Dudurudh

Seated in 35J in the Lufthansa flight from Munich to Bangalore 

Time moves slowest in the last 1.5 hours of the journey from New York to Bangalore. Captain Karl informs us over the intercom that we’re about to “make a right, a left and land in an easterly direction on runway 9R at the Bangalore international airport”. It’s when the cabin is at its busiest. The cabin crew is prancing up and down the aisle, passing around water, collecting trash, getting people to straighten their seat backs and open the window blinds. Passengers are mid stretch, mid yawn, mid sleep, mid movie or in the middle of the long queue to the bathroom. Babies are waking up confused and groggy with popped ears and dry eyes. The oldies (born 1993 or earlier) slowly get up as their knees, backs and necks crack in unison. My eyes are fixed on the map in front of me. Bangalore is in within sight but we’re making only crawling progress at 560kmph. We’re flying over Robertsonpet. I don’t have enough flight WiFi to google that name. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?  

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Standing in the immigration line at BLR airport at midnight

The two men behind me in the immigration line are making friends with each other. Their conversation took them from Florida and Munich (in English) to Manipal and Bangalore (still in English) to, finally, that familiar question, naatil evideya? Irinjalakuda and wayanad. I want to turn around and join them but I have little energy and 9 hours more to my destination. 

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7:30AM at the Kannur international airport 

The baggage belt is a teller of stories. I try to match baggage to owners in my head. One suitcase arrives, fully wrapped in cling film with a large piece of paper on which is a name (and SHARJAH in bold, in brackets), local address and the phone number of its owner in enviably impeccable cursive. It must be the man with the thick black mustache wearing the plaid shirt and black trousers, waiting impatiently with his arms crossed behind his back. Occasionally he’ll take out his phone and irritatedly share updates with his wife (or kids or driver, it’s hard to tell). The air is humid and the breeze, warm.  Welcome to Kannur. 

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On an early morning walk on Payyambalam beach, Kannur

Somewhere on the far side of this wave that just caressed my feet, a ball of metal from the moon with 4 humans inside splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Just last week we managed to go where no human has ever been and they stared into the endless horizon much like I am doing on this beach. I say “we managed” but really it was all them. We didn’t do much. We were focused on more important things like improving productivity using AI, I guess. 

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AI is taking over my life and it will suck out every last ounce of life force in me. At least it’ll never know how to pull a pail of clean water from a well. Not unless someone tells it, of course. We can gatekeep that secret as a society. And even if it figured that out, it’ll never know the feeling of pouring it over yourself on a sweltering hot day. It’s nicer in the real world. Here we have the sun, the beach, friends and surprises and disappointments and seasonal fruits and baby fingers holding onto adult ones and puppy eyes and kitty paws and dense canopies of trees that will soon die in service of some delusional tech bro who we must call a visionary.