Foreign Body

Chapter 9

October 16, 2007

Tuesday, 11:02 p.m.

New Delhi, India

The wheels of the wide-body jet hit hard as they touched down on the tarmac of the Indira Gandhi International Airport and jolted Jennifer awake. She’d been awakened twenty minutes earlier by one of the cabin attendants to raise the back of her seat as the plane had started its initial descent, but she’d fallen back asleep. The cruel irony was that during most of the final leg, she’d not been able to sleep until the last hour.

Pressing her nose against the window, Jennifer tried to appreciate her first images of India. She could see little more than the runway lights streaking by as the powerful engines reversed. What surprised her was what looked like fog obscuring the view toward the terminal. All she could see were hazy, individually illuminated airplane tails rising up out of a general gloom. The terminal itself was a mere smudge of light. Raising her eyes, she saw a nearly full moon in the apex of a dark gray sky with no stars.

Jennifer started arranging her things. Lucky for her, the neighboring seat had been vacant, and she’d taken full advantage with the surgery book, the India guidebook, and the novel she’d brought for the flight — or, more accurately, the three flights. Her itinerary required two stops, which she’d actually appreciated as an opportunity to stretch her legs and walk, but only one change of aircraft.

By the time the big plane had nosed into the gate, and the seat-belt sign had gone off, Jennifer had her carry-on items packed away in her roll-on but then had to wait while others closer to the exit slowly filed out. Everyone looked as she felt: exhausted, yet having landed in a strange and exotic country, she could feel herself enjoying a second, or maybe a third or fourth, wind. Despite the fact that she was coming to deal with her beloved grandmother’s death, she couldn’t help but feel a certain excitement as well as nervousness.

The flights themselves, although remarkably long, had been endurable. And contrary to her initial worry that their duration might give her too much free time to obsess about the loss of her closest friend, it seemed to have been the opposite. To some degree, the forced solitary time had allowed her to come to terms with the loss by tapping into one of the lessons she’d learned from studying medicine: that death was very much a part of life, and its existence was one of the things that makes life so special. Jennifer wasn’t going to miss her grandmother any less, but her loss wasn’t going to paralyze her.

Once off the plane, Jennifer walked through the mildly dilapidated and dingy terminal building, finally appreciating that she was truly in India. On the plane everyone had been in Western clothes. Now she started to see bright-colored saris and equally bright-colored outfits on women she would later learn were called salwar-kameezes. On men she saw long tunics called dhotis over either voluminous lungis or pajamas, which were loose pants snugged at the ankles.

With some concern that she might face a problem, Jennifer approached her first potential hurdle: passport control. She couldn’t help but notice that the lines were long and moving slowly for the few booths occupied by border agents both for citizens and for tourists. On the other hand, the line in front of the diplomatic booth was completely free. Its occupants were either chatting or reading newspapers. With little confidence in bureaucracy in general, and India’s in particular, thanks to what she’d recently read in the guidebook, Jennifer fully expected to have a problem because she was not carrying a visa, even though the airline had been so apprised. It all depended on Mrs. Kashmira Varini and whether she’d made the call she promised and whether she had spoken to the right people.

“Excuse me,” Jennifer had to call out at the booth’s window to get attention. Conversations stopped and newspapers were lowered. The rather large group manning the diplomatic line, in sharp contrast to the other booths, which were occupied by single agents, all stared blankly at Jennifer as if shocked that they had business. All the agents were wearing saggy brown uniforms, and although the clothes were not obviously soiled, everybody appeared mildly disheveled.

As directed, Jennifer handed over her passport and began to explain the situation, when the border agent slid back the passport, and without speaking motioned for Jennifer to use one of the other lines.

“I was specifically told to come to the diplomatic window,” Jennifer explained. Her heart sank as she began to worry about possibly not getting into the country after such a long trip. Hurriedly, she related that she’d been instructed that a visa would be waiting for her specifically at the diplomatic window.

Still without speaking a word to Jennifer, the border agent picked up his phone. Even from where she was standing outside the booth, she could hear some shouting on the other end of the phone line. A minute later, she watched as the agent opened a drawer beneath the countertop he was sitting at and extracted some papers. He then motioned for Jennifer to hand back her passport, which Jennifer was happy to do. The agent then glued into it what she assumed was a visa, initialed it, and then stamped it. Only then did he slide it back out to Jennifer while motioning for her to pass. With relief at being allowed to enter the county after fearing for the worst and surprised at not having to pay for the visa, Jennifer grabbed her roll-on and quickly moved on in case they changed their minds. It was curious the episode had happened without the agent’s speaking one word to her, which reminded her why she disliked bureaucracy.

Next was baggage, which surprisingly turned out to be more efficient than it was at JFK. By the time Jennifer had located the correct carousel, her wheeled bag was there, having already made several circuits.

The customs agents appeared even more rumpled than the passport people, and even less engaged. They all were sitting on the edges of the long countertops that had been built to facilitate opening and examining luggage, but no one was doing either. Dutifully, Jennifer slowed, but they merely waved her on.

Jennifer then pushed through the customs security doors and entered the terminal’s main arrival area. Immediately, she had a presage of one of India’s main characteristics: an impressive population. The place was mobbed. Although the arrivals part of the terminal had been crowded thanks to multiple international flights landing almost simultaneously, it was nothing like the rest of the terminal. Just beyond the doors was a thirty-foot-wide upward-sloping ramp more than eighty feet in length and lined with a metal handrail. Pressed against the handrails and pancaked against one another like sardines were hordes of expectant people, most holding up crude signs. About half the crowd was in Western dress, including a large number outfitted in fancy uniforms with visored hats sporting hotel insignias.

Jennifer stopped in her tracks, taken aback by this new quandary. Having been told she would be met by an Amal Palace Hotel employee holding up her name, she’d not concerned herself with this aspect of the journey. Clearly, that had not been a wise move. From her vantage point there could have been thousands of signs and even more people.

Never happy to be the center of attention, Jennifer nonetheless tried to make herself apparent as she gradually made her way up the incline. As she vainly looked for her name, she invariably briefly locked eyes with strangers, each of whom appeared to be more foreign and exotic than the next. As a young single woman with essentially no travel experience, it was intimidating, even a little scary, especially with no police or other authorities in sight.

Just stay cool, Jennifer silently advised herself, hoping at any second to hear her name being called out over the din. Unfortunately or fortunately, Jennifer was not sure whether anyone had accosted her by the time she reached the top of the ramp. Unwilling to press into the mob, she turned around and as slowly as she’d risen up the incline, she now descended. No one had called out to her by the time she reached the exit doors, or if they had, she hadn’t heard it.

With the idea of returning inside to see if there was any kind of information available for hotels, the doors burst open and out came a youthful man in a porter’s uniform that was a step down in appearance from those worn by the custom men. He looked more like a student than a professional porter, and the uniform was not only tattered but also much too big. He was pushing a four-wheeled cart loaded with luggage. As he came through the doors, he had built up speed to get up the incline. As a consequence, he almost ran into Jennifer.

“I beg your pardon,” the porter exclaimed, catching sight of Jennifer and with some difficulty pulling his cart to a stop.

Jennifer stepped aside. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t be trying to enter an exit. Can you tell me if there’s an information booth around? Someone from my hotel was supposed to be meeting me, but I don’t know where.”

“What hotel?”

“The Amal Palace.”

The porter whistled. “If someone was supposed to pick you up from the Amal, they will be here no doubt whatsoever.”

“But where?”

“Go up to the top of the ramp and turn right. They’ll be a number of them for sure in that general area. They’ll all be in dark blue uniforms.”

Jennifer thanked the man and headed back up the ramp. Although she still felt mildly reluctant to push into the crowd, she did so, and as the porter promised, she immediately found the Amal greeters in their highly pressed sartorial splendor. Although Jennifer thought it odd they didn’t make themselves more apparent, she now confronted the man with her name on his chalk board. He introduced himself as Nitin and took her two pieces of luggage. He also called Rajiv, who was to be her driver, on his cell phone before ushering Jennifer out of the terminal. As they walked, he kept up a friendly banter.

When Jennifer and Nitin got outside and were standing on the curb waiting for Rajiv to bring the car around, Jennifer again noted the heavy foglike haze that blanketed the area and hung heavy halos around the airport’s streetlamps and the headlights of cars. It was exactly as she’d seen from the plane, but now with the addition of an acrid smell.

“Is this haze typical?” she asked Nitin, while she wrinkled her nose.

“Oh, yes,” Nitin said. “At least at this time of year.”

“What time of year is it not around?”

“During monsoon.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“What causes it?”

“Dust and pollution, I’m afraid. We have eleven and a half million people in Delhi now, more or less officially, with more people moving into Delhi every day than are born here. Unofficially, I think it’s more like fourteen million. It’s a mass migration from the countryside, which is straining everything, and causing increased traffic. The smog is from exhaust and dust from the streets mostly, but the factories here in the outskirts add to it, too.”

Jennifer was horrified but didn’t comment. She thought L.A. was bad in September, but Delhi made L.A. seem like springtime in an Alpine pasture.

“Here comes Rajiv,” Nitin said as an ultra-shiny black Ford Explorer with darkly tinted windows pulled up to the curb. Rajiv leaped from the driver’s seat, came around the vehicle, and greeted Jennifer in the typical Hindu fashion of pressing his palms together, bowing over them, and saying “namasté.” He was attired in a splendid, spotlessly clean, freshly pressed white uniform complete with white gloves and a white visored cap. While he opened the rear door for Jennifer, Nitin loaded her two bags in the back. A moment later, she and Rajiv were on their way into New Delhi.

Passing the first car heading in the opposite direction took Jennifer by complete surprise. Although the Explorer’s steering wheel was on the right, the implication hadn’t dawned on her. When the headlights of the approaching car appeared out of the gloom and headed for them, she assumed they would pass on the right, but as the vehicles sped closer together, the oncoming car did not move to Jennifer’s right. On the contrary, it appeared to be drifting to the left. The moment the two cars passed, Jennifer had to suppress a scream, expecting they were about to collide head-on. It was only then that she figured it out. In India, like in Great Britain, autos kept to the left and passed on the right.

With her heart thumping in her chest, Jennifer sat back. She was ashamed of her travel naïveté. To calm down, she used the cold towel Rajiv had given her to mop her brow and took a sip from the iced bottle of water he had provided. Meanwhile, she stared out the window in amazement about what she was seeing.

Once they had reached the main highway from the airport access road, their progress slowed to a crawl. Despite being after midnight, the road was choked in both directions with all manner of vehicles, but mostly trucks, every one of them overloaded in the extreme. Over all hung a choking layer of both exhaust fumes and dust plus the din of unmuffled engines and each vehicle’s horn sounding every few seconds for no reason other than the mere whim of the driver.

As Jennifer looked out on the scene, she found herself shaking her head in disbelief. It was like a wild dream, and if this was the way traffic was at midnight, she couldn’t even conceive of what it was going to be like during the day.

The driver spoke reasonable English and was more than willing to play tour guide as they worked their way into the city. Jennifer peppered him with questions, particularly when he turned off the main road and entered the residential section of Chanakyapuri. Here at least there were no trucks or buses and the traffic moved more freely. Jennifer noted block after block of relatively similar huge white mansions, which appeared to be mildly dilapidated but still impressive. She asked about them.

“They are British Raj-era bungalows,” the driver said. “They were for the British diplomats and are still used by some diplomats.” Soon the driver was pointing out the various foreign embassies, for which he seemed proud. He pointed out the American embassy, which looked rather ugly to Jennifer when compared with those of many of the other countries. Its main characteristic was that it was large. Jennifer turned as it passed by on her left to get a better view. She imagined she’d probably have to make a visit for help dealing with her grandmother’s remains.

Next the driver pointed out the Indian government buildings, which were stunningly impressive. He said they had been designed by a famous English architect, whom Jennifer had never heard of. A few minutes later they reached the hotel and pulled up its ramp to the front entrance. At first she was disappointed. The structure was merely a modern high-rise that could have been anywhere in the world. She’d expected something more typically Indian.

But inside it was another story. To her surprise, the hotel’s public spaces were buzzing with activity despite the hour, and Jennifer had to wait in line to check in. Actually, it wasn’t a line per se but a comfortable chair where she was offered refreshments and given a chance to gaze around the lobby area. Instantly, Jennifer could see why the porter at the airport had responded as he had when she’d named where she was to stay. Jennifer had not stayed in many hotels in her life and certainly never in one like the Amal Palace. It was, in her own words, sumptuous, even decadent.

Twenty minutes later the formally dressed guest manager who’d shown her to her room on the ninth floor backed out and closed the door behind him. En route to the room he had described the hotel’s facilities and services, which included a fully staffed twenty-four-hour spa/exercise facility with an outdoor Olympic-size pool. Jennifer decided that she was going to make an effort to enjoy her stay at least a little, as Neil had suggested. Briefly thinking about Neil raised her hackles, so she put him out of her mind.

After fastening the safety lock on the door, Jennifer opened her bags, unpacked, and took a long, hot shower. Once out of the shower, she puzzled over what to do. Although she knew she must be exhausted, the excitement of the arrival and the knowledge it was midday in L.A. had given her yet another wind. She knew that if she tried to sleep she’d toss and turn and become frustrated. Instead, she donned one of the luxurious Turkish robes hanging from behind the bathroom door, turned down the comforter in the expansive king-size bed, propped herself up with a clutch of down pillows, and turned on the impressive flat-screen TV with its remote. She had no idea what she would find on the TV, but she didn’t care. The idea was to relax and fool her body into thinking it was time to sleep.

What she did find was a lot more English-speaking channels than she expected, so channel surfing was quite entertaining. When she stumbled on the BBC she almost stopped to actually watch the news. But finding it difficult to concentrate, she moved on and soon found CNN. Surprised to find an American cable network, she watched it for a while, since she didn’t recognize the news anchors. After fifteen minutes had gone by and she was about to move on, the female anchor caught her attention by beginning a piece on medical tourism similar to the one that Jennifer had heard while waiting in the UCLA Medical Center’s surgical lounge. Wondering if her grandmother’s name would again be mentioned, she listened carefully. But her grandmother was not part of the segment. It was another patient’s name, but it was the same hospital, the Queen Victoria.

Mesmerized, Jennifer sat up straighter as the news anchor continued. “The Indian government’s claims that their surgical results are as good or better than those anywhere in the West received another blow last night when a Mr. Herbert Benfatti of Baltimore, Maryland, as we mentioned, passed away with a heart attack slightly after nine p.m. New Delhi time. This tragic result happened after the gentleman had had an uncomplicated knee replacement some twelve hours earlier. Although Mr. Benfatti had had a history of an arrhythmia, he’d been in good health and had even had a normal angiogram in the past month in preparation for his surgery. Our sources tell us that such a death is not an infrequent phenomenon in private Indian hospitals. It’s just that the Indian authorities have managed to keep a lid on such information leaking out. Our sources tell us further that they plan on continuing to report future as well as past deaths so prospective patients can have the information they need to make informed choices of whether or not they want to take such risk merely to save a few dollars. CNN, of course, will bring such information forward the moment it is available. Now let’s turn to...”

Jennifer’s first reaction was sympathy for the Benfatti family and the hope they hadn’t had to hear the tragic news from the TV as she did. It also made her wonder about the hospital. Two unexpected deaths from elective surgery two nights in a row was definitely excessive and, as such, most likely preventable, and thereby more poignant. She also found herself wondering if Mr. Benfatti was married, and if he was whether Mrs. Benfatti was in India, and if so, whether she was staying there at the same hotel. It was Jennifer’s thought that if there was a Mrs. Benfatti it might be nice for Jennifer to convey her sympathies in person if she could marshal the nerve. The last thing Jennifer wanted to do was bother whoever was the next of kin, yet because of her ongoing experience with her grandmother’s death, she thought she could commiserate better than anyone.