Day One:
February 6-7, 2005: Transit
SCENE: Bombay airport, around midnight. Several hundred people are milling around a slow baggage carousel, yanking suitcases off and piling them on carts. Most of the women are wearing saris. The light is dim, fluorescent, and kind of flickery. Camera zooms in on AMERICAN, in blue jeans and hiking boots and a cotton sweater, bags beginning to form beneath her eyes. She is muttering to herself.
AMERICAN:
Four things. I just have to do four things.
[She pauses.]
No, five things. Get my bags -- I hope the backpack made it. Clear customs. Change money. Find the pre-paid taxi booth and pay for a taxi. And get to the hotel Godwin in Colaba. That's it. That can't be so hard. Then I can sleep.
[She beams involuntarily when her backpack emerges from the swaying rubber door, slings it on, and moves resolutely towards the throngs queuing up for customs and immigration. Fade to black.]
Or, back to the index.