Oliver Benjamin
CHAPTER 20
Another flight, transporting us magically through the time/space
matrix of the universe to another world, delivered me once again in
the one-dimensional limbo of a pressurized cabin. Timeless,
placeless, without reference points or scenery to gradually mark the
changes, like a scene from a science-fiction program, I was about to
be disassembled and then reconstituted in another, completely
foreign environment that initially would look a lot like the one left
behind, but would boast an entirely different flavor upon leaving the
airport. Like one of the many planets visited in the Star Trek
television series, these alien worlds I visited were widely varied in
their landscape, whereas the airports always seemed to boast a
contemporary interpretation of futuristic modernism à la the
starship Enterprise. When I first arrived in Thailand I overheard a
young woman remark that the Thai airport didn’t look very “Thai.” I
was glad about that. When it came to air travel, plastic and steel were
far preferable to teak and bamboo.
After a short stop in Bangladesh, we continued on to Calcutta by a
rickety Air Bangladesh jet that might well have been crafted from
teak and bamboo. Due to a strike by India Trans Air, other airlines
were pitching in to help take over the flight routes, which explained
the low price of the tickets and the curious manner of transport. The
small cabin was outfitted in an amazingly sparse manner, with seats
for only about forty passengers and served by two air hostesses. Near
the back of the cabin was a coffee machine and a few boxes of
crackers that served as both our snack and our lunch—coconut-
flavored crackers for the snack, and a more robust chicken-and-
cheese-flavored variety for lunch. We suffered through these rations
twice, the second time in reverse when the small plane hit a
ridiculous and unrelenting amount of turbulence. Unfortunately for
Oscar, there were no air-sickness bags. In trying to spread his legs
and aim for the floor, he forgot about his newly-adopted manner of
dress and badly soiled the lap of his robe.
“Damn!” he shouted while surveying the mess, “Who decided
that holy men have to wear women’s clothes?”
And it only got worse. After the turbulence subsided, the co-
pilot rushed to the bathroom to throw up as well. As we listened to
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