himself.
"Yes, our women are the best in the world," said another woman, and our men are the absolute worst gadhas in the whole wide world."
"Dadi Amma!" everyone shouting. "Dadi Amma!" A granny, sari hitched high for action, showing limp, flesh-colored socks and hairy legs, was racing about with the luggage trolley, whacking into ankles, clambering over the luggage belt.
Two men with disdain on their faces, off the Air France flight, had sought each other out, "Where are you from, man?" hanging aloof.
"Ohio."
"Columbus?"
"No, a little outside."
"Where?"
"Small town, you wouldn’t know."
"Paris, Ohio." He said this a little defensively. "You?"
"South Dakota."
He brightened. "Just look at this," he said, gesturing outward, relieving them both of pressure, "each time you come back you think something must have changed, but it’s always the same."
"That’s right," said the other man. "You don’t like to say it, but you have to. Some countries don’t get ahead for a reason…"
They were waiting for their suitcases, but they didn’t arrive.
Many bags didn’t arrive and Biju overheard a fight at the Air France counter where the passengers had to fill out lost-luggage forms:
"They are only giving compensation to nonresident Indians and foreigners, not to Indian nationals, WHY?" All the Indian nationals were screaming, "Unfair unfair UNFAIR UNFAIR!"
"This is Air France airline policy sir," said the official, trying to calm them, "Foreigners need money for hotel/toothbrush – "
"So, our family is in Jalpaiguri, we are traveling on" said one woman, "and now we have to stay overnight and wait for our suitcases… What kind of argument are you giving us? We are paying as much as the other fellow. Foreigners get more and Indians get less. Treating people from a rich country well and people from a poor country badly. It’s a disgrace. Why this lopsided policy against your own people??"
"It IS Air France policy, madam," he repeated. As if throwing out the words Paris or Europe would immediately intimidate, assure non-corruption, and silence opposition.
"How am I supposed to travel to Jalpaiguri in my dirty underwear? As it is I am smelling so badly, I am ashamed even to go near anyone," the same lady said, holding her own nose with an anguished expression to show how she was ashamed even to be near herself.
All the NRIs holding their green cards and passports, looked complacent and civilized. That’s just how it was, wasn’t it? Fortune piled on more good fortune. They had more money and because they had more money, they would get more money. It was easy for them to stand in line, and they stood patiently, displaying how they didn’t have to fight anymore; their manners proved just how well taken care of they were. And they couldn’t wait for the shopping – "Shopping ke liye jaenge, bhel puri khaenge… dollars me kamaenge, pum pum pum. "Only eight rupees to the tailor, only twenty-two cents!" they would say, triumphantly translating everything into American currency; and while the shopping was converted into dollars, tips to the servants could be calculated in local currency: "Fifteen hundred rupees, is he mad? Give him one hundred, even that’s too much."
A Calcutta sister accompanying a Chicago sister "getting value for her daaller, getting value for her daaller," discovering the first germ of leprous, all-consuming hatred that would in time rot the families irreversibly from within.
American, British, and Indian passports were all navy-blue, and the NRIs tried to make sure the right sides were turned up, so airline officials could see the name of the country and know right away whom to treat with respect.
There was a drawback, though, in this, for though the staff of Air France might be instructed differently, somewhere along the line – immigration, luggage check, security – you might get the resentful or nationalist kind of employee who would take pains to slow-torture you under any excuse. "Ah jealousy, jealousy" – they inoculated themselves in advance so no criticism would get through during the visit – "ah just jealous, jealous, jealous of our daallars."
"Well, hope you make it out alive, man," said the Ohio man to the South Dakota man after they had filled out their claims, feeling double happy, once for the Air France money, twice to have it all reconfirmed: "Oh ho ho, incompetent India, you’ve got to be expecting this, typical, typical!"
They passed by Biju who was inspecting his luggage that had finally arrived, and had arrived intact.
"But the problem occurred in France," said someone, "not here. They didn’t load the suitcases there."
But the men were too gratified to pay attention.
"Good luck," they said to each other with a slap on the back, and the Ohio man left, glad to be bolstered by the story of the lost bag – ammunition against his father, because he knew his father was not proud of him. How could he not be? But he wasn’t.
He knew what his father thought: that immigration, so often presented as a heroic act, could just as easily be the opposite; that it was cowardice that led many to America; fear marked the journey, not bravery; a cockroachy desire to scuttle to where you never saw poverty, not really, never had to suffer a tug to your conscience; where you never heard the demands of servants, beggars, bankrupt relatives, and where your generosity would never be openly claimed; where by merely looking after your own wife-child-dog-yard you could feel virtuous. Experience the relief of being an unknown transplant to the locals and hide the perspective granted by journey. Ohio was the first place he loved, for there he had at last been able to acquire a poise -
But then his father looked at him, sitting in his pajama kurta working away at his teeth with his toothpick, and he knew that his father thought it was the sureness that comes from putting yourself in a small place. And the son wouldn’t be able to contain his anger: Jealous, jealous, even of your own son, he would think, jealousy, third-world chip on the shoulder -
Once, his father came to the States, and he had not been impressed, even by the size of the house:
"What is the point? All that space lying there useless, waste of water, waste of electricity, waste of heating, air-conditioning, not very intelligent is it? And you have to drive half an hour to the market! They call this the first world??? Ekdum bekaar!"