The Pilot -- Episode One: 888 India

Before leaving for India on August 6, I thought 8-8-8 was simply a clever marketing start date for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. A brand intended to distract the world from China's choking industrial pollution, the algae green ocean, the human rights abuses, and limited freedoms of speech and press. But after 40 hours of travel, first riding an airport bus from my London flat to the London-Heathrow airport, then on an Air India flight to Germany, then back onto the same flight to Delhi, I started to think it might be a particularly auspicious date.

India's monsoons had delayed the flight since Germany so I missed my connection to Bangalore and sat waiting on the floor of the Delhi airport. A muted FOX News "Shock and Awe" inspired morning program broadcast 888 across the HD wide-screen television in front of me. A mushroom cloud nuclear explosion leveled a cityscape as silhouette rifle toting, ninja-like figures fell from the sky forming bookends to the show's logo. Meanwhile, the explosion gave way to the image of the planet Saturn and its rings zipping by as the spaceship camera zoomed toward Jupiter, then Mars and so on all the way to the planet earth. Arriving, images of floods, burning buildings, and people removing rubble and bodies from their destroyed homes, wailing, gave me an uneasy feeling. Apparently, I had not fully appreciated the meaning of traveling on 888.

I began to think that Air India is like a seven year old beauty pageant contestant trying to convince the judges that her dolled-up sexuality and her grown-up gestures and make-up are just the external expressions of her true mature self. Sure the brand new Boeing plane seemed promising at first and the video screens on the back of each seat seemed to indicate the airline was truly concerned with passengers' privacy, comfort, and entertainment, but the fact that none of the screens worked properly quickly quashed any heightened expectations. By the end of the flight only one of the cabin toilets was operable and the human toilet line clogged the walkway aisle creating a mini-disaster of its own. People squabbled and complained in numerous languages but everyone was quickly silenced when a young man exited the toilet and collapsed on the floor in an epileptic seizure. A small crowd quickly gathered, debating, as several flight attendants tried to clear a space around him. The man's shrieks and contractions filled the cabin with helpless malaise.

As I sat on the floor of the Delhi airport, I noticed several German passengers who were also stranded. I found out they were continuing north to the Rajastan highlands, but were informed they must spend an unplanned night in Delhi to catch tomorrow's departure. The delay completely threw off their travel agent's itinerary, forcing them to readjust their schedule for the next two weeks. One of the German women looked quite shaken but when I approached to ask if she was OK, her friend explained to me that it was "India." She said it with emphasis as if to drive home the point and put exclamation marks around the word, "India." She laughed a laugh drenched with sarcasm when I responded that she could at least visit Delhi for the day. The designated airline representative interrupted us to update the group of the new plan.

When I booked these flights, Panicker had again warned me of delays.

"Must I remind you, my friend, it is the monsoon season."

"Of course," I responded.

I was fully aware of the travel problems that may arise during the monsoon season. Two years ago, I was stranded for several days in a small Indian village while the local authorities negotiated with a multinational conglomerate that sold industrial size bilge pumps to clear the village's roads, freeway under-passes, and airport runways. The negotiations and the delays were all part of the process. No one complained and no one questioned Aquasafe, Inc.'s payoff to the local government officials. At the time, I had plenty of time, plenty of interest in these matters, and I was in no hurry to leave the country. I was looking forward to a few more days in the upscale, imperial hotel. To some, monsoons were floods of rain and destruction but to me they were a gateway to my grandmother's nostalgia for seriously heavy rain, lightning, and earth shaking thunder.

Although Panicker didn't understand my desire to travel to India during the monsoons, he seemed to appreciate my desire to build gardens. For the past seven years, I had been working for seemingly important people to build heritage and traditional style gardens around the globe. It all depended on the location. Mostly, the gardens were minor projects but they kept me engaged in the global garden building network. Occasionally, however, I would land a job that required extended stays and a large scale production crew. I was eager for the work and I found that building gardens kept my ex-wife's attorney off my back. Sam was practical, not to mention middle-class rich from her father's inheritance, and she didn't cut me any slack if I missed a child-support payment.

But like Panicker, my two children and ex-wife didn't understand these jobs. They kept me abroad for several months at a time, which conflicted with my childrens' school schedules and their monthly weekend visits.

"Do you really expect me to get by on just the interest? It barely pays for my electical." Sam once asked after an especially heated conversation over dinner.

"Sam," I said, "maybe you could scale back a little. I am trying to make this right. Please just give me some time. Something promising is lining up in India."

We were eating at the newly opened Thai restaurant, two blocks from her downtown London flat. The tom yung kung soup burned the roof of my mouth as the fore and crown of my head began to form beads of sweat.

"You know, Zule. They're your children too." She was unsympathetic to my request.