Airports, Airplanes, and Good Intentions

The more I travel in my adult life, I have come to see a transformation in airports, especially in India. The airports in India used to be filthy, no air conditioning, and very basic facilities to get your luggage and go through immigration. Now, the airports in India look like every other airport and each city having their own personal touch. Really though you could be anywhere in the world and the airports nowadays seem to have the same flare--restaurants, clean bathrooms, places for kids to play, comfy chairs, etc.

 .                           



















In case you are wondering, this week, we are traveling to Kochi, Kerala for a South and Central Fulbright  Conference. We decided to extend our stay to do some sightseeing and enjoy the art festival that is going on down here. We decided to make it a whole family affair.

I love traveling for many reasons and one of them is that I get to read on the airplane. It is my thing to do on vacation and airplanes---that is after I read the travel magazine in the pouch. I had a plan and very good intentions. I generally choose a book that is fiction or historical fiction or a memoir and set in the place that I am spending some time in. For example, when I was in Chile, I read Paula by Isabel Allende and when we visited India in 2008 I read Turtle Feet: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk by Nikolai Grozni and I finished the book when we were in Dharamshala where most of the book took place. And when I lived on Martha's Vineyard I read a local Arthur, Dorothy West. I read a lot of her books (it did help that I worked at a local bookstore on the island and as a perk for working there I got to borrow the books to read!). My favorite book of hers was The Wedding.


This time, I chose a VERY LONG book (on the iPad it is 1,614 pages). I figured why not, I am going to be in India for 6 months. The book is called Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. I feel like I am a couple of years behind everyone else and this was a popular book awhile back. Cutting for Stone is a novel written by Ethiopian-born Indian-American medical doctor and author Abraham Verghese. It is a saga of twin brothers, orphaned by their mother's death at their births and forsaken by their father. Here is what made me buy the book. "An epic novel that spans continents and generations, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, compassion and redemption, exile and home that unfolds across five decades in India, Ethiopia, and America."


I was ready to get on the plane and let the kids use their kindles (Thank you Priya!--These have been wonderful for when we travel--some piece and quiet.) I really had good intentions but they failed me. I fell asleep within 2 minutes of getting on the plane. I guess I just need the piece and quiet more than escaping with the novel:) And life goes on...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

John's World...Jeeva Hop Garden

Image
The day has finally come.  I had been thinking about this for almost a year.  Of course it's beer related.  HOPS... Hops grown here in India.  Our friend Arjun had suggested spending his time at his family's foundation Jeevarathni.  Jeevarathni  is an organization working to improve the lives of economically and emotionally deprived children, specially abled children and the aged living in poverty and injustice.  We brainstormed some ideas to help the foundation and came up with a hop garden. For those of you who don't know or have not gone through the Sam Adams Brewery Tour a few hundred times, hops are essentially what gives beer its flavor.  There are close to one hundred hop varieties now in existence.  Combine those hops at different stages in the brewing process and you will have a unique beer unto-itself.   For various reasons, India has never really had a significant amount of hop production.  The weat...
Read more

John’s world...habits

Image
One of the things I’m most interested in dicovering when I travel abroad are the habits I engage in after the trip.  Some are short lived.  Some involve a gadget I bring back.  Some become an integral part of who I am.  Years ago I was in Mexico and I noticed the friends I was staying with would drink their water out of a clay pot.  They told me  that it keeps the water naturally cool and removed toxins (like many things apparently do).  So of course I brought a giant clay pot with me back to the United States.  The habit was short lived.  I drank water out of the pot for two weeks and regifted it to someone as a wedding present.  I called it a wedding pot even (I’m terrible and if I gave you that pot please post that I’m a bad person in the comment section). I had coffee for the first time in Spain.  I prop my foot on the bar at a pub like a proper local in Britain would posture themselves.  Habits that have lasted....
Read more

Farmhouse Retreat

Image
My class on Education Policy and Decentralisation took a field trip to a village. One of the students, Sanjeet, was kind enough to offer his farmhouse for all of us to stay at the night before. Sanjeet has an amazing story which I will save for another post. Briefly though, for 20 years or so he worked in the corporate world and decided to leave his job and enter in the MA program at Azim Premji University. His family runs a school in a village outside Bangalore and he wanted to learn more about education in India and put his talents to good use in the social sector. There was about 15 of us including my Professor, Dr. Paik. This class is more like a community and how they interact with each other, with me, and our Professor is a case study in itself. Right from day 1 of the class, I felt the warmth, kindness, and enthusiasm from each one of them. The farmhouse adventure is a testament to their true generosity and compassion. We left the campus around 5:30pm on this bus th...
Read more