He couldn't wait to get out of the plane, more because of the noise of children and their frazzled parents all through the flight had now becomes unbearable, having reached its crescendo as land was sighted by the excited parents. The only bored faces belonged to teenage children of expatriate parents who had decided that the whole experience would be better gotten over with so they could move on with their lives in the countries they were born. As he stepped off the plane, he felt the heat wave envelop him with no warning and the hot wind bristled under his nostrils and made him regret the whole decision for a second. Then the regret became fear as he looked up and saw an army of airport workers standing in no particular order gazing intently at the passengers. The airport was shining and new and had no patina of history nor the burden of forbearance. It stood in the middle of coconut estates and paddy fields as an oddity, an invitation to join a global party that was happening all around outside of its realm. He noticed that, even in its newness, it was designed to look as an old one.
The line to get out of emigration was long, primarily because many families with their children and hand luggage had decided to rush along to the front of the line to claim entry into their land as fast as possible. He stood in the line with no particular aim or attention and waited his turn with the officer. He found the emigration desk already disheveled, not explained by the relative newness of the airport. The officer wiped his lips with a dirty handkerchief and looked up him and then buried his face into the new passport without a word. He waited without a blink, trembling gently as he interpreted and reinterpreted the officer's silence. Then without a word, the officer waved him to the side and beckoned the next passenger. He felt a chill as he looked at the officer's desk and controlled the urge to snatch his passport, now in the custody of the officer, back.
"What is the matter?" he asked trying to conceal his urgency.
"You please wait," said the officer, without raising his head from the passport of the next passenger "we have to check something."
"But please tell me what the problem is," he pleaded now perspiring under the collar, "is there an issue?"
The officer looked up at him vacantly and did not return his nervous smile. He waited, embarrassed, in the middle of the arrival hall, as an untied captive of the officer, watching the rest of passengers amble past him, with their passports in hand.
It must have been forty minutes before a paunchy senior looking officer approached them. He too bent his head into the passport without greeting him, then preceded to whisper to the officer in the cubicle. He stood up erect, thinking, how do I prove to them that I am back in this country to seek myself, how do I convince them that I am a harmless prodigal son?
"Officer, please tell me what the problem is?" he spoke in the local language interrupting the secret conference between the superior and the subordinate.
That seemed to make a big difference to the mood of the situation. He was back. In his natural element in his country which was not his at all. The senior nodded at the junior and said, "Let him go, he is one of us."
The junior officer stamped his passport. Then he turned the page over to the senior who produced a shorter stamp from his pocket and stamped the top edge of his visa page. It read, "M. K. Murukesan, DSP, Airport."
And with that he was free to go.
The air outside was stuffier and the crowd seemed even more unruly. He didn't have anything particular to do just that minute; no one was there to greet him, to shed tears of joy. He was very sensitive to the immediacy of airport gatherings and their precarious intimacies. Like waves, multitudes reached out to passengers as they came out one by one weary and tired, and choreographed smiles broke out and tears were shed. He watched this spectacle from the sidelines until he was bored. He finally allowed a taxi driver to intervene in his thoughts and let him carry his bags to the car without having his arm-twisted.
This was home. But it felt strange after twenty years. He didn't recognize anything outside, reflected rapidly in the car mirror, illuminated by feebly burning streetlights. The car moved at a steady pace and he wondered what he was going to find in his trip. What was here for? The enthusiasm that he felt while buying his ticket had tricked down to a protesting whimper by the time he had gotten off the plane. Now the reality of his alienation from his memories and dreams began to choke him and he realized that the sweat on his brows had not just the heat, but also his fear to thank for. Nevertheless, he forced himself to smile, at the darkness, and he realized that unwittingly he was smiling at his own reflection in the window. Perhaps that is why he was there, he decided, to face his own reflection without masks and protection, to find himself in a place where he couldn't protect himself even if he tried. He was his own hunter and it was up to him to decide how this game would end.
His mind fell back into the past and the faint glow of memories and histories. He was not sure if the things that he sought in this trip were really memories or if they were subversive plots that his imagination created to sustain himself. A procession of characters went through his head, old bitter women trapped in the traditions and confines of his ancestral house, the servants and serfs, the Dalits and their stories, the myriad Gods and Goddesses that often came down directly in their midst and intervened, not always blissfully or benevolently. He tried to shake his head clear of the racing thoughts.
"Sir, I think we are here, your hotel," the driver announced. He looked up and saw a concrete building with no influences, no apologies or pretensions to be anything other than what it was. The travesty of that concrete building echoed its name well, he observed without any hint of irony.
It was three in the morning; he needed to sleep. Tomorrow, he decided, he will get his bearings and try to find the way to the promised land in his mind, even if the way is permanently lost to the memories. Until then, it was going to be a good night.
