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12 July 2005
Costa Rica: The sitcom
In what might very well pass off as presumption, I have decided to replay my Costa Rica trip in episodes. This helps me in being more committed to recounting my entire experience and also lessens significantly any demands on memory and time.* * * * *
Two weeks in Costa Rica: Day 1, 23 June 2005
There was no lack of drama on even the day we were to leave for the trip. Our trip the previous day to the Costa Rican consulate had only proved to be mildly successful with acknowledgement of the people in Costa Rica of our applications. On the morning of the 23rd however there was better news as Chris found out from Percy -- the point man in the Costa Rican consulate in LA -- that Radhika's application had been approved and mine would be too by the time we reached the consulate. And so once again the three of us drove through the backroads of Los Angeles to get into downtown -- first on 210 West, then onto 134, then 2 South and finally onto a major street the name of which slips my memory presently. We drove from lush green valleys through landfills atop seemingly picturesque hill-tops overlooking the freeway system into the heart of the Hispanic part of LA -- an area Chris warned was not safe even at 2 in the afternoon. The signs which were first predominantly in English, segued into bilingual and finally morphed into Spanish exclusively. In the baking heat, Los Angeles was forgotten and what was presented was instead a little port-hole into Mexico. Formalities at the consulate having been completed, and a sweatshirt presented to a very blushing-pink Percy gloating in his oily skin and well-nurtured beard -- he incessantly importuned us to call him and tell him of our exploits in Costa Rica when there and Chris very sagely guessed it more as transient euphoria and offered all the relevant empty promises -- and beginnings of Spanish lessons having been imparted from mentor-driving to us wide-eyed students, we returned.It was closing in on one and we had another six hours to go before we left for LAX. It was all of these six hours that I had to make one final push and shift the remaining vital essentials from Catalina to Mentor. The knee injury had no doubt made it more threatening but thankfully I had friends to bank upon and promptly at 5, Subash then Abhishek then Vikram joined in but not before a puny little sandwich was eaten up by way of lunch for a monstrous sum nearing $5 which did not even include the grimy New York Cheddar Kettle Chips. We filled boxes after boxes with shoes, racks, books, maps and mapbooks, crumpled purple hats with leopard-spotted hatbands presented on Mardi Gras, unused bottles of wine slept on kitchen sink-trays, bathroom rugs, year-old frozen peas, shampoo sachets, panchaataranam-uddarani and salty sandhyavandanam plates, god-photos, four-part -- Google safety blanket, flattened pillow, paper-thin comforter and converted cloth-floormat -- beddings, artistic wall-paintings, dusty Casio keyboards, violins and laundry-baskets. We threw away the rest -- Subash was conscientious about the cleaning-up operation. I quickly changed into my polyester -- my mother would probably call them dirty-pink -- checked shirt and cotton pants, bucked the Californian trend of wearing slippers to airports and laced in my shoes (little was I to know what they would have to endure before the trip was done). I did present an odd spectacle to the evening dog-walking crowd -- clean-shaven, limping in formals with a huge, looming Kelty backpack threatening to crush the bodyframe -- but then, I was going to Costa Rica and they were not.
No prayers were said, no holding hands, no communion of minds and no single, wishful thought was shared by all when we assembled at LAX and as we shuffled through check-in. Murmurs and recommendations on taking off shoes to pass through security there were aplenty, but I stood them off and went in with reasonable assuredness that I would not blip and I did not. Our flight to Miami and then onto San Jose had us juxtaposed with passengers boarding flights to other Latin American countries. One uniformly 5'2" family of father, mother and children stood out for mention as the cylindrically-shaped father carried a cylindrically-shaped jute bag painstakingly hauling it by grabbing its neck. It made me realise all over again in one single instant the sociological and anthropological significance of height. The plane did not leave for a while and that presented many of us with enough time to go about securing victuals for the night because domestic or international, six hours long or three hours long, American Airlines would definitely not attend to them and we should be thankful they do not skimp on flight attendants, curtains partitioning coach and business class, colourless pretzel design bags, Mr. and Mrs. T Bloody Mary's Mix with their original Tailgating recipes and $2 headsets ambling for space with their antennae and cords in a crowded pigsty-plastic bag. Chris and Greg showed us previews of their different though nicely dovetailed senses of humour with a wry comment Chris made about announcements for executive class passengers that should instead go: "Inviting passengers whose family wealth dates back before 1800 to board" and a brilliant add-on by Greg about how the flight attendant would behave in their august presence: "Sorry Sir, here let me push this old woman out of the way for you". They also had the pick of better-looking flight attendants. In coach we had second-class railway compartment seat-adjustment issues. I had asked for an aisle seat to rest and stretch my left leg though the check-in attendant had our right and left towards the front crossed and awarded me the aisle seat on the wrong side of the plane. Still, it was something and I was wont to let go of the chance. Jane also asked for and got an aisle seat right behind me but she and the check-in staff had not reckoned with the dilemmas of lovey-dovey twosomes in new wedlock, gleaming wedding rings, side-nestling, hand-holding and bad breath-exchanging allocated seats on either side of a wall of seats. We were still in English-speaking dominion, so when their request came in Spanish with plaintive appeals and supplicatory smiles we pompously played their warring families and refused -- I clutched my right knee indicating a problem and Jane just plainly asking to sit in the aisle seat. Their helpless, lost and powerless simpers stared back at us as the wife got out of Jane's seat to sit beside me and for the rest of the six-hour trip, she was either asleep or talking through six-inch vertical slits between seats to her husband as though exercising conjugal visiting privileges.
Now is as good a time as any to mention our demographic and introduce the cast. Our group of eighteen comprised of 1 Briton, 2 Indians, 1 South Korean, 1 Indian-American, 2 Korean-Americans, 1 Canadian-American, 1 Thai-American, 1 Chinese-American and the rest full-blooded American (including one who claimed "direct" ancestry to the Mayflower party). Our group of eighteen comprised of 3 staff members, 7 graduate students and the rest undergraduate students. Our group of eighteen comprised of 8 men and 10 women. Our group of eighteen had four with a Korean connection -- one born to Korean parents in the United States, one born to a Korean mother and an American father, one with a Korean-American boyfriend and one from South Korea himself. Our group of eighteen had two reluctant to be on the trip, our group of eighteen had sixteen bringing malaria prophylaxis medication with them on the strong urging of a large woman at the Caltech Health Centre, our group of eighteen had one openly and amusingly calling me and my lot brown people and how they were not to be trusted because of a previous personal break-up incident, our group of eighteen had 3 with fluent Spanish speaking ability and 1 with earnest Spanish teaching yearning, our group of eighteen seemed like a disparate mix of individuals with nobody cognisant of more than four others on the trip, our group of eighteen was tentative of what the next thirteen days of sunshine and afternoon rain meant to each living in the shadow and company of seventeen others. But our group of eighteen was meant for many things of divine coincidence, happy amalgamating, very intimate secrets-sharing, cement-mixing, stuttering, giggling, chirping, shrieking, through-the-dense-glass blinking, Laughing Buddha chinbelly-moving, crying, shopping-whoring, muscle-flexing, flirting, leering and returning complete strangers to all but our group of eighteen.
