by Bajaj, Karan
And so, later that evening, with tickets purchased at the counter and sparkling new degrees lodged in our backpacks, we were on a flight from Boston to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Under Sam’s able persuasion, I had omitted to gather any information about our destination and I found myself tense with excitement at the randomness of the journey. I knew nothing about Phnom Penh, but even the names of certain places - Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Istanbul, Marrakesh, Ulaan Bataar, Myanmar, the Amazon - gleam with the promise of hidden mysteries and undiscovered wonders.
Sam, despite his usual over-the-top enthusiasm, was right. Soon we would have rental leases, demanding bosses, nagging girlfriends (if we were lucky) and two-week vacations to cope with. Perhaps we’d never again have the luxury of making an impulse trip to another part of the world.
The airplane was empty sans a bunch of tough-looking marines in green berets and crew cuts, who eyed us curiously but didn’t say much.
‘I’ve planned it out,’ said Sam, eyeing the air hostess as he fumbled with his seatbelt. I reached out and snapped it shut.
‘Some mechanical engineer,’ I muttered.
‘We spend a few days in Phnom Penh, pick up some chicks and head to Angkor Vat. It’s just a four- or five-hour boat ride. Picture it. Sitting atop a wooden ferry, a light breeze blowing in our faces, watching the picturesque Cambodian landscape pass by - all with a girl on each arm.’ He grinned, his face flush with excitement.
He pointed to the guidebook. ‘It says here that the Downtown Foreign Correspondents Club is a great place to meet expatriates and locals. We should find a hotel near it.’
‘And leverage your significant success at picking up girls in the US, I assume?’
‘Very funny, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Things are different now. We’re MIT graduates.’
‘And that matters in Phnom Penh when it didn’t seem to have an impact in Boston?’
‘American women don’t like Indians. We don’t have fair skin like the Caucasians, big dicks like the blacks, exotic accents like the South Americans, or even the sensitive femininity of the Chinese. But Cambodians are different. They love our spices.’
‘I didn’t see that written anywhere in the Lonely Planet,’ I told him.
‘What are you bitching about? You had your pick in Boston as well. Not that you made any use of it. If I was six feet tall and played basketball and soccer, I would be picking up a new girl every day,’ he said. ‘Anyway, girls or no girls, we need to smoke up in Phnom Penh with the Chinamen. I’ve heard gaanja is as abundant as air there.’
‘Somehow, I don’t think we have the same things in mind for this vacation,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, I know you want to go and contemplate and philosophize and stuff. Lots of time for that there. It’s quiet as hell. Nothing ever happens in Cambodia.’
‘Looks like it. There isn’t a soul on this flight except those bomber types.’ I glanced around at the empty seats.
‘Oh, it’s an undiscovered gem,’ Sam said confidently. ‘You know how tourists are. They’d rather push each other into canals in overcrowded Venice than see a place worth seeing. Anyway, what were the options? I’d rather sit in the MIT library looking at pictures of Cambodia than do a homo trip to Bhutan to watch mountains and sunrises with you.’
He piped down a little as the flight took off, and I stared out the window as the familiar landmarks came into view. The four years in Boston had done me good, mostly because I wasn’t tormented by happy, cheerful images of the past every day. In India, every street reminded me of how life had been before Mom and Dad had expired within a few months of each other - she after a short but painful battle with cancer, he of a heart attack. The memories were everywhere, in our small, comfortable Army apartment on SP Marg, our sprawling ancestral home in Shimla, the bungalows of the aunts and uncles whom I subsequently stayed with. I had found peace nowhere, always harassed by the healthy ghosts of my parents pottering about the house, dropping me off to school, waiting for me when I returned. The sudden loss of everything I had taken for granted almost crippled me, and had it not been for Sam, I would probably never have summoned up the will to apply for undergraduate studies in the US. He was my best friend in school, a hostel mate in Delhi who, I half suspected, changed his IIT plans to MIT, sensing my need to escape from India.
I looked at him affectionately. His clumsy optimism had pulled me through, first in high school and then in MIT.
‘All my life I dreamt of this, you know,’ Sam said suddenly. ‘Not Cambodia, I mean - just this absolute freedom to take a trip from nowhere to nowhere. That’s why I wanted to get out of Bhatinda. Everyone around me had already planned the rest of my life without even asking me.’
I felt a sudden stab of regret at what I would never have. ‘Like a Greek tragedy, one realizes the value of what one has only when one loses it,’ I said softly.
‘I guess that’s why there aren’t too many Greek heroes in Bhatinda’s poultry farms,’ said Sam with a grin. ‘Nothing much to lose there.’ He let out a gigantic yawn. ‘Should we get some sleep, you think? So many empty seats, we have more room to sleep here than in the dorm.’
‘Get up,’ said Sam, shaking me violently. ‘We’re about to land. Just look outside, will you? Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?’
I opened one sleepy eye and looked blearily out the window to see a bunch of trees, some scrubs, a body of water, some buildings.
‘It looks like any other place,’ I mumbled.
‘Your irrepressible enthusiasm after sixteen hours of sleep is very uplifting,’ he said. ‘I’m going to score here, you wait and see. You just see,’ he repeated as the plane touched down bumpily.
I felt a surge of excitement as the plane skidded to a halt on the sparse runway. Phnom Penh, Siam Reap, Angkor Vat; all remote names from primary school history lessons that were suddenly becoming a reality. To top it all, we had no hotel reservations, no travel bookings, no maps and no fixed plans -the best way to travel. I felt myself sharing Sam’s enthusiasm as we jumped up to take our backpacks from the overhead luggage compartment.
‘You should try and get back on the next flight,’ someone said.
Sam and I turned in surprise. One of the military dudes had walked up behind us.
‘The civilian government was overthrown by the communist rebel army, the Khmer Rouge, in a coup yesterday,’ he said. ‘Things will get ugly very soon.’
Now what’s all this, I thought. We were on a vacation. Where did coups, civilian governments and rebel armies fit in?
‘Isn’t the Khmer Rouge the people’s army?’ Sam asked. ‘Won’t it be more peaceful now that they have replaced the unpopular government?’
The tall, middle-aged marine ran a hand through his, crew-cut blonde hair and shrugged. ‘I don’t know all that. This isn’t a history lecture, son. Coups mean trouble, no matter who replaces whom.’
‘When will things settle down?’ I asked.
The marine laughed. ‘A few decades, maybe; this is South Asia.’ He began to walk away. ‘I would go back if I were you.’
Backpacks in hand, Sam and I looked at each other.
‘I thought nothing ever happened in Cambodia,’ I said.
‘Don’t tell me you’re going to listen to him. You know how paranoid Americans are,’ he replied. ‘Where we come from, there is a coup every day.’
‘I don’t know. This sounds serious. It’s not worth getting shot at just to see a bunch of temples.’
The Cambodian air hostess looked at us expectantly.
‘Anyway, we need to get out of the plane, I guess,’ I said.
We began to move towards the exit.
‘I think we should take the next flight back,’ I told Sam as we walked towards the terminal.
‘Maybe he was just a racist fucker getting off from scaring two brown curry boys,’ Sam replied. ‘He could be laughing with his buddies about how he scared us into running away as soon as we arrived.’
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�Unlikely,’ I said. ‘He was a marine, not a hick cab driver.’
We reached the terminal - and realized immediately that something wasn’t right. The small airport, barely a tenth the size of the Boston airport, was teeming with chaotic activity. Groups of westerners, mostly American and European hippies with matted blonde hair, grubby faces and dirt-streaked backpacks, were huddled in corners, talking in loud, agitated voices to nervous-looking Cambodian airport officials.
‘This doesn’t look good,’ I muttered.
There was no one at the immigration counter to check our passports. A big white board hanging over the counter proclaimed ‘All flights cancelled definitely’ in English. They may have meant ‘indefinitely’, but ‘definitely’ had an ominous ring to it which seemed fitting given the dark looks on the faces of the hippies. The marines who had been on the flight with us were nowhere to be seen.
‘How will we get out if all outgoing flights have been cancelled?’ Sam asked fearfully.
‘Why worry? Let’s just pick up some of these hippie chicks and have a vacation right here,’ I snapped, furious with myself for falling in with Sam’s plans without doing any research of my own.
‘Look, I’m sorry..’ he began.
I cut him off. ‘No, no, it’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘Let’s try to find a way out of this mess, shall we?’
We joined the thirty-odd hippies who were huddled together in the deserted baggage claim area.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked a tall lean guy with shaggy blonde hair and vacant blue eyes, who was standing alone and looked more relaxed than the others. He smiled.
‘We are fucked,’ he said sweetly. His accent was unrecognizable, neither American nor European, the two accents we were most used to hearing at MIT.
‘Why, what’s wrong?’ asked Sam in a rush.
‘The Khmer Rouge has cut off all air, road, train and river routes. Who knows how long it will be before things get back to normal? A day, a month, a year, a decade?’
‘We can’t afford to wait that long. I start with GE in three weeks,’ said Sam. He pointed at me. ‘And he starts with NASA.’
The blonde guy just stared blankly at us.
‘There may be bigger problems to worry about than not joining work on time,’ I said. ‘Just relax a bit, will you?’
I turned to the blonde guy. ‘Is the government going to arrange for us to stay somewhere safe until then?’
He laughed, so incongruous a reaction in the circumstances that most ofthe hippies turned to stare at him. ‘Here, take a look at the new government,’ he said. He pulled us to a small window in one corner of the terminal.
I saw a carnival-like atmosphere on the clear stretch of road outside the airport. Three big, green armoured battle tanks, each one about fifty feet wide and fifteen feet tall, stood half a mile ahead at the entrance to the airport. Twenty or thirty young boys sat atop the tanks. They were maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, and were dressed in black with red bandanas tied around their heads. Hundreds of short, thin men and women dressed in bright, colourful clothes - presumably the Cambodian junta - danced on the road, around the tanks. Periodically, the black-clad boys pumped their rifles into the air, firing impromptu shots which were greeted with jubilant cheers from the junta. Sure, it was an unlikely sight - the crowds milling around the tanks were mostly middle-aged men and women who were cheering unruly, teenage boys - but it didn’t seem sinister.
‘Everyone seems quite happy,’ said an American hippie with caked blonde hair and rings on her pierced cheeks. ‘It doesn’t seem all that bad. Why have they cancelled the flights?’
There was a general murmur of assent at this observation. Everyone began to crowd around the small window.
‘I think we should talk to them and find out when they plan to resume normal services,’ said a tall, muscular guy with a German accent.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said the shaggy blonde guy. ‘These Khmer Rouge soldiers are illiterate village boys who’ve been taught to hate Americans all their lives. In effect, that means all foreigners, since they can’t tell the difference between a Pakistani and a Texan.’
‘How do you know that?’ someone asked.
‘I’ve been a PhD student at the University of Cambodia for a year,’ he said. ‘I saw this coming before even the government did, but I didn’t get out in time. Now, it’s over.’
‘What’s over?’ asked the German guy. ‘What did you see coming?’
The girl with the cheek piercings let out a sudden shriek and pointed outside. We followed her glance. The celebrations seemed to have gone silent all of a sudden. Everyone, except the hooting boys atop the tanks, seemed to be staring at something in front of one of the tanks. Although we were a few hundred metres away, we could make out the obviously dazed expressions on their faces.
‘He shot him,’ said the girl excitedly. ‘I saw it.’
‘Who? What?’ asked the hippies huddled by the window.
‘One of those guys in black,’ she said, pointing outside. ‘He just shot a man who bumped into him, he shot him right between the eyes. There was blood.’
Everyone stood in silence, staring at each other as the tanks began to roll forward towards the airport. The swirling crowds followed the tanks, though they seemed a bit subdued now.
‘This is what I meant,’ said the PhD guy. ‘The Khmer Rouge are animals.’
A chorus of panicked voices broke out in the airport as the cavalcade approached.
‘We need to run.’
‘And go where?’
‘We should reason with them.’
‘And get shot?’
‘Why would they shoot us?’
‘They shot someone who just bumped into them!’
‘Should we put up a white flag for peace? We don’t even know if they are looking for us.’
‘No use,’ said the PhD student. Everyone turned to look at him. ‘Do you know the motto of their revolution? To keep you is no benefit; to destroy you is no loss. They will gladly wrap you in your white flags if you give them half a chance,’ he said, sounding quite calm despite the death sentence he was pronouncing for everyone in the room.
All flights were cancelled, the tanks were fast approaching the airport, and we had nowhere to go.
A petite woman began to whimper, which triggered a crying fit in the room.
‘Can’t we fight them off?’ asked the muscular German. ‘They are just a handful of boys, and the crowd doesn’t seem to like them too much.’
He looked around the room for support. None of the hippies seemed enthusiastic about this course of action.
‘And then what, we take over the city? Perhaps fight off thousands of boy soldiers in the country?’ said a teenager with a French accent.
‘Do you have a better idea?’ asked the German.
‘Any idea would be better than that,’ said the Frenchman sarcastically.
The German moving threateningly towards him and caught him by the collar. ‘If you can’t help, don’t speak, you bastard.’
‘Okay, James Dean. Let’s go Hollywood on the soldiers instead,’ the Frenchman sneered.
The German struck him in the face. A babble of panicked voices broke out, although the Frenchman himself didn’t react.
Thus far, I had been watching in a state of mild disbelief as the events unfolded. This was a vacation, I thought, no one got killed on a vacation, damn it. Everything would take care of itself. But the sudden eruption of violence in front of me brought back memories of a lifetime spent on basketball courts and soccer fields. My father, a colonel in the Indian Army, had ensured that I cut my sporting teeth playing rough ball with the jawaans in the army fields.
‘Does anyone here have a map?’ I asked, startling myself a little. I had had a sudden inspiration, quite like the ones I sometimes had when we were a three-pointer away from winning in the basketball league matches where I captained for MIT. And most of the time they didn’t work, I reminded myself grimly.
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Everyone stared at me.
‘A map of the area? Come on, quick, somebody must have one.’
A young, sharp-looking brunette handed me a crumpled map.
‘Sam, hand me the guidebook,’ I said hurriedly.
‘What?’ he asked, looking dazed.
‘Pull yourself together, will you?’ I snapped. ‘Get the Cambodian travel guide out of your backpack.’
He rummaged through his bag and handed me the guide with trembling hands. I thumbed through the pages quickly and found the address I was looking for. I tried to find it on the map, suddenly irritated with myself for refusing to go to the jungle reconnaissance training my father had wanted me to attend.
‘I’m not even joining the army,’ I had whined. ‘Do I need a map to find my way around the school cafeteria?’
Despite being a strict disciplinarian, he had relented that once, although now I wished he had forced me as he had for the Himalayan mountain survival course and the marathon training.
‘There is one way if we can figure it out, I think,’ I said as I struggled with the map.
I looked up to see thirty pairs of petrified eyes fixed on me. ‘We should head out to our respective embassies immediately. If we are lucky, there’s still a chance they will be safe zones.’
They continued to stare at me with the same dazed expression, until the German spoke.
‘That’s an idea,’ he said excitedly. ‘Are the embassies close to where we are?’
‘I can’t read this map,’ I said. I turned to Sam for help but one look at his white, petrified face, and I knew I would have to look elsewhere. ‘Is anybody good with maps?’
No one moved for a while until the PhD student stepped forward.
‘I can help,’ he said, kneeling down beside me to study the map. ‘I know Phnom Penh quite well.’
The German guy quickly broke away from the group. ‘Let’s divide into groups quickly, shall we?’ he said authoritatively. He took the guidebook from my hand. ‘I’m calling out the names of the countries that have embassies listed here. Just stand with your group, okay?’
Suddenly, I felt calm. We needed to treat this like a soccer match against a powerful opponent or like a tough mathematical regression problem. If we worked together and used our heads, we had a fighting chance to get out of this.