Oasis

This is the twelfth time I am flying to India in the last six years. I have flown alone a couple of times, but most of the time we travel together as a family. The purpose of the travel remains the same—visiting family in India, with a predictable regularity, especially for the peace of mind of aging parents, both mine (when they were around) and my husband’s. Each time we take the same Emirates flight—from San Francisco to Dubai, and then from Dubai to Kolkata, with a generous stopover at the Dubai airport breaking the two legs of the journey. The Dubai airport lounge now feels like a familiar vacation spot where you come back again and again. Nothing symbolizes our immigrant life more than this acquired comfort at an airport lounge in a country that, despite being superbly welcoming, is neither our birthplace, nor our adopted workplace.

As I try to analyze the source of this strange sense of comfort, I realize something profound. This journey is the only legitimate break where I feel temporarily unencumbered from the professional demands in the US and the personal duties in India, both of which I like immensely, but there is no denying that this dual existence keeps me stretched thin between the two continents.

This realization is more poignant this time, perhaps because of the cumulative effect of three deaths of three beloved parents in India in the last four years. Each time death, or the prospect of it, loomed in the background during the journey, but each time in a slightly different way. The saga started in 2012. In December 2012, I was flying to India knowing that my mother’s cancer was rapidly deteriorating. But I didn’t imagine I would receive a phone call from my siblings during the Dubai transit that mom had slipped into a coma, quite unexpectedly, while I was flying from San Francisco to Dubai.  She passed away the day I landed in India. Three years later, I was again flying through Dubai, knowing that my father was in the hospital due to complications from an angioplasty, but at least he was stable at that point. (He died two weeks later). Today, I am flying with my son—my husband is already in India—knowing that my mother-in-law has already passed away a few days earlier. So I know that there is no escaping, or even delaying, death this time. I have to face the reality that I have lost a parent—again—even before the first anniversary of my father’s passing.

When you have to preserve all your fortitude to bravely deal with deep personal losses over and over again, you appreciate the temporary refuge offered by a transit airport more than ever. Thank you Dubai for being the true oasis that you project yourself  to be.