Dinner kept us all busy for an hour. The lights dimmed shortly after and I decided to put on the headset provided by the airline and kill time by watching a movie or two. It was too much to hope that the large headset would be a deterrent to Shyama. I felt her prod, she had a needle in hand and was asking me if I could inject her. She seemed a bit confused by the dosage too.
Visions of being arrested for having overdosed an elderly lady loomed in my head, and I said absolutely not! She looked at me silently and realized that I was not going to change my mind, her husband reached over and I could see them clumsily trying to figure out the logistics of the procedure. I looked away, not wanting to get sucked in, although Giresh went into the merits of helping the lady and I had to remind him harshly about lawsuits and jail time.
I felt the prod again, this time, Shyama had lost the lid to the needle and couldn’t find it. She and her husband were looking vainly for it, so she entreated me. I reluctantly got up thinking for sure I was in a circus. I looked at her seat, went on all fours and looked all around the floor with the passengers to either side of us watching the spectacle with stony faced looks. I couldn’t find the damn thing and told her so. As I sat back, I heard her say she had found it in the seat pocket in front of her.
There was peace for a while. As I began to get involved in the plot of Florence Foster Jenkins, I felt her presence closer than I expected. She was standing beside me. Startled I looked up, and she asked me if I was a RC. I had no idea what she was saying, so I removed my headset and asked for clarification.
She repeated, "RC anno?" (Are you a RC?)
I was completely bemused and confused and indicated I had no idea what she was asking. Helpful Giresh leaned over from the other side and said loudly, she’s asking you if you are a Christian. I looked at Shyama and said "No". That didn’t faze her, she asked what I was and I replied I was a Hindu. As we spoke, she got closer to me and I began pressing myself against the back of my seat. She then asked if I knew a Christian boy, for her granddaughter I presume.
"No," I said.
But Giresh interjected, "What about Sunny?"
My eyes rounded and Shyama’s gleamed. She caught on to that and launched into the virtues of this 23 year old while I desperately tried to avoid eye contact. But Giresh was interested in this possible matchmaking scheme and soon engaged in a conversation with Shyama over my head. As her hearing was not what it used to be, she had to lean in with her ample bosom pressing into my right cheek, to hear what Giresh had to say. They continued to talk about the girl’s credentials, her looks, her pleasing personality and her willingness to travel anywhere to be with her potential mate, which by the way we did not have any candidate in mind or place. But Shyama was quite sure we had connections given the thoughtful responses and hope that my darling husband was providing her by his complete interest in the situation.
At some point the suffocating position I was in began to get to me and I pushed the round body away from me, glared at Giresh and tried to tell the lady that Sunny was married, with a kid, and I didn’t know of any other Christian boy. While Shyama tried to digest that, Giresh helpfully pointed out, "he may know someone in his church!" That gave Shyama the leeway she needed and she went back to her seat to rustle through her purse once again and surfaced with a paper containing her contact information.
In the meantime, my husband had prodded me saying he needed to get up to use the restroom. I didn't feel like obliging and told him to stay put saying that between him and Shyama, I was reaching the point of wanting to shoot myself. Giresh grinned and said he had to go, his nose was dripping or something. So, I got up to let him out and then settled back in. Shyama had in the meantime written her number and turned around to give it to me. She asked for mine and I said I would get it to her as soon as Giresh got back. Then I put my headset on and began watching the movie.
Her repeated interruptions of me was punctuated only by her horrendous and prolonged open mouth coughing which truly sounded like she was going to vomit a whole lot of phlegm at all close by. The reggae haired guy sitting in the aisle directly opposite her and the Nordic directly in front visibly shuddered every time she went into one of her coughing spells. At one point, the stewardesses serving drinks in the aisle across from us exchanged glances of what seemed like disgust amongst themselves. Shyama had single handedly managed to raise the spectrum of disdain and superiority amongst all passengers that were from the Western hemisphere as they studied this individual from the Indian sub-continent. I truly felt for my race and felt guilty at the same time knowing that Shyama was doing none of this intentionally, she was a well meaning soul whose Indian norms were clashing violently with Western norms in the close confines of an airline cabin 36,000 feet in the air, with no hope of exit for anyone of us that wanted to get away.
