Cyberabad, Asbestos Centre, packs of dogs

The inflight magazine of Spice Jet, one of the many domestic airlines to spring up in India in the past four years, tells me more about Christmas than I’d ever known. The article explains that what we now call Christmas used to be a Roman pagan holiday celebrating victory of light over darkness; it moved to Dec 25th about 336 AD. India is more multi-religious than secular, and the author goes on to explain how Christians have been celebrating for over 300 years. In Kerala, mango and banana trees are decorated with Christmas ornaments. In the North-East, it’s a month-long affair, and their choruses are famous. In the magazine ads families of no more than four are enjoying water filters and resort weekends and cholesterol monitors.

Flying in India is an immersion in the frantic fervent explosion of the consuming classes. India is not catching up with alacrity somewhere on the historical course of Western nations. The domestic airport is a taxidermist’s creation of animals extinct, powerful and imagined. The check-in is computer-scanned, and at least one fleet of planes say ‘turn off electronic devices’ instead of ‘no smoking’. The men crouched on the airplane body giving it a wash are wearing shoes, which have become less of a rarity on construction sites since the Delhi Metro set a prestigious standard. Outside the arrivals terminal, a man working away on piping holds a welding mask, definitely still a rarity. On second look, the piping is being braced by the flip-flopped foot of another man who looks away as the blue-white flame fires up again.

When the pilot comes on the intercom, North America all of a sudden feels very far away. He’s clearly from somewhere in the Caribbean, his voice low and precise as he tells of temperatures and which runway we’ll be using. I wonder if anyone from his family was originally from ‘the Indes’, brought by the British the replace the first Indians and work on the cane plantations. Now he’s back, flying into Cyberabad, Coimbatore. Maybe the forced flows between colonies and colonials are being replaced. People and ideas again follow the rivers and oceans and plains of Asia to more natural trading partners, enemies and religious converts.