Transnational Dillemma

ASSAULT OF THE SENSES 

By Deepikah R B 

December 2022: I am traveling to Delhi from Toronto for a wedding in the family. My second post pandemic flight that’s over seventeen hours long.  

There is a huge line up at the economy class bathroom, but the airhostess won’t let me use the first-class washroom. No one is wearing masks. Does it matter anymore? My friend whose a researcher doing her PhD in the UK says people have developed immunity. Have they? Do we as humans accept that we are mortal, or do we live with amnesia of the pandemic and of being mortal beings? We build houses, cities, wear masks, get vaccines and feel invincible. We do everything to not die except remember to live. But we are built to die. Shouldn’t we live then?  

The privilege of this decision is heavy. Who chooses to live fully despite their circumstances and who gets to move away from difficult environments? What does it mean to live fully?  

There is a huge line up at the washroom in the plane. An entire village stands between me and the release. I wait for the queue to diminish. It doesn’t . I am sitting in premium economy. I get the extra leg room but not a room to pee.  The war of the classes ensues when someone from the premium economy tries to take her kid to the first class washroom. “Madam you can’t!”. I contemplate if humanity is worth saving.  

I cave in and go stand in the queue for economy class washroom with all the aunties. Most are a little bit older than me, yet I don’t want to accept my aunty status. Most of them wear salwar kameez with sneakers.  I am wearing my mask but no one else is. Everyone huddles close like king penguins in winter. I wonder if my mask will keep me safe. It’s finally my turn. I enter the already overflowing washroom. It’s filthy. Even if I don’t get covid I might get something from this Petri dish of grossness. I try not to breathe. The absurdity of doing a perfectly ordinary human act in the middle of troposphere in a metal vessel floating through space strikes me. 

I cannot justify any of the waste created due to the aftermath of being a transnational person. The carbon footprint of each flight is unsurmountable. But, what choice do I have? Can I afford to take a boat around the globe like Greta? Can I breathe in my home city (Air Quality Index or AQI 200 on a good day)? Which is clogged up with pollution and fascism alike? Islamophobia blocks the drains where the black money from corruption had already choked the pipes. Then I remind myself that individual responsibility for global warming is a carefully crafted propaganda much worse than the sugar industry. Preparing for landing. The plane is descending over one of the most polluted cities in the world. I see the ring road through someone else’s window. I can smell the chaos already. As soon as I exit the airport, I notice more than usual orange billboards with the face of the prime minister.  

A few days later, I find myself on a cycle rikshaw in the middle of a jammed street. The rickshaw puller is a middle aged thin man who asks for double than normal price to get me out of the market that is so loud with screaming people and cars that I can’t hear myself think. I agree to give him two dollars instead of one. Letting go of my ego, entitlement but never being able to let go of my class or privilege. I see the “Canadian” rub on me as I thank a motorcyclist who braked at the right moment and did not hit my rickshaw. No one seems to care that a huge SUV is honking at a pedestrian possibly causing permanent ear damage. No one seems to care that they are eating and breathing in fumes full of lead from diesel cars on a day the AQI is 362. I wonder if this constant and extreme assault on the senses has permanently damaged their pre-frontal cortex to be able to rationally think about these things or care? Or are they just stuck in the trivialities of life to make the best of the hand they have been dealt with. At this moment I recognize my privilege for being able to walk away from this mess. I try to recall if living here for all those years made me complacent and numb to the non sensical cacophony of life in the maximal city. How did I not think this was absurd? 

The thing that did jolt me out of my slumber was becoming a mother about six years back. I could not let my child breathe this poisonous air. My partner’s brother is having twins. “Do we really need an air purifier?”. This air pollution thing isn’t real anyway” he says. I bite my words as I remember being huddled indoors on high AQI days in New Delhi with the hum of my three air purifiers running nonstop in my nursery all those years ago. 

My mom bargains with everyone. She gets so annoyed with me when I make quick decisions and give people the amount of money they ask for. The mobile cover Wala (person who sells mobile covers) the lehanga Wala, the jewelry Wala who keeps extra large earrings only for long necks like me. We Indians do drag every single day. We dress queer on a daily basis and yet had laws until very recently that criminalized being gay.  

Incense infused PM10 hits a bit different. over layered soundscapes of kids begging, autorickshaws running, the engines palpitating. The red light counting down. Honking as soon as the signal turns green. Why is everyone in a hurry when no one ever shows up on time? Kids run on the road as soon as school finishes. No regard to safety. My heart hurts and brain hangs up. I can’t take this assault on the senses. Another jolt, my autorickshaw breaks and there is another orange flag with the lotus on it. And another. They are on every electric pole every 4 meters. At night these poles light in the national flag colours. Apparently, they were installed on the Independence Day to celebrate “The Great Festival of Freedom”. What is the need for this rebranding when we have called it Independence Day for 70+ years? My father opens the website for the Delhi Zoo to take my child to visit and the same orange posters pop up there as well. They are aiming for hypnosis. I wonder what this over-the-top nationalist propaganda that crowds your visual political landscape with a singular possibility for the future, that of the fascist Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) does to young people in India?  

My parents and my in-laws discuss politics in front of me and my mother in law who never votes in Canada calls me an AAP-tard (person who favours the originally liberal (but now soft Hindutva) party); I get annoyed instead of being critical and kick myself for being reactive at their small mindedness. Anyone who’s not the majoritarian Brahmin upper middle class and has not had enough resources to assert their voice is the “other” under this regime. The average young middle class person never wants to discuss politics and the older middle class is so indoctrinated into Islamophobia that they celebrate the fall into the abyss called the Hindu Rashtra (Hindu/ single religion nation). The young raise their hands, shake them, and say, “we don’t understand this politics-sholitics, let’s go eat some momos”.  

Every one is always eating. By the side of the road, in the middle of a jam, in the middle of a political rally. Speaking of which, I am in the middle of wedding celebrations and its election campaigning season for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. There is a BJP public speech in the midst of a majorly Hindu colony and there is a whiff of poor digestion in the air. As I sit down to get my child to eat something in the evening during a pre-wedding festivity, two ladies sitting on the same table are discussing the rally while looking at their WhatsApp messages (more propaganda messages I assume). Over their hushed gossip I hear them say how everything is “just politics” and every politician just wants to prove the other one an idiot”. I cannot stop myself and ask them if they have decided who they will vote for. They say, “we are still unsure and undecided”.  

I consider this a great sign that democracy is not dead in the country after all. Even after blatant and over the top propaganda, people are still thinking. The dire living conditions of Delhi have not numbed them entirely into giving in to the mediocrity of being the spectator. This gives me incredible hope where I had none as I left the country in the hands of an extreme right government. I feel like a deserter. But all that guilt cannot make me breathe in AQI 362 for the rest of my life. Am I selfish? Of course. Am I privileged? Yes. But, anyone with access to my privilege and resources wouldn’t blink an eye before leaving the country or would even critically engage in retrospectives.  

 I accept my transnational status and existing in the liminal state of not belonging anywhere and everywhere and accepting the multiplicity of cultures, ways of existing, knowing and living in the grey and beyond categories. This new identity of mine is larger and complex in thought, sensitivity, nuance and comprehension than ever, and I am relishing it.  

I am relishing my boiled egg and as the chai boils and the flavor notes from the tea infuse into the cardamom, my partner tells me, AAP has won the MCD elections. All I hear is that the people didn’t choose the blatant fascist and corrupt party BJP. There is hope after all.