The Lockdown Journey
This lockdown has taught me something important – get off your lazy butt and travel before something happens that makes it virtually impossible to enjoy the world. I wouldn’t even say that I took travelling for granted – it was something that I never really craved. There are enough pictures of Insta-hungry people posing by a clearly dangerous waterfall in some tropical country or videos of couples drinking champagne next to the Eiffel Tower (cringe), I didn’t exactly want to be a part of that. No, travelling for me like many NRIs is going to India, because if you are going to spend more than 5 hours on a plane, you might as well go to India to get some family meetings done (with total strangers), stock up on your bhadang supplies and come home with a bag full of clothes from Fab India. Travelling during lockdown however, was far less appealing.
The OCI Card Holder
When I came to this country (wow now I REALLY sound like an aaji) I had a distinctive dark blue Indian passport, as a child would, I assumed for a few years that this was what all passports looked like, that it was just some book that people apparently needed to get on a plane with. That was, until the day my family and I got our British citizenship and our passports changed from dark blue to a deep pinkish red colour. I could not have been more disappointed. I didn’t like pink, I liked blue. That was the extent of my thinking, but I noticed other things too, like how at the Immigration queue at Mumbai airport we were now required to fill out immigration forms and have visas; which made no sense in my head at the time because we were Indian too, it clearly said Place of Birth – Mumbai on my girly British passport.
However everything changed when we got “OCI cards”, almost like mini/light versions of an Indian passport. I didn’t really know what these were supposed to do but after a while I realised that it showed you have joint nationality in both the UK AND India. In that moment I felt elite. I had gone from British passport holder to International elite travel diplomat. Master of the skies. Global spy. Travelling to India became easier, travelling within Europe remained easy, I had the best of both worlds and it made me feel equally Indian again as it did British. That was until hell unfolded and we landed in this pandemic. Travelling never became more hectic or scarier and it came to a point where I felt like I wouldn’t be able to travel to India for a very very long time.
The Forms
Initially earlier this year India wasn’t even accepting people travelling in from the UK, which was fine as I would be insane to go to India during the summer heat in any case. Somewhere somehow, things did eventually and quietly opened up for OCI card holders. The problem was that the process of travel was made ten times more complicated. It took me around 2.5 months to muster up the courage to book an actual plane ticket but the next point of worry was all the forms.
I’m not talking about one clear form you fill in, there were at least five different forms to fill in. Five different forms, with exactly the same questions – what’s your name, where do you live, what’s your dad’s address, what’s your mum’s family tree, do you have a car, what planet are you from etc. etc. I had gone from fabulous, amazing OCI card holder with total ease of travelling, back into British passport holder who needs to prove she is not an illegal alien.
Apart from all the forms to fill in, I realised I needed to take an “RT-PCR test”. My heart sank. I had no idea what these letters even meant let alone where to get one.
The RT-PCR Test
You may by now have formed an opinion that I am “special” for not knowing what an RT-PCR test is. The thing is, I knew very well that there were tests available for people who had Covid-19 symptoms. The problem was that this led to many more questions in my head:
How can you tell if you have Covid-19 symptoms or just normal flu symptoms?
What is the difference between a swab test and an antibody test?
Will the airlines want me to take both?
What on earth is a PCR test?
Why is it called that and not a swab test?
What the hell is an “RT”-PCR test?
Why am I doing this?
Shall I not go to India?
I come from a long line of over-thinkers and/or overreactors so I was pretty anxious about booking this swab test for travel, and I was especially worried about booking the wrong one, or booking it with some dodgy organisation in East London and then getting taken off the plane and thrown in OCI card jail for faulty test results.
I heard different things about the swab test from different people. Some people told me it was just a casual swab test from your throat; but then I saw videos on social media of people having gigantic swabs being shoved up their noses…the horror of this was confirmed by my aai who told me “yes Sonu they have to swab your nose too and it is slightly uncomfortable.”
This worried me. Why do parents do this. The vagueness was really unsettling. I couldn’t tell whether she meant slightly uncomfortable as in slightly ticklish or slightly uncomfortable as in getting bitten by a shark is slightly painful. Going to Mumbai however was far more important than a test that would take a maximum of 30 seconds, so I went ahead and booked myself into a test at a clinic in Liverpool Street, Central London four days before my flight.
On the day of the test I was getting ready and took five minutes to just stare at my nose in the mirror. I kept thinking “this is the last time you may even look this way because somebody is going to swab your nose and potentially damage it”. I brushed my teeth three times but then like an idiot I decided to wear lipstick. Totally oblivious to what I had just done, I put my mask on and rushed to the tube station to make my way. Fifty minutes later I walked into a small but thankfully clean little clinic and was met by a very bored woman who stared at me up and down and told me to sit down and “relax” while she prepared the swab. As if telling anybody to relax has actually ever worked.
I sat down with my heart thudding in my throat and realised that while I had been wearing the mask all of my lipstick had smeared. Maybe that’s why she stared at me. She must have thought I was an exotic dancer who had just finished a shift. While I was contemplating all the excuses I could give for my appearance she came back with this long swab and told me to tilt my head back and go “ahhhh”. Felt like total idiot going ahh like a child at a dentist appointment but after three seconds it was over. And now it was upon me. The nose swab. The dreaded moment where I would find out if she was going to lightly tickle my nose or shove the swab so far up my nostrils that my brain would fall out.
Thankfully, it did feel just like a dandelion tickling the inside of my nose for a brief few seconds. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was so overwhelmed with relief that I nearly started to cry. I was expecting a surprise injection or an ambush for a random blood test with more needles too but thankfully it was all over in a matter of minutes. I covered my lipstick-smeared face in my mask, hopped on the tube and made my way home with a weight lifted off my shoulders.
Pre-flight
Swab test done. Results were with me within 10 hours and I felt like nothing could bring me down, until I was reminded to actually fill out the forms. Yes I left them all until the very last minute because…well…there is no reason in fact. The GOOD thing is that I am surrounded by organised people. The bad thing is…well…I had taken a test 92 hours before my flight time, when in actual fact I was supposed to have taken a test WITHIN 72 hours before the flight time. Two days before my flight and I realised this. I had already uploaded the test…
I went numb, wore my coat and went outside for a short walk in the gloomy UK frost. “This is it” I thought. This was the day that the Immigration police were going to break down my door and arrest me for uploading false papers. I was genuinely preparing myself for this. I looked up at the sky and thought, “well its been a good life, maybe you deserve this, maybe you will come out of this wiser”. Twenty minutes later I walked back in the house and checked my emails almost certain I would have an alert from an anti-terrorism organisation that they were on the way to my home but I was pleasantly surprised to find that my test results were accepted. I decided to calm down, stop overreacting and just get on with the rest of the processes.
The problem with me was that I had scared myself into thinking that if I didn’t complete a form properly then I would be arrested. I had read too many stories on Facebook about people being “held in government quarantine facilities” because they had the wrong documentation. And this was in India. Indian police do NOT mess around. They carry guns for god’s sake. Thankfully, I did calm down eventually and uploaded all my forms on time. 24 hours before the flight and the horror of the swab test was over. I had done everything I was supposed to do regarding the forms, nothing could stop me now. That was, until I realised, I had not packed my bag. I really don’t help myself sometimes do I.
Heathrow
“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere.”
– Hugh Grant, Love Actually, 2003.
If you haven’t seen “Love Actually”, the epitome of a perfect UK Christmas movie, then you need to. The first and last scene show people embracing at Heathrow airport, it really makes you feel all fuzzy and realise that travelling is about strengthening bonds with people from different walks of life and spreading love. When I got to Heathrow however, it could not have been more different. Quiet is an understatement, it was like a well-lit graveyard more than anything. As I heaved my bag towards the check-in desks for Virgin Atlantic I was hoping to see floods of people with families and their batches of massive bags filling up the queues for check-in but no, there were five, maybe six people at the most. Heaving my bag onto the belt at the check-in desk for Margaret to weigh it before stamping my boarding pass was also made more difficult by having my face covered by a mask the entire time. I don’t know about you but sometimes I feel totally stifled and have to consciously tell myself not to fling my mask off and throw it away out of impatience.
As I floated through check-in I was ready to spend some serious cash on alcohol, waste my time looking at fancy makeup products I would never wear and scoff down some greasy fast food (yes it was 7am but good food waits for nobody). But the shops were closed. Apart from a crappy Pret and a pharmacy there was nothing open and my heart sunk. That sausage and egg Mcmuffin I was craving had eluded me yet again. I grudgingly made my way to Pret. If you don’t know what this is – it’s sort of a café/sandwich shop franchise, like Wasabi or Leon.
It has some really good sandwiches but because it was the only food place open at Heathrow the only thing left on the shelves were the “healthy salads” and “tubs of fruit, muesli and yoghurt”. I wanted to throw my boarding pass in the bin and walk home at this point; but I knew very well that this was the least of my worries. People were losing their jobs, their livelihood and even their lives during a pandemic nobody had control over; so I shut up and joined the queue with my healthy bottle of water and my nutritious pineapple and mango muesli yoghurt tubs. Felt like this must be what celebrities eat at airport – the fancy healthy stuff.
The best bit about my healthy breakfast was being able to take my mask off. One bite into my gloopy, grainy mango muesli and I knew I had made the mistake of my life. Five glugs of water later I made my way to the boarding gate. Still no sign of herds of Indians. Where were they all?
As I sat at the boarding gate I looked outside the window and it felt like things were normal, that excitable feeling was happening again. The feeling you get before a long journey that you haven’t taken in ages. Nobody had told me I had filled in the wrong form and I was ready to go. All of a sudden one of the staff made an announcement, “The following passengers will need to fill out their health declaration form before boarding the flight, please make your way to the front desk where we have hard copies for you to fill out thank you; Rajesh Patel, Nilima Patel, Gia Patel, Girish Patel, Prachi Patel, Pooja Patel, Heena Patel, Darmesh Patel, Nirmal Patel, Varun Patel, Ish Patel, Umesh Patel.”
Unbelievable.
Firstly, what on earth was the whole Patel population doing on a flight to Mumbai, and secondly, I was so worried about something happening to me when there were people who had left things to literally the last minute! I glared at each one of them as they casually walked up to the boarding gate and filled out their form without a care in the world.
The Plane
The time finally came to board the plane, even the band of Patels were let through with no issue and we were met by air hostesses dressed in some sort of smurf costume with masks and visors. I realised that less than half the plane was full so everybody could comply with social distancing.
I was pretty happy about this because it meant no children. No loud, little, annoying children throwing up or running down the aisles like they normally do on flights to Mumbai. Bliss. Another bonus was that because I was travelling alone, I did not have to sit next to anybody. Hurrah for social distancing. As soon as the plane seatbelt signs were off, with the speed of light I lifted the arm rests for the two seats next to mine, made a little bed and lay across the seats. I had upgraded myself to first class without even moving and I felt triumphant.
As I lay on my new bed, I realised that I was probably a lot safer on this plane with my mask on, with people who had negative swab test results than on the ground anywhere in London. And then it dawned on me – what on earth would the situation be like in India? I realised I had no idea what to expect when I landed there and after ten minutes of serious overthinking, I decided to block out all the noise and watch a horror movie. The Great Gatsby. Perfect. Leonardo DiCaprio is the perfect distraction from anything that is worrying anybody.
There were definitely a few things that made me at ease while being on this plane. The first thing was that the air hostesses were not barging down like elephants through the aisles. Maybe this is just something that happens on British Airways planes but normally air hostesses INSIST on stomping and crashing down the aisles between seats like they are doing their absolute best to wake up peaceful sleepers. I strongly believe air hostesses should be banned from wearing shoes on planes precisely because of this reason. The second reason was that the toilets were kept clean.
Because of the pandemic, a lot more care was taken by the plane staff to constantly wipe down the doors to the toilets with disinfectant wipes, check the toilets themselves were clean and you cannot imagine how much I appreciated this. My worst nightmare is using the loo on a plane on a flight to/from India. At the start of a flight the toilet is clean, there is paper, the main thing is that it is clean. By the time it is one hour before landing the toilet door is more likely than not totally broken, somebody has clearly eaten all the toilet paper and a stench of cyanide seems to be creeping down the aisles. This time however, the toilet stayed sparkling clean. It was the happiest plane journey I had had in a long long time; topped off by decent (not great) but decent food. I was on my way to Mumbai totally Covid-free and I intended to stay that way. By the time we were ready to land I was ready to get out of my seat and get on with things. The landing was as usual a total disaster. I clutched onto my hand rests for dear life otherwise I am certain I would have head-butted the person sitting in front of me.
Finally we landed. After three months of worry and struggle and totally self-inflicted stress, I was back in my beloved Mumbai. While the struggle to actually get out of Mumbai airport was not over, I was now confident that I would make it across Immigration with my passport and my OCI card in one piece with no delays. That was unless the Patel gang made a mess of their forms again. I confidently walked through each queue with my “health declaration form” hard copies and my phone armed with the Aarogya Setu app. Every check point through the airport I passed. It was like doing an exam you already had the answers too.
Health Declaration form? – Sure no problem
Immigration form? – Here you go
Aarogya Setu app? Madam you will need to join queue to download... – HAAAA but I have that too
Oh the smugness on my face could have been seen for miles. All those stories of being forced into vans to Mumbai’s mental asylums were FAKE. Nobody was going to send me home. I felt like I had discovered the world’s secrets. I knew the truth. I had made it. I walked out of the airport with my bag and my sanity ready to take on the world and was met yet again by stares of people waiting outside the arrivals gate. This is totally normal to see when you walk out of CSM airport arrivals so I didn’t think too much of it, found my driver and sat in the car.
Until I looked at the rear view mirror and realised what I looked like and why people were staring. Note to self – throw away all lipsticks.
You weren’t made for them love.
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