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…..Most international flights for North America depart from Mumbai during night. Therefore, this journey starts with sleep deprivation before it gets further compounded with jet lag. Route over the Pacific to US West coast is worse since one travels to the East gaining almost three hours and thereafter travels, losing fifteen hours, to the West. Body clock gets wound up a little in a clockwise direction and then gets over-wound up in anti-clock direction. Some sort of unwinding is possible if one manages to sleep during the flight or if nothing else, it would at least take care of the sleep deprivation with which the journey has to begin. But no such luck for me either. I do manage to get a few winks during a (sitting) journey but never voluntarily I guess. I sometimes wonder whether I am by nature, too self-conscious.

One realizes the full impact of jet lag only after landing and reaching one’s destination. Sleep does come but it comes with the old clock that one has left behind and not according to the new clock that one sees in front. It takes a few days even a week before one’s body clock realigns itself. Manaswini gave me some pills which were supposed to reduce the difference between the two clocks but they do not seem to have worked. I think like for everything else,Time is the most effective remedy for jet lag. We have been here for five days now but I yet find myself lying awake at night but decreasingly so. May be I am still a couple of hours away from the Pacific Coast Time.

I wonder how Chris Gayle managed to score a hurricane century in the first IPL match that he played while still nursing a jet lag.

–2–

Strangely, when I woke up late on the first day here as my body clock had refused to obey the local time, I also became aware of absence of yet another clock with which we all are very familiar with in urban India—the Ambience clock. In India, even in big cities like Pune, one can wake up to the chirping of birds at the crack of the dawn; one may hear even a Koyal like we do at our Deccan flat. Then the Humanity in general and the Working Population in particular takes over. More or less at the same time, the giant of auto-mobility awakens and soon overshadows everything else. It takes very little time before the ambient sounds of the morning are metamorphosed into an ambient noise and it stays that way almost till the day ends. It is quite difficult to disregard this noisy world outside and continue with your date with Ms Sleep.

Not so in this part of the world. Silence prevails here almost throughout the day. There are periodic sounds but they merely whisper and tiptoe as they get across; a two/four-bogey train passes every 30 minutes but does not hoot, few cars of the residents leave for their work place (sometimes I wonder whether most of Manaswini’s neighbours work from home). I do hear some birds sometimes although I see them not. No school buses, no street hawkers, no screeching and hooting cars, no loud speakers that spring up at even minor festival, no marriage or political processions, no nothing….

….. We landed at San Francisco half hour ahead of schedule but had to wait for almost for an hour to get past U S Immigration as they seemed to have trouble with their finger-printing machine. A young Sikh –probably a Gurudwara Granthiji and a middle aged Chinese woman kept on waiting to be finger printed at the two counters, that served our queue, almost for twenty minutes while all queues behind them lengthened with the arrival of one more flight. A senior Immigration official arrived at the scene, saw the huge backlog of the visitors that had built up and appeared to instruct all counter officials to dispense with the biometric part.
 
   We reached the Arrivals and were greeted by our daughter and son in law. It was in 2001 that we had arrived at San Franisco airport for the first time and had been received by this duo although they were yet to be married. We had then chosen to fly by Cathay Pacific since it was the cheapest. It was the same airline this time too and the main reason was not different, although we also had some other reasons for choosing this airline this time. This was my sixth visit to the U.S. and I had flown by a different airline each time, once flying over the Atlantic and touching Europe in stead of flying over the Pacific and touching the South/ North East Asia as is the norm for all those visiting U.S. West Coast.                         

                                                         —2—-
 
 I had not been much impressed with Cathay Pacific when I flew with them for the first time, primarily because I had not much liked the food that they had served. On the other hand, I was quite impressed with Singapore Airlines when I flew with them a year later. Food was excellent and one could easily discern that the total service that the Airline provided was of a much higher standard. But Cathay Pacific seemed to have improved over a decade; food (probably my main criterion for judging (inviting) hostesses and airlines) was very good and I was quite touched by the gesture of an Indian girl from the cabin crew.
 
      Over the years, I had grown accustomed to being careful only about ordering a Hindu Vegetarian meal for my wife since it was sufficient to say ‘Chicken’ while ordering Non-veg lunch or dinner and Non-veg breakfast normally meant eggs and pork sausages (if at all). May be Cathay Pacific was serving a different Non-veg breakfast on this sector (Hongkong-San Francisco) which normally does not have many Indian passengers. Eggs came with Beef sausages. When the (Chinese)air hostess kept my breakfast tray down and also apprised me about its contents, I requested her to change my order to Veg but was a little apprehensive about getting it since we were amongst the last few rows to be served. The Chinese girl removed the Non- veg pack from the tray and said that she would return with a new tray carrying veg breakfast and could I meanwhile carry on with Croissant and the fruits please. A little later, an Indian girl came along with a new tray with some Kitchari and cooked beans and for me that was no better. I was about to give it up when the Indian girl returned with a new tray carrying Masala dosa and Idli sambar. She perhaps had sensed that I was not going to be comfortable with this Asian brand of veg breakfast and had returned with a veritable Indian version. I could easily see that she was doing it either from a genuine concern for a fellow Indian or from a responsible sense of service/duty. Either way it was commendable……