Goodbye India, Hello Singapore

Was I worried about travelling to Southeast Asia on my own? Oh boy ... Alessandro had left the day before me, so that was it. I was the last person on the boat. I was the last one of the gang still left in India, alone in the apartment. Ingrid and Paula had left before Christmas. And after that, it was one goodbye party after another. I packed my things; there was a pile of shopping bags and boxes full of trash outside the door. Mostly pink shopping bags. I am a girl after all. My stomach felt nervous.  The cab was waiting outside and the boy that was supposed to pick up my keys was late.

He was this very sleazy, totally gay guy who had visited our apartment a few times before, when the company sent him round to fix things. He always spent an unnecessarily long time inside, visibly enjoying the sight of an apartment that he would never be able to afford. I gave him the keys and ran. He waited till I was gone and then locked himself inside the apartment. I realized I forgot my watch in the kitchen and had to go back; the look on this face when he opened the door was somewhere between surprised and embarrassed. He was probably jerking off on our couch and I interrupted him. Disgusting.

I was supposed to leave my things with Milap, but he was on a train to somewhere and his housemates were both at work, so Luisiana and Butch did what friends do and agreed to take my things to their apartment instead.  The cab driver was a total retard and refused to make a U-turn so that I could get to JMD to meet them. I yelled at him like mad; totally lost it. In the end, Luisiana and Butch had to cross the road and meet me at the FIP building . We say goodbye but try not to be too emotional. We had had dinner earlier at the Metropolitan mall earlier - pad thai at Bangkok no. 9, good as ever. I will be eating a lot of this soon. We had then walked across to JMD, singing “I am leaving on the jetplane” with silly made-up lyrics that declared our love for all things Indian - the cows, the dirt, the bacteria, the stupid cab drivers, all the works.

A girl in a cab alone at night between Gurgaon and Delhi is always asking for rape, but luckily this time the driver was not up for any action. We spent ages waiting to pay the toll at the new Gurgaon-Delhi expressway. This is supposed to be the new, most efficient toll gate in Asia, on the new, six-lane expressway that is supposed to cut down the journey time from Gurgaon to Delhi to thirty minutes. Hardly, when it takes those guys an hour to collect the stupid toll. I read there are 600,000 cars commuting between Delhi and Gurgaon every day. Not people, cars. There and back, every day. You would expect they would think of a more efficient way of collecting the toll. Monthly passes, perhaps? Maybe a month is too long a timeframe for a city this young.

Check-in goes very smoothly. I only have hand baggage so that saved me going through a luggage scan, and the airport attendant sent me straight to the business class check-in desk. Although I did get to skip the economy class queue, the boarding card they handed me had “economy class” written on it in big capital letters, so I guess Malaysian Airlines did not consider me worthy of an upgrade. Can’t have it all.

I pass immigration and security, undergo the truly Indian experience of frisking – being touched everywhere by some woman in a uniform, under the excuse of public safety. I sit my bum in the departure lounge, next to some nosy Indian guy who mistakes me for a tourist and tries to see what I am writing in my diary. Not in the mood to be interrogated. He looked like a well-to-do businessman, coming back to Singapore or maybe Tokyo with a bride that he picked up in the homeland. I could tell instantly. She was slender, shy, long hair that needed cutting so badly her split ends had ran the whole length of her long pigtail. She was dressed in a cheap, wannabe-classy embroided saree, her hands were painted with mendhi and she wearing wedding bangles. Her feet were dirty. His fingernails were clean. They didn’t look like they belonged together at all. Go talk to your wifey boy, it’s not my problem you two had an arranged marriage and have nothing in common. You made your bed, now sleep in it.

I spent the past week feeling all sentimental about leaving India, but all that is gone now. I am ready to go, and full of excitement. Attempt number two at conversation goes much better. Frank was a young Malaysian businessman, not too handsome, but smart and wealthy enough to make up for it. He was in Delhi for two days on business , as his company is apparently rolling out Wimax in Delhi and Mumbai. He hated India – one bonus point for Frank! He talks to me about about the upcoming sales in Singapore; Chinese New Year is a good time to stock up on my Gucci and Prada, apparently. I couldn’t feel farther from Gucci and Prada in my cargo pants, sweaty t-shirt and dirty Nike trainers.

My diary entry reads:

“There’s a lot of Chinese / Japenese-looking people around me and some of them are wearing surgical masks. Oh the shock horror of having to transfer through Delhi! I feel dirty when I look at them – my shoes, my clothes, my bags, my hair ... the last six months have left its mark! The first thing I will do when I get to Singapore is buy a brush and soap and spend a few hours cleaning myself and all my things!“

I am sure that nosy, newly married Indian businessman would have been thrilled to read that. Well, fuck you. I am fabulous and all you have is a wife that barely knows you. By some lucky coincidence, my seat on the plane is right next to Frank. You would almost think that God is trying to fix us up. But then again, he is a quite probably a Buddhist and I am undecided about religious issues, so God is not on the menu. Must be the check-in agent. What a pimp! We talk a little longer, about India and about my trip. Frank thinks that my plan - going to KL during Chinese New Year – is not very clever, as the city is supposedly dead during that time. As I contemplate changing my itinerary, the airline dinner arrives. Chicken curry with a side dish of daal makhani – whoever thought it would be a good idea to serve beans on the airplane is a complete idiot. And then I doze off. We get to KL, say goodbye and unfortunately do not exchange phone numbers or saliva. I guess this romance wasn’t meant to be. Oh well, what kind of businessman travels on economy class anyway?

In KL, I have just about enough time to pee, put on a clean t-shirt and socks, and transfer onto a Singapore-bound plane. The flight is short and sweet, the legspace limited, and I get to admire the green landscape of the Malaysian penninsula. Feels very lush, goodbye Delhi desert. No fancy breakfast this time, just guava juice. Interior of the plane is ultra-chic, done in turquios and purple, complete with ultra-thin air hostesses, who all sport shiny, long black hair tied into a knot with chopsticks, perfect British-English accents, perfect skin, and ultra-chic turqois and purple uniforms inspired by traditional Malaysian dress.We fly over water and start descending towards Singapore ...