Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

As it was, the staff were presumably struggling in a tiny galley just out of sight, trying not to bump into each other, the steward plying a blow-torch to give the surface of the roast the appropriate savoury blisters, one of the ladies in saris pulling the leaves off a dishevelled lettuce, rinsing them over a miniature sink with water poured carefully from a bottle.

Lively molecular traffic

My fantasy, of course, was that in the middle of all this finicky drudgery one attendant would say to the other, ‘If only they were all like the little chap! He’s no trouble at all …’ Only in these supremely artificial circumstances could I bask in the luxury of being ‘no trouble’. Normally it isn’t an option for me to be no trouble. I can only hope to be worth the trouble I cause.

I resolved to remember the name of the champagne, so that I could ask Granny if it was a good make. Moët et Chandon. It seemed nice. I’d have to ask her without any men around, otherwise she would defer to their judgement, pretend not to know the names of brands, and refer to the drink itself, so lively in its molecular traffic, simply as ‘fizz’. Somebody behind me, another lucky soul reincarnated for a few hours as a Maharajah, got the hiccups. Shortly afterwards so did I, whether because of champagne, altitude, suggestibility or some combination of the three. It struck me that since the state airline was part of the government of India, the country itself had paid my travelling expenses. Not only that, India had given me the First Class treatment. I was much more than a tourist, and in a special category even as a pilgrim. I was a national guest, as I lolled above the clouds in a cloud of hiccups, nicely flustered by fizz.

For me the experience of air travel was one of a marvellous levelling. Up there in the air, as I realised, we’re all the same. The plane is a big box full of people who can do nothing for themselves. It’s not just me. We passengers displayed our caste marks less legibly than usual. If I needed more help than my fellows to go to the toilet, then it wasn’t much. I was calm even when the plane lurched in turbulence and my fellow-travellers murmured anxiously. I was at an advantage. I’d had plenty of practice at sitting still.

The only disadvantage was visual. My eyes work reasonably well, but I’m partially sighted all the same. I’m partially sighted on planes because I don’t have a view even if I have a window seat. At best, with my flexibility at its maximum, I can look out but not down, and down (when you’re many thousands of Maya-feet up in the air) is where the view is.

The food came in small portions at short intervals, which is just what this body likes. Eventually the hiccups stopped and I dozed off. When I woke I was in a panic. I was convinced that the plane had landed at Bombay, and somehow I had slept through the whole thing, so that the plane had taken off again and I was now on my way somewhere else. I called the stewardess for reassurance. She managed the same beautifully measured smile as she had when she had poured my champagne. She told me there were still three hours to go.

What in a semi-conscious state I had interpreted as my missing my stop, as if this was that other exotic mode of travel, a bus, must have been our Boeing 707 landing in Bah. rain, a detail of its itinerary which I had somehow forgotten. I was sorry to have missed the ‘reality’ of Bah. rain since I liked the name so much with its diacritical fleck, the dot under the h like a stowaway clinging to the undercarriage of the word.

Now, suddenly, I found I had run out of patience. Those three hours were harder to live through than the years I had spent in bed forbidden to move. I thought that I would go mad, now that I was definitely moving, and still not getting where I wanted to go. I didn’t enjoy the way my life seemed to offer an endless cumulative proof of Zeno’s paradox, that the arrow will never reach the target, since it must cover half the distance, and then half that, then half that … Patience is only tenderness in its chronological expression. At this point I had no time-tenderness left.

In my mind I tried to knock off the o -apostrophe- s to turn what was blocking my path into a more congenial Zen paradox, the one about the Zen master who always hits the target although ( because! ) he doesn’t bother to look and is wholly indifferent to the result. Then all I had to do was become indifferent, all of a sudden, to everything I’d struggled for all my life.

I didn’t see my gormandising co-Maharajah again after Beirut. Perhaps that was as far as he was travelling, or perhaps he was sleeping it off. Or else vomiting it out.

Before we landed at Bombay I was told the drill. I should remain in my seat while the other passengers ‘deplaned’. After I had myself deplaned, of course, I would re-emplane for Madras. I was transplaning.

On hand for the deplanement was an attractive young man in white trousers and jacket, an Air India official of some sort who was helpfully holding on to a child whose mother was struggling to organise herself. He offered to take my carrier bag for me when everything was arranged for this little family and he had a hand free.

Dad had warned me to be careful in India, in fact anywhere outside England. In England there were rules, but anywhere else it was mayhem and anarchy. You could trust no one. At Bombay airport, in my first conversation with an unknown Indian, I was unwilling to part with the bag — which was of course open to the world and contained my passport and traveller’s cheques, not to mention my wash bag, flannel and perspex bum-wiper. My doubts must have shown on my face, because the white-clothed official said sweetly that he was only trying to help. That was his job! He wasn’t going to run off with my bag, and he certainly didn’t want to make me uneasy. I should hold on to my bag if that made me happier. But when he was finished with his current task was there something else he could do for me?

Ramana Maharshi compared anxious seekers after self-realisation to people on a train insisting on carrying their luggage. Put everything down! It’s all coming with you! I wasn’t sure that a similar analogy applied to my situation, now that the plane had landed and I needed to take charge of my belongings again.

Meanwhile, what did I want this young man to do? I wanted to go on looking into his eyes, which meant I wanted him to carry me slung in his arms in the appropriate position. Not very practical. I certainly didn’t want him to push me in my wheelchair — that way I wouldn’t be able to see him. It would be better if he pushed someone else in a wheelchair, ahead of me, while someone else (someone less rewarding to look at) was pushing me.

My mouth tasted sour, of old champagne and bad sleep, and I realised it was high time I brushed my teeth. It was thinking about my wash bag, and whether to trust it to a stranger, which reminded me. I decided I should greet the Indian Nation with gleaming teeth and fresh minty breath, and this suddenly became a worry, that I might greet the Nation with an unworthy smile. The beautiful brown man in his white clothing had handed the toddler back to its mother, and was now turning his entire attention to helping me. I told him that I wanted to visit the lavatory and also to brush my teeth. He said ‘That is very fine.’ He pushed me in the wheelchair as far as the Gents, then helped me out of it.

As I went into the lavatory he first held the door for me, and then made to come in himself. This was exactly what I had wanted, but it made me nervous. Politely I tried to close the door on him, but it was necessarily an unequal struggle. He persisted, and so we were both in the cubicle together. I had some slight idea about what this would mean in the West, the taboo charge of lavatory intimacy, but no notion of how it translated here. It felt strange and exciting. I felt a little embarrassment about urinating. With that safely out of the way, I turned to brushing my teeth.