Radisson Hotel, Delhi, Wednesday, 1999-02-24 18:00 local (Z+5:30)
Hi, Everybody,
I find the view out the window of my third-floor room interesting. First, there's the hotel security fence. The bottom part is a ten foot concrete block wall, nicely painted and topped with a small, fancy metal grill work with ornamental lights every thirty feet or so. Behind it is the real barrier, vertical steel girders about thirty-five feet high spaced at approximately eight feet intervals. A horizontal girder tops the whole thing, and the entire affair is covered by a coarse steel mesh. I'd guess the octagonal holes in the mesh are about an inch across. Starting around fifteen feet up and equally spaced are four wires running horizontally and attached to the girders by electrical insulators. Whether or not those wires are electrified or not at the moment, I of course don't know, but it's obvious that's what they're there for.
Beyond that is a large vacant lot surrounded by perhaps an eight foot block wall. The wall has been breached in numerous places, and five young Indian boys are playing cricket, not very seriously though, and one of those damn cows is wandering around a ways apart from the cricket players. Beyond the vacant lot is a residential area, what I would take to be a middle class neighborhood by Indian standards. One house is under construction, six workmen, no more than one of which appears to be doing anything at any given time.
It's sunny and cloud free, but it's a weak sun because the pollution is so bad.
Oh, oh, an Indian woman just came through one of the block wall's breaches and has sidled up to the wall. She pulled up her skirt as she squatted and is apparently defecating, either that or a very long pee. The boys are in plain sight, but they're paying no attention to her.
Since my last message, I operated from Jeddah to Chennai, layed over one fourteen hours, returned to Jeddah, stayed there twenty-four hours, and have operated here. Except for the usual confusion, the leg here was uneventful. The legs to Chennai and then back to Jeddah were more interesting, a nice way of saying that they were a helluva hassle.
The woman has finished her business and is retracing her steps through the breach. The boys have stopped playing cricket and are now piling loose blocks one on top of the other, backing off a ways and throwing broken block parts at their block pillar to topple it. Can't see the cow.
The Jeddah to Chennai leg, two days ago now, started with a two-hour hassle with Saudi immigration. They will not tolerate a foreign based crew showing up to depart with crew members that did not come in all together. There is a substantial fine, $900 we're told for each crew member in the departing crew, for mixed crews. If all had visas, we would be considered Jeddah based and would breeze through immigration both coming and going. However, Nachtomi's Saudi buddies have failed to deliver on the visas they promised. The rumor is that if the visas are not forthcoming shortly, we will either be based out of India or will simply pull out of this year's Hajj. The latter is not unheard of. Every other year or so somebody pulls out after starting for one reason or another, and Tower has pulled out of contracts before.
Our next problem was finding, on arrival at the aircraft, that it had not been properly serviced. This is a frequent occurrence and normally would not warrant mentioning but for the fact the one of the items that had not been done as it should have was the cleaning up of a pool of blood on the carpet in the very nose of the aircraft's main deck. My curiosity compelled me to go take a look, and, sure enough, there was a reddish brown circular stain about two feet across. It seems that on the inbound leg, a flight attendant noticed that a male pilgrim leaving one of the lavs had a lot of blood on his garment—the pilgrims have to wear white. The doctor on board was notified—there's always at least one—and he took the man forward to examine him. The seating up there is such that it affords some privacy when blankets are strategically arranged. The man had several walnut-sized hemorrhoids. When the doctor pushed them back in, one or more of them popped. Enough said.
When we got to Chennai, we found the ground handler had not been notified that the cockpit crew would be laying over rather than deadheading back. Hence no reservations or transportation had been arranged, and we sat around the airport until they found us rooms and lined up the transportation. The hotel was a dump, one of those places that had once been very nice but had gone to seed, and was located in an unsavory area. But then there may not be any savory areas (is that a word) in Chennai; I don't know. I took my shower in brown, smelly water, and there was no bottled water in the room. There was a large thermos filled with water. It had a odor but was clear when I poured it into a glass, so I used it. I hope that doesn't become our regular hotel there. The Radisson Hotel here in Delhi is very nice, an island of luxury.
The kids are leaving. The cow has moved back into sight. The workmen are all busy now. Looks like they're packing up to leave for the day. No defecators in sight.
We had a 01:00 local wakeup call set for our return to Jeddah. As usual, I set my alarm for half an hour before to give me time to call the ground handler and reset the wakeup if necessary. No point in waking the other crew members unnecessarily. When I called, the handler said we would not be operating the early morning flight, that a deadheading crew was coming in with it, and that we should show at 12:00 at the airport to operate an afternoon flight. I cancelled the wakeup calls and went back to sleep. At a little past 05:00, Sisso, the manager of Tower's Paris station, called me from Delhi. He's temporarily here managing the Indian end of Tower's operation. As soon as I answered the phone, he started screaming at me, wanting to know why we weren't at the airport. My reply telling him why was followed by more screaming—he has a reputation for that—including his wanting to know who told me there would be a deadheading crew on the incoming airplane and telling me to get the cockpit crew to the airport as soon as possible.
When we got to the airport, we were met by the Indian I had talked with on the phone. He apologized for the confusion, saying he had been told by Tower that there would be a deadheading crew on the airplane to operate back. I asked him who in Tower had told him that. He replied, “Sisso.” Conclusion: Sisso had screwed up and was trying to cover his mistake with his phone call to me. Once, in Paris just after I joined Tower, Sisso came into the cockpit for a few moments and then left. The captain turned to me, pointed toward the open cockpit door through which Sisso had just existed and said, “Don't ever trust that man.” He is often referred to as “that snake, Sisso.” Today when we arrived in Delhi, I spotted him at the end of the jetway as I was wrestling my bags out of the airplane. I know he saw me, but by the time I had hooked my flight bag to my roller bag and reached the end of the jetway, he was nowhere to be found.
The next problem was the APU crapping out. Great, a full airplane in Chennai's heat and no cooling. We called for a huffer—that's an air start unit—and were just about ready to get out of town when the next problem surfaced. A security man came into the cockpit and explained that a woman passenger could not be found. However, her bags were aboard. He asked if I would depart without offloading the bags, explaining that all bags had been x-rayed and had been held in quarantine for twenty-four hours, and that offloading the bags would take at least an hour. I asked if they had done anything to detect an aneroid device. In other words, put the bags through a pressure chamber. Tower sometimes does that at New York. They take cargo to the equivalent of 10,000 feet. A jet liner's cabin is always pressurized to less than 10,000, usually no more than 8,000. The idea is that a bomb triggered by the decreasing pressure will go off in the chamber, not in the airplane. When he said no, I said I would not depart with the bags aboard, and I called for a refrigeration unit to keep the passengers cool while they made the bag search. I sent the loadmaster down to make sure that they really offloaded the bags rather than pulling the stunt of letting a few minutes go by and just telling us they had.
As much as I bitch and moan about the Indians, I have to give credit where credit is due. They had the refrigeration unit there within five minutes, and a short time later when I went down to backup the loadmaster, I counted twenty-three men tackling the task. One of them, watching only, was the airport manager. I apologized to him for having had to ask them to do this. He was most gracious, and not all upset, stating that they would gladly follow proper procedure. They found the bags within thrifty minutes and we were on our way back to Jeddah.
We had about twenty hours in Jeddah and then came here to Delhi, where the other two crew members were severely disappointed. Saudi is dry, no alcohol, unless, of course, you have managed to make connections, and that takes some time in-country. The Saudis, like our U.S. drug warriors, have not learned that when you prohibit something, you automatically create a much greater than normal appetite for whatever it is that you have prohibited. So, almost all crew members, except strange fellows like me, develop an incredible thirst while in Saudi, which they immediately seek to satisfy—in excess—as soon as they land outside of Saudi. However, on leaving the aircraft here, the first officer and the flight engineer were severely disappointed to learn that India is dry for the next few days. It seems they are having their elections, a multi-day event during which the sale of alcohol is prohibited.
However, the crisis was averted when our Indian ground handler informed us that the duty-free could sell liquor to passengers and crew departing the country, and that crew members were usually not asked whether they were coming or going. Both crew members headed for duty-free while I guarded our bags. When they returned both they and our Indian rep had plastic sacks, and we started towards customs. Just before reaching customs, the Indian rep subjected me to one of the smoothest switches I have ever been caught in. He sidled up to me, quickly handed me his bag in such a way that if I did not grab it, it would fall, said, “Captain, please to carry this through customs,” and peeled off to put some distance between me and him. I immediately realized I had been conned, so to speak, but there was no backing out, and carried his booze through customs for him. He relieved me of it once outside and thanked me. So, I guess I can say, in a small way, that I have run illegal drugs. You know, I think I like that.
It's dusk. The cow is gone. The vacant lot empty. And I'm going to bed.
Goodnight, All....Terry