Airport Ho!

March 1, 2007 Link Amma's Grace

Last night uncle and I were up quite late looking for tickets to the US. Unfortunatly, since it was so close to the departure time, none of the websites were giving us a booking. In the end, we determined that there were about seven empty seats on the 10:30am Emirates flight from Cochin, and we should be able to get them if we went to the Airport early.Kartu dada (a music producer in Bollywood with whom we have done a few songs for Amma) and Surru bhai (a Bollywood actor and producer cum director) called while we were arranging this, and said that they were catching the midnight flight from Bombay to Cochin, to see us before we went! They would arrive at around 4am. Our flight was departing at 10:30am, and since it was international, we were supposed to be there three hours early – 7:30am, which meant that we had to leave AIMS the LATEST by 7am. We wanted to be early to sort out our tickets, get uncle’s lost baggage, etc, which meant that leaving by 6:30 would be best… I told them this but they refused to understand, and came anyway!!! Funny angles!

That night I finished uploading this blog, and got to sleep around 3am. When Kartu and Surru came, they also slept. We all began waking up around six.

Now the crush began. I’m not sure exactly what everybody else did, but for me, I just started running around. Yesterday in my pursuit of a No Objection Letter (NOL) to leave the country (because we three had been in India for more than six months, this is necessary), Babu Swami had rang up a Mr Menon, Dr APS Krishnan’s Secretary, who knew about all these things. Since the day we left the Ashram, Vinaya and others had been trying to get the letter for us, but were unsuccessful.

Mr Menon had unfortunatly already gone home, but promised to be in his office by 8:15am today. The morning is still a large muddle for me, but around 8 am, uncle ran off to the airport to begin the check-in and ticket aquisition process. I went off to find Mr Menon, and got him finally at his office. He was very helpful; I was there in his office while he called up one police official after another (one of them was still in his bath). As time was getting late, he realized that we might not be able to make the plane. So he arranged with everyone that if we couldn’t make the plane, they could still stamp our papers, and we could get a later flight. He gave me contact with the Superintendant of Police (SP) and his Deputy (DYSP) who were both in charge of this at the airport. By 8:45, he had arranged for the DYSP to take care of our case in the airport, and give us the NOL, regardless of whether we could make the 10:30 flight. He sent me off with adieu, best wishes, and prayers, and a special request for a box of Chocolate and a Shaving Kit! Not as a bribe or anything – he was being very loving… He was extremely sweet.

So I thanked him profusely, and ran out of there, back to the room… it was locked. I guessed that they had gone towards the airport, and wanted me to catch up. As I ran towards the other side of the hospital to get a rickshaw, I ran into Kartu
dada – “Where have you been? We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

We ran towards the Casualty unit, where mom appeared “Good! Now where’s Annika?” At that moment, Surru, Annika, and Rishikesh all came busting out of the Casualty unit. We all ran towards the car, and piled in. Uncle Jeff had just called and said that if we could get there before 9:45am, the airport authorities had gotten everything ready so that we could still make the flight. We told the driver our time limit “No problem! 25 minutes is enough!” and drove the Raide de Cochin-Nedumbassery in true Rally style.

We got there, and got into the Airport. Uncle Jeff met us with an Emirates official, who was personally looking into our case. For international flights, you’re supposed to report to the airport 3 hours early, to complete the customs procedures. Our flight was at 10:30am, it was now 9:30am.

The official took our passports, and asked if we had gotten the NOLs yet. I gave him my contacts with the DYSP made this morning via Mr Menon, and he took our papers and headed off, only to come back in 10 minutes with the NOL stamped on the back. In the meantime we checked in our luggage. Here there was some more confusion, because our tickets were not ready yet. The Emirates Ticket lady was in a rush, couldn’t get the system to print the tickets out, so she hand-wrote them, with many mistakes. While the tickets were being written up, the lady there checked in the baggage to the only ticket available – uncle Jeff’s, and we were whisked to the front of the customs line.

The Customs official took their time, of course, and by 10:15 we were out of there, and on our way through the security checkpoints. Each stop meant unloading the three laptops, two violins, and one guitar from my shoulders, undressing to various degrees, going through the scanners, and dressing up on the other end, and trundling off to the next stop… Thank God those people are there to give us a safe flight!

Amazingly, we made the flight. Air Emirates is a nice airline, not as good as Singapore, but comparable. The flight from Cochin to Dubai was about 6 hours, I think… I’m a little tired right now, not able to keep all the details straight.

Flying in over the Middle East was quite interesting: first we saw mountians and hills, for quite a long time it was deserted hilly areas, with nothing growing there, nothing whatsoever. After that, there was flat, flat, FLAT sand – Somethimes we we would see some vegitation from above, but it’s mostly just flat sand.

Mahima chechi picked us up and took us to her house to stay till our Flight to New York at night time.
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