It’s 11pm on Christmas night in Bangkok and I take one last sip of a sinfully delicious iced peppermint mocha before checking in for my flight back to Delhi.
For the first time in a while, I haven’t come to the airport alone – instead I’m surrounded by new and old friends who have oh-so-kindly come to see me off. It would mean a lot on any night, but on arguably the biggest holiday of the year, it feels especially poignant.
We make our way to the check-in counter, weaving through crowds of Indians headed home, each with a 40” or 46” flat-screen TV on their luggage cart. Apparently, I’d missed the memo to bring such a souvenir back from Bangkok with me.
Finally a young Thai guy working for Indigo Airlines waves me forward. On the blue knit vest of his uniform is a pin. Girl power, it reads.
“I like your pin,” my friend Carter says.
“Yes,” he says, after telling us his name is Boo. “I wear it because of the girl who was attacked in Delhi. It is a tragedy.
“Because we are an Indian carrier, we must show our support.”
I’d heard about the tragic gang rape of a 23-year-old female student in Delhi ten days ago, but it was hard to keep up with all the updates while in Thailand.
Reminded of the event by Boo, the atmosphere of our night takes an unexpected turn – even more so after I catch one of the headlines of the Bangkok Post: “PM urges calm over gang rape.” I read that “much of central New Delhi [is] sealed off after a wave of violent protests,” and wonder whether I am returning to the same Delhi I left just three weeks ago.
Five hours later I land on Indian soil. At the currency exchange counter, I ask two workers how things are in the city, and with the girl who was so horribly attacked.
“All of India is with her,” one man says. “She is on a ventilator and her situation is critical.”
As I head out into the early morning air of Delhi – a full forty degrees brisker than the Bangkok I left behind – I find myself thinking again of Boo, who had gone on to tell me how he spent a year in Newark, New Jersey, as an exchange student, and that he is now thinking of getting his masters – either in New York or London.
When I told him I enjoyed getting my masters in the UK, he said, “Yes, I am consulting my family. London would be nice.”
It was an unlikely connection on Christmas night in Bangkok, a connection that bridged four countries, and as I showed Boo’s picture to the men in Delhi, telling them about the pin he was wearing, I was grateful I could say: “All of the world is with her.”
Just as I’d loved waving goodbye to dear friends in the airport, I felt that those in Delhi, too, should know they’re not alone.
Ii was wondering what it’s like IN India now… are there still protests? Do you think that anything wiill truly change?
Can you email me your response, too? I can’t sign up to get responses emailed to me 🙁
Hey! So sorry to just reply…I know there were protests for a while, but unfortunately I’m not sure what the current situation is like in Delhi. And I think there is a chance for some change – especially as someone just told me that apparently last week another girl was raped and she told her parents, rather than hide it out of shame. Hopefully there will be an underlying shift in attitudes towards it, you know? I certainly pray so. Miss you, friend!
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