March 10, 2008 – Kolkata, India

We were recommended to leave the apartment at 5:30am this morning, by the latest 6am, in order to get to the airport in time for our flight.
5:27am - my vibrating but non-ringing phone succeeds in semi-waking me up. I wonder briefly if it has been ‘ringing’ since 5am, our original wake up time. We attempt to jump into gear, but are foiled a little by a sudden lack of power. No lights, no sunshine, a fair amount of our stuff spread out through the two-storey penthouse (reason being that we’d been drying laundry that hadn’t successfully done so the day before). Rush rush. All by flashlight. Priorities are established - toothbrushing is deemed to need the sole flashlight less than the missing article searching.
6:45am, 45 minutes later than the latest suggested time - finally we’re out the door, thank-you postcard of Vancouver written and key successfully placed within a waterbottle so the guard doesn’t realize what we’re putting him in charge of (our ingenious(?!) solution to preventing Rajeev, penthouse owner extraordinaire, currently staying with his in-laws, from having to meet us at this ungodly hour).
Our flight to Chennai is uninteresting but for a companion we meet on the bus from the airplane to the Chennai Arrivals terminal – none other than stranger lady from two days before. Weird. She said that she’d been meeting her son there because the van had broken down or something. Don’t know what to believe at this point. We smile politely and get our bags off the baggage track (one of the perks of arriving super late & not missing your flight is that your baggage ends up coming off first!).