How I Fled India: 3 Flights and A Helpful Taxi Driver
The plane took off and so did the unlikelihood of how I would come back home.
A story told by a family friend and his mother on how they escaped India when it was the peak of the Delta variant.
I stepped down at JFK and stepped up to the plate.
As a person who struggled through COVID with the uncertainty of my family’s future, I didn’t know what this year would hold for me. I hadn’t seen my mother in over a year and felt worried about how she took care of herself in isolation. One day, I booked tickets to India in hopes that I would land on the plane and get her to come here after sorting arrangements in Bangalore.
While going through security, and finally sitting down on the plane, little did I know that a surge in COVID would land me in jeopardy.
It was mid March.
While staying in Bangalore, I was up all night working in Eastern Standard Time, wondering when the dreadful routine would end. My eyes are groggy during the day, and it feels odd in the quiet hours of the night. All we needed to do was get a few medical procedures done, my mother vaccinated and testing in order to board our flight back home. Swirling my cup of chai, I debated whether or not I should book flights back home for May 2nd. I closed my laptop thinking it wasn’t a big deal and decided not to buy them.
The mess kept piling up.
After her eye operation, my mother got her 2nd dose of vaccine later in April. By then, the news channels kept alarming everyone of the pace of the spread of COVID and the city was put on night and weekend lockdown. Both my mother and I looked at each other with concern.
Should we leave early or should we wait?
I checked flights online for the 25th, to see what airlines had the cheapest or most reasonable prices. Only one was cheap — — others were twofold of the original price. We booked the return tickets via Paris and canceled my backup tickets for May 2nd.
We had 5 days to prepare for our departure. I organized PCR tests as needed by airlines and organized the taxi drop to the airport. Given the PCR tests, take up to 72 hours to return with a result I organized 2 of them, One on the 22nd and on the 23rd, we had another backup test in case the one we took on the 22nd took too long.
I probably shouldn’t have listened to her.
The situation was rapidly deteriorating in India.
Flight bookings were like a game of chess, one cancellation and you were out of the long list of people waiting to return as well. On the 23rd, after we had given our COVID samples, I receive a message from Air France on behalf of Delta seeking info on our US visa status, followed by a call from the manager that we are not authorized to fly to the US via Paris. Shocked, My mom and I didn't know what to do. I had no choice but to look for new bookings.
By the 23rd, UAE had cut off all flights from India. We couldn't fly via Europe and it could only be direct flights. Given the weekday travel and better travel, I settled for flights from May 15th.
I decided to use the power of manifestation.
Our days from then on were agonizing slow and the anxiety kept building.
India was a warzone, fighting COVID with fright, not knowing how it exploded so soon.
I was annoyed at how nothing was falling into place, I felt like I was pulled in all directions. The whole healthcare system in India was a mess. I couldn’t rely on the system for it to work for me in order to potentially travel. My mother and I got our test results, where she was positive and I was negative. It didn’t make any sense — — she had no symptoms at all. She started getting stressed, knowing that the local authorities would take action. I was waiting for them to call, as well as, waiting for the second test we did and a subsequent antigen test.
I could sense the stress and worry in her voice.
Every day my wife will call me up in the morning to tell me to come home with no pretense and I will look for any openings for earlier flights. Many friends were messaging me, saying to come home as fast as possible in fear that we would face the worst.
Then on the 29th, Air India magically opens up seats across some days starting with May 2nd being available. I want to book but my mother was still hesitant to pack and leave in 3 days; We had to organize a COVID PCR test too. We settled for 8th and I rebooked the flights from 15th to 8th May. I soon realized I made another mistake in avoiding the most feasible option.
On the 30th of April, it was 1 AM in Bangalore, and I was fast asleep when my wife calls. She tells me that Biden is banning all Air travel from India with immediate effect and no flights allowed after 3rd May. Aghast and panic stuck, I had minimal hope but decided to take help from my friend in the US who was luckily in the airline industry. I called Air India last minute at 2 AM, where I learned I was the 80th caller. My friend, his wife, my wife, and I spend the next 3 hours looking for options on the internet for immediate return.
We had no shot at returning home.
After continuously searching for four hours with all the running thoughts in my head, I decided maybe it was time to start settling down in Bangalore for the next six to ten months.
The next morning as my mother was at the stove, simmering milk in the pot of chai. I told her that we don’t have any hopes of traveling now and that I shouldn’t have listened to her about waiting to leave and rebooked for 2nd May instead of 8th May.
All it took was a plastic cover obsession.
It is 10 AM, I’ve been up for hours. I’m confused and lost as to how I’m going to sort my schedule here. In normal fashion, I decided to vent out by cleaning the house. Taking a look at the plastic cover obsession my mother has, and reminiscing as to why she has it, to begin with, I laugh at her innocence. I took out the trash, cooked a lot of food, simultaneously my mother and I had a yelling match about plastic covers trampling the house.
It’s 3 PM and I start my work shift. I called up my uncle, venting how I’m stuck here. He calls up his friend Vijay Kumar, a travel agent. Vijay, my Uncle, and his daughter had collectively worked on finding tickets for my cousin to return to London. I remember that I had packed everything for travel days prior, designating each bag with specificity. I told my uncle, cousin, and Vijay, whatever flight you get just book it. The flight we found was for 3AM — — Bangalore to Kochin, Kochin to Doha, and Doha to Boston. The total trip was 7000 dollars.
All the food I had cooked had to either be disbursed or thrown. Where I lived, Prestige Shantiniketan was featured in the national news for a surge in cases. My first domestic flight was booked from Bangalore to Kochi. I took all the documents I needed on my Whatsapp, ready to board the flight. However, we had a few hurdles to overcome.
What happens when you don’t get a good cup of chai.
Moreover, I was nervous as to how we will get the RTPCR tests that are needed to board flights. Overwhelmed by what was thrown at me, I call another friend, Riaz, who said it’s tougher to get testing done on a Saturday. Riaz calls up an officer at the testing center, and the officer provides me a sigh of relief knowing he’s there anytime for us to finish our tests. Murthy, our taxi driver, arrives, and we soon find out the car was too small for our load. We stuffed the entire car and carried anything else on our lap.
It’s 6AM in New York, 3:30PM in Bangalore and I call up my wife to let her know we’ve officially left the house. The RTPCR test had to be in a lab that detoured from the airport around 30 minutes. The officer that Riaz had called said that he would stay there in case anything else happened. However, different officers have different shifts, so it was a bit uncertain how everything would be coordinated. The entire time, we all kept getting confused between taking an PCR versus an RTPCR test, and whether an airline needed it, to begin with.
The long process made us really doubt why we left the house. Despite leaving at 3:30PM, all tests and coordination would take more than three to four hours. Murthy tried to find ways to bypass the bureaucracy in order to board our flights on time. The bureaucracy would have determined if we made it back safely to Boston.
I’m not sure how this all happened.
My mother and I hadn’t eaten for hours. Neither did Murthy. Murthy waited for us for five hours without complaint, while we checked in through security, and the airport was pin-drop silent. When we finally reached Kochin airport, the Bangalore RTCPR testing had been cleared. I let out a big exhale knowing that the ride would be smooth from now on. From Kochin to Doha, and from Doha to Boston, I didn’t sleep for two days. Once I landed in Boston, I rented a car and drove back home to New York. While driving, I kept dozing off, trying to pull through until I was finally able to knock on my door.
I parked the car, took out our luggage and my wife was waiting with the door wide open.
God is good.
