Arrivals and Departures

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So my mother arrives for a month-long visit tomorrow and I must admit that I'm relieved. As much as I love "all my relations," they are a bit too Indian for me at times. Even the arrival tomorrow is fraught: my mom's plane arrives at 1:30 am at Bangalore airport. Given that my mom flies half way around the world once every couple of months, I figure it would be enough if one member of our family were to show up at the airport and escort her to the hotel I've made a reservation (because I'm told that it would not be safe to drive back to Mysore in the middle of the night). All right, I accept that. We'll stay the night in B'lore; in fact, my mom's keen to spend a couple of days there and visit some family and friends there. Sounds like a plan, doesn't it? Pick her up at the airport, let her recover for a day, get some duty visits out of the way and then head back to Mysore. I could even cope with my aunt and I both going to Bangalore to meet my mother's plane.... but now we're at the point of including my uncle in this trip because my grandmother -- she's been demoted from Ancient and Wise one to Cranky and Unreasonable one now -- is convinced that it's not safe for two or even three women to travel to the airport and back "alone" so late at night. My uncle, incidentally, can't stay beyond a day so he's going to make the 6-8 round trip merely to escort us to and from the airport. I want to SCREAM.

This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy: I've survived -- alone -- on 3 continents, in countries where I speak none of the languages, where, because of my race, or gender, or accent, or whatever, I stick out like a sore thumb and here I am, being told that I'm not capable of hopping in a cab, booked from the eminently respectable hotel at which I'm booked in to stay with my mother, going to a tiny little airport with one arrivals gate and safely returning with said mother in tow. In the city where I was born, in a place where I speak all of the three languages going, in a space where my class access privileges me to a horrifying extent. ARRRRRGGGGH! This is exactly the kind of thing about India that drives me nuts. Our departure from Mysore will be a three-ring circus; our arrival at the hotel in Bangalore, where we will now need another room, will be the same. And I'm sure that our family excursion to the B'lore airport and back will be another unforgettable experience in family bonding.

Give me strength.