India: Everything Since, Before… and then some

EDIT: This post ended up being Part I of a series of however many it ends up being.

So here it is. In some of my posts, I’ve referred to a business trip in India in December 2018, but I felt like it was too much to go into…

…and it still feels like so many points making lines…

…so many lines of thoughts and experiences…

They all converged to the one pivotal point… or place (as I currently view it)…

India.

I tried to figure out ways to make it a linear story, but that isn’t even the way it happened. If you have watched M. Night Shyamalan films, then you know how “the big reveal” shows you bits from the past that were “clues”… how the characters’ remember things that were seemingly insignificant or didn’t make sense at the time… that’s how it feels for me sometimes when my experiences bring about the moments of “OMG, why didn’t I see that?” or “Oh daaaaaaaang, this all makes sense now” or all I’ve been saying here lately, “Every. Fucking. Thing. Clicked”.

I let go of trying to make this recollection fit and am allowing it to flow. I’m not even going to look back at journals or other things I’ve written. I trust that whatever flows are the pieces that matter most and are the ones that need to be shared and seen/heard at this moment for this post. Later I’ll review it and add pingbacks to related pages and posts if they don’t come to me while typing. For now, it’s time to flow.

What felt like a loss at the time ends up being a gain in the big picture – the journey.

How the Trip Came to Be

On 5 December 2018 I left North Carolina to travel to Bangalore, India (Bengaluru) on business. When my leadership team planned the trip, I was not originally part of the group that would be going onsite, but by November, my manager determined that she needed me to be there. I had been helpful as a go-fer and tension breaker through October’s cybersecurity awareness month, usually from just trying to be a light and make it fun during some very busy days that spilled into working outside of regular business hours.

Honestly, I resisted at first because I felt ill-prepared to travel out of the country. For one thing, my passport had expired; but we had enough time, the company would pay for my passport fees including the rush to process it, and they would also pay for me to receive the vaccines recommended for traveling to India. What the company couldn’t buy a cure for was my own inhibitions from feeling guilty that October and November took away a lot of time from my family and now I was facing a week out of the fucking country to be there for my work family.

I reminded myself that it was happening for me intentionally and to feel grateful for the opportunity… traveling outside of the USA again, gaining experience in hosting a cybersecurity awareness boot camp that would help me grow in my career, experiencing the culture and seeing the sights in another country… Not that I really “bought it” at the time, but I surrendered to the positive or inspirational messages that I had been influencing me to change my mind and heart and building a daily attitude of gratitude since 2012.

Getting There

Leaving for Bangalore still wasn’t easy because of all the things to do at work and at home. I would be gone for a week and half of it would be spent traveling and out of pocket while we were in the air. That morning I had to make time to run to the office and pick up a few items that we didn’t ship in advance because we were finding that the packages we shipped were met with issues at customs.

While I was packing my final items and making sure I didn’t forget any of the essentials that others recommended to me in order to avoid getting sick in a different country, I called to check in with my mom. We didn’t talk long, but as always, we ended our call with “I love you”. That was the last I heard my mom speak to me without whispering.

I was running late to get to the airport, so my manager and I scrapped the idea of me swinging by to pick her up instead of her getting an Uber. We talked on the phone while I was en route, and she advised me that our chief officer was still in a meeting and not even on his way. How’s that for adding to her stress level?

I drove up to where she was waiting by the curb, dropped off the items from the office, then went to park my car. When I got back to the curb, we loaded all of the event swag into the extra dufflebag she brought, then made our way to international flight check-in.

Guess who didn’t have her travel visa printout with her. I had my passport but could only guess the paper visa was still sitting where I left it. And at this revelation, I could feel my manager’s anxiety like everything that could go wrong was going wrong (and yes, we just had to give it time for, “But wait! There’s more! to rear its head); however, the agent suggested I visit the USO office and ask if they could print it for me.

My manager went to the gate to wait for our leader, and I headed up to find someone in the USO. Short story – they were helpful with not only allowing me to use a computer and printer but also with putting me at ease. I got through security quickly then joined my team at the gate where boarding had not yet begun.

Arrival

Off the top of my head, I remember little about flying to Bangalore other than I think we went from RDU to Atlanta to Paris to Bangalore. I think I spent around 24 hours traveling if you count getting to and from airports, layovers between flights, and all the pieces in between those points. Even with the excitement, I managed to sleep on the flights to and from Paris. If you know me, you can verify that I can fall asleep anywhere.

We arrived in India around midnight local time on 7 December. We had to figure out which line for customs we needed to be in, go through the process, and find baggage claim. Even though we thought the process took longer than expected, we still had to wait for our luggage before we could meet our driver and head to The Oberoi in Bangalore.

On the ride to the hotel, if it wasn’t lit, I didn’t see it, and believe me, I was trying to see as much as I could. I had no expectations of the sights or the time it would take to get to our hotel. I didn’t even know we had arrived at our destination until I saw “The Oberoi” sign on the gate.

The Oberoi’s staff was the most pleasant in helping us check in and get settled.

THIS is the place where I took a break to take Chief Daddy to visit the cemetery.

And this is what happened.

Arrival Continued

The wonderful staff at The Oberoi saw me to my room, and for “the cheap room” it was much nicer than the discounted rooms I’ve stayed in at various Marriott locations in the USA. My bed was turned down, and slippers were beside it. They left a cup of hot cocoa and biscuits (cookies) for me, but I was being all germaphobic and left them alone for a bit.

I opened the door to the balcony and met “my tree”, a 119-year-old raintree. I didn’t realize how much time I would spend with my tree between Friday and Tuesday.

We needed to be up and on our way to the office in a few hours, so I sent my mom a message on Facebook messenger to let her know I arrived safely. I didn’t have an international plan for making calls from my phone, so Facebook via WiFi was how I planned to stay in touch with my parents while I was in India. [Note: I could still use text messaging on my phone to stay in touch with everyone else, but Mommy had a flip phone and rarely used it for text messages.]

For the sake of not boring you and for the security of the work we did, I’ll skip over everything about work except for one thing. At lunchtime, I stepped outside with one of my colleagues who works at the location. While we were standing on the street, a stray dog was trotting along, saw me, started to come towards us, but retreated after I acknowledged it and continued to wherever it was heading.

I snapped this pic because this baby was so similar to Tucker, my first dog. I mentioned to my colleague about the resemblance but even though it came to mind, I refrained from telling him about how much my mom loved Tucker because of a time when she passed out and woke up to Tucker licking her face. She gives him credit for getting her to come around and keeping her from lying on the floor longer than she had been.

Of all my Tucker stories, that one felt odd for being the first one to come to mind. It only took until the end of the workday to realize the reason behind it.

When we arrived back at The Oberoi, and I connected my phone to the WiFi, all of my Facebook messenger notifications loaded. One was from my cousin’s wife, asking about my mom’s condition and if she was still in the hospital.

I need a break…

More to come in another installment.

Luceat lux vestra.