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Masala Moments
a
travel novel from India
by
Dorothee Lang
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Excerpt
Vegetable
Kurma "Your ticket,
please," the flight attendant says, and June shows it once more, there, at
the end of the walkway, next to the open door of the plane. Then she is inside,
a part of the stream of passengers that floats through the aisles, past the ones
that already found their place.
It all seems so organized, June thinks.
All those people, all those tickets. All those planes linking to each other. Yet,
the truth is: You can never know. Not back home, not here. All you can do is make
plans. And then watch things come together or float the other way. Like with this
plane. "There might be a strike in Italy," they had said in the news,
just a few days before she left. "There might be delays at the airports."
June had fished for details on the internet, then called her travel agency. "We
heard about that," they had told her, "but the strike isn't definite
yet. And even when it happens, you should be fine, as the international flights
should be going on time," the man on the service hotline had explained. You
should be fine. Better than nothing, but still.
"No guarantees,"
she had told herself in the morning, when she had shouldered her backpack and
closed the door of the apartment she shared with Kathrin and Anna, there in one
of the old buildings that form the centre of Freiburg, not far from the Münsterplatz.
At the porch, she had turned around one last time, suppressing the sudden
wish to stay here, in the safety net of the everyday, the wish to escape the truth
about going, the fact that you can not be sure that you'll return.
The
straps of her backpack had felt strangely light on her shoulder when she had walked
to the bus station, the very way she had taken so often, on the way to the office.
But not today, she had thought, and it was there that she felt this need to leave
again, this need to see some other skies, at least for a while, for a few weeks.
"I wished I could do the same," Anna had said as she sailed through
the door at half past nine, late for the dinner Kathrin had cooked for goodbye,
but there at last. "This job is just mad," she had declared, and then
opened the bottle of red wine she had brought.
"I'm not sure if
the idea of going to India alone sounds exactly that much saner," Kathrin
had pointed out once more, but then clinked glasses anyway. "You are still
sure you don't want me to drive you to the airport?"
"I will
be fine," June had repeated, wishing time would tick either slower, or faster.
Then the morning. The early alarm. The bus to the airport. The sunrise
flight over the Alps. There, Italy, and the news that the air strike was postponed,
that her plane will be leaving as promised, as hoped for. And now, here, her seat,
waiting for her: 23B. Just like her ticket says.
Relieved and excited
at the same time, June settles down, and tries to make herself comfortable. She
puts the water bottle and her book in the net in front of her, stores the daypack
under her seat, buckles the seat belt, and leans back. Done, she tells herself,
and peeks out of the window. Nothing is moving yet, but the engines are hissing
already. All that is missing now is the start. All that is missing now is saying
hello to the one who will sit next to her in the coming hours. She turns.
"Hello," she says.
But the man next to her doesn't react.
He is sleeping already.
She notices his tanned skin, his dark hair, and tries
to figure out where he is coming from. So close they are, so distant. A stranger
a breath away. That's one of the rules of travelling that June always finds odd
to deal with: the way personal space is reduced to a minimum while travelling;
the way you have to pretend that you're an arm's length away, that you don't feel
the other person, so close to you.
A shudder cuts through her reflection.
It's the huge body of metal, vibrating. Moving. Its three wheels, starting to
turn. Through the window, June can watch the ground move now.
An hour later,
lunch. Below them, it is early afternoon already. That's what the monitor in front
says. Local time: 14:35. Time at destination: 18:05. Those two numbers will get
closer and closer during their flight towards Asia. The Orient, the land of morning,
moving forward in time, while the Occident, the land of the setting sun, moves
back in time. And all this without even touching the theory of relativity. Without
even touching the laws of time and space. While lunch is getting closer.
Line by line, the stewardess asks the same question. "Vegetable or meat?"
June isn't sure.
"Which kind of vegetable is it?"
she wants to know, when it's her turn.
The stewardess takes a look at
the packs, as if no one ever asked the question before.
"Vegetable
Kurma," she reads.
"It sounds interesting," June says.
"I'll try it."
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book reviews:
- India in a Teacup (SereneLight
-
Masala Moments (ghoti magazine)
- Discovering the World (Moondance)
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