Thrivikramji goes to Lawrence, Ka, June 1972

On the ward of a Fulbright fellowship and travel grant, I took a Dakota plane (Indian Airlines ) to Bombay (now renamed Mumbai) in the month of say mid June. The trip was bumpy all the way. The plane landed in the Kochin airport briefly to load and unload some passengers. By the time it restarted it was well in the early night. I could see the city lights barely only. The trip was very long considering a propeller planes air speed. When we landed in Bombay it was close to ten in the evening. One word about Dakota propellor plane. It is basically a DC3, and while In Tarmac has a considerable slope towards its tail end. There is a wheel at the tail. Once air borne the fuselage is roughly horizontal. The number of seats are incredibly low compared to their cousins flooding the national and international routes. Being a propeller and twin engine type the flying altitude is like about two kilometers from the ground.

I was get connected to a Bombay-new Delhi caravelle flight to New Delhi .The trip was different as the instrument was a jet aircraft. Indeed it is a very small plane carrying under say 90 passengers I would imagine. But it had a jet speed and we reached Delhi say in about two hours. Around one clock after midnight I checked into a room in Madras cafe in Connaught place. I had to spend about one night and another day there. I needed a courtesy call to the USEFI in Kasturba Marg in New Delhi. By about four am next day I took a taxi to Palam airport to catch an Air India flight leaving around eight in the morning.

Once I checked in and concluded my immigration I ran into two guy from northern India- all of us going to Lawrence , Kansas to attend the orientation program for the new fulbrigters. Well until I reached Lawrence , in the university of Kansas I did not know there was another center based in Hawaii and in the university of Hawaii .

Regarding the friends at air port. One man was a physicist attached to a DRDO lab, and the other a research scholar in JNU, New Delhi and attached to area studies centre. I can not recall the names now. The JNU fellow was to spend time in USA for data collection for his thesis and hence the award.

Some thing about the plane. Luckily all three had seats allotted in the adjacent rows. It was a 707 Boeing - a narrow body version. There were no over head bins for on board luggage. I had a hybrid brief case, partly wood and partly made leather, which needed to

be tucked below the seat in my front. Once the plane took off, I was very curious to watch the landscape below.

In one row ahead of me there was a girl passenger headed to Lawrence and another tall man , an afghan citizen, know in India as frontier Gandhi. There was a third afghani youth who was also in the team. I am not really sure if he was also a student. We felt elated as it was a chance to see the frontier Gandhi alive.

The first stop was Cairo. The pilot few alongside the great pyramids, so that passengers got a chance to look and see the pyramids at least from the air. After one hour we took off on the way to Europe. The first halt was in Geneva international air port. The pilot again announced to check out the Mt. Blanc (where in 1966 Jan., an Air India-Kanchanganga- with Dr.Homi Bhabha on board crashed killing all) and the Lake Geneva. The plane smoothly landed. After another hour plane was back in the air and headed to London. Our first stop at the end of first leg of our voyage. Once we concluded our immigration process, we boarded a taxi arranged by the strand hotel and drove through the motor way to London and to the Strand Hotel. The trip was only say 45 minute long. Though we landed at Heathrow before sunset, it took a while to finish the transit formalities and fetching our luggage. So when we got to the hotel it was the young night in London made brilliant by street lights and neon signs. We checked into the Strand Hotel and at the hospitality of Air India. The hotel was palace like but for some reason I did not feel like going for dinner. Instead I settled for snacks and black coffee from the 24 hr coffee shop.

I had for the first time the thrill of sleeping in foreign hotel and that too without spending even a single pound from my pocket. To tell you the truth, all that I carried was only eight dollars - a sum any Indian citizen bound for outside world was entitled to. I carefully clutched the dollars and had no intention of buying anything. I blindly believed the arrangers of the trip as well as their hospitality.

I had a single room to sleep. A cozy bed and attached bath and toilet. Our connection to Kansas City was on the next day by TWA, to Albuquerque, say around one pm. After stomach full of coffee and donuts we split and marched toward our rooms, but agreeing to meet early in the morning to go to the Buckingham place gate to see the change of guards- something no visitor would wish to miss.

So the following morning all of us met at the breakfast buffet in the dining hall. I could not remember the various food items, yet I really enjoyed belly full meal as I was cosmopolitan in respect of food. My friends basically orthodox vegans ate only after reconfirming the vegan nature of food they ate.

We slowly got out of the hotel to nosing our way to the front gate of the Buckingham palace. In fact we walked over to the palace gate from the strand place. It was no sweat any way. We were there on time to see the eight o clock guard change. None of us had any camera and even only memories.

On the way back, we walked through the Hyde Park. Saw the small bunches of older and not so older groups enjoying the various vistas. Our next destination was the Thames river shore. We asked down for a while in the promenade. Then to meet our schedule of the journey to Lawrence, Kansas in USA we rushed back to the hotel so that we could catch our taxi to the air port.

The moment we walked into the lobby we were informed that taxi bound to the air port was waiting for us. In fact before we went out in the morning we had packed up our suit cases and readied to board the cab in no time. We did exactly the same thing.

Well by around 11' O clock, the cab came in to Hotel parking. The trio happily picked up our luggage and jumped into the cab. The cabbie was a young shall I say kid, very tall and sported only a white rund neck t-shirt and jeans. Very obediently the cabbie started off with us. To our surprise within 20 min or so the cab came back to the Strand Hotel area. I was kind of disturbed but remained unperturbed. Others really did not notice. The young driver went on with the trip through several stop signs etc and again after say after thirty minutes came back again to the strand circle. I could not contain myself, and told the cabbie that we need to rush to Heathrow as we have to checking by 13:30 hr. and already we are at 12:15hr. The cabbie then stopped near an old man neatly dressed in three piece and with a hat, and holding a news paper seemingly reading the hot news and was in no mood to answer. But another man guided the cabbie, yet with no positive result.

This time around, when I saw the tunnel leading away from the Hyde park area, I caught hold of the t-shirt and forced him to take the subway. To our relief as we emerged from the tunnel, we hit the motorway to airport. We had a sigh of relief and prayed and that we will not miss the flight.

But our luck dashed miserably when, our cab ran out of gas and the cabbie pulled to the curb. We were nearly close to the airport and we saw the tail section of the parked aircrafts in Heathrow. All I could or we could do was there comes some taxi for our rescue. I was waving at the passing by cabs but our luck god was evading us. The cabs heading to airport obviously will not stop for us.

All of a sudden one cab slowed down made a u turn some place behind us and slowly came toward us and once it stopped we dumped the luggage in the cab and boarded the new cab. In the mean time the first cabbie told sorry to us for all that happened. Firstly he comes from a small town to London seeking a summer job and so took up the taxi driver’s job. He has no idea of the geography of London. So all the problems with getting out of the town. By circling round and round in and around London he also burned off the gas too.

We just got into the passenger entry gate. The driver did not ask for any money and explained to us during our run to airport that cabs running out of gas is not uncommon and such free drop offs are also common place.

But when we reached the immigration check, we were asked to wait to give way for white skinners. But we were only minutes before closing the boarding gate. Our explaining did not make any difference with the officials at the immigration desk. We got delayed a good ten minutes as the checkers took too much time. Once we passed the hurdle, we ran to the gate to board the TWA to Albuquerque with a stopover at Kansas City in Missouri State. The ground crew gave three of us seats by offloading three waitlisteds. We were in the flight and I had a skull splitting headache. One of the girls gave me a pill and half glass water that gave me at least half an hour of good sleep that drained off my headache. So much for the first transcontinental journey with just $ 8 in my purse

Once we got to Kansas City everything worked like a machine. There were two young students waiting for us and on coming out of the airport we boarded together with some more foreign students straight to Lawrence, Kansas, the seat of the university of Kansas where the orientation program for Fulbright pre-doctorals meet, live and orient themselves for several semesters of study in a US university. Syracuse was my final destination.

I checked into a double room in the 8th floor of Ellsworth Hall in the Mt.Oread. I saw my roommate, white man from Brazil sleeping in his bed under a blanket. I said hi and good night and cuddled under my blanket. The bath in the 8th floor was without any shelter to hide in while taking shower. Or else it was the Roman style shower battery.I quickly got used to the community bath, which is like our bath back home in temple or other public ponds where friends and compatriots join together for small talk and bath.

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