Putting Up the Flyscreens
I recently flew from Sydney to Mumbai with my fourteen year old girl, Sally, who has severe autism. She loved the journey. Everything, from the sight of the large jumbo jets parked at SydneyAirport to the roar of the engine as our plane heaved into the air, caused her to scream in delight. I’m not sure if either her pleasure or her energy was matched by our fellow passengers, but they didn’t tell me as much. Well, admittedly, some did with their looks. Flying brings out a unique type of intolerance in some travellers.
We are leaving Australia once more for another posting, for another adventure abroad. I was as restless as a monkey in a cage in Sydney. Not that I have anything against Sydney. It’s one of my favourite cities. I love the harbour, the Northern Beaches and my mates there. Yet I couldn’t settle. I caught the expatriate bug sometime in the 1970s when living abroad with my parents and have never been able to shake it off.
My husband, Michael, and I had talked about moving back to Asia for some time. A trip to the UK via Hong Kong last August rekindled this fire. I had in mind a posting to Indonesia, something close to home, so when Michael told me that we were heading to India with his work my initial response was ‘But I said Indonesia?’ He replied, ‘Hey, it’s close enough. India starts with an In and ends with an A.’ For a couple of weeks I didn’t think much more about India, retreating into an effortless head space that said let’s pretend this isn’t happening. One day I reluctantly read a book on India, followed by another. Then all I wanted to read were books focusing on the country. In a reverse of sentiment, I packed my bags two weeks ago with a measure of excitement about moving to this diverse and rich culture.
My flight to Mumbai brought to mind many other long journeys with Sally. This trip was just as exhausting as the rest but this time around I didn’t seem to care so much about the other passengers’ feelings towards us. In spite of my seemingly cool composure, I’m often moaning inside on a plane journey with Sally. You know the sound of a babbling baby on a plane? Yep, it might be us, except that Sally is much older than a baby. It leaves with me with a feeling of despair and despondency. Time, thankfully, seems to have eroded many of these attacks of anguish. My skin is tougher, wiser. I now see the looks of disapproval on the strangers’ faces in a room, or at the airport, or on a plane, but I don’t see them as much either. I call it the flyscreen effect. The comforting thing about flyscreens is that you can look out from the safety of your arm chair but catch only what you want to see.
Does this mean that I am an embittered person? Am I less mindful of others’ feelings? Nope. I think there is a still a kind and compassionate person inside there. I’m just more resilient to others’ expressions. I also hope that Australian society is mature enough now to accept everyone in their society, disabilities and idiosyncrasies and warts and all.
I have been in Mumbai for all of seven days now which, admittedly, only gives me a sneak insight on this dazzling place. My first impressions run along everything that I had read about in the Lonely Planet guide: a messy city, polluted, a contrast of the extremes of rich and poor people, and, yet for all of this, it’s likable. Mumbai reminds me of a set of dentures whose beauty is masked by too many stains, cracks and lack of care. Behind the grime lies the architecture and soul of a magnificent city, once the jewel in the British Crown. There are avenues lined with proud, statuesque buildings, hidden under grime and decay. The edges of the well designed avenues fight for space against open rubbish, mangy dogs and makeshift homes constructed out of others’ leftovers. There is a song in the air filled with Bollywood music and the tooting of the traffic. Sally is transfixed by the colour and confusion; I’m agog at all the culture.
When Sally and I flew into Mumbai, our plane closed in over a range of flat-roofed mountains resembling a checkered grey and sandy tablecloth. If a Martian had arrived on Planet Earth and landed on this mountain range, it would have thought our planet was disarmingly similar to his own home. But if the Martian had arrived further west and planted itself into Mumbai, it would naturally think that Planet Earth is a populated and polluted place. Mumbai, I have read, is the most densely congested city on the earth. It feels busy. It looks tightly packed from the air too.
As the plane descended onto the tarmac, we flew between suburbs of densely packed apartments glued together by wedges of slums. In every corner of Mumbai there are shanty homes sealing up the cracks in the spaces. The poverty is relentless.
You can cushion yourself quite easily from this other side. We are staying in a spacious serviced apartment featuring a swimming pool that overlooks a lake allegedly populated by crocodiles. Michael’s driver drove Sally and me around Mumbai yesterday. When we had half an hour to fill at the end of the outing, he took us to one of the top hotels in the city for a coffee. I had never seen such grandeur. And I have lived in the ostentatious splendour of the Middle East. In the foyer there was a scattering of well-heeled gentlewomen. They shared the same countenance of those with a certain wealth: it’s a gaze that passes over you, an invisibility, making you feel slightly unnoticed. So I got the impalpable look of not quite existing on this Planet Earth. Except that these very women glanced back at us. Not at me, exactly, but at Sally. I think Sally’s disability was as alien to them as a Martian landing on Bond iBeach. When something is so unusual, so disarming, it makes you look twice. We rarely get the second look any more in Sydney.
I hope that I never see past the disadvantaged people of this country. Michael says there is poverty and wealth everywhere in the world, and you can’t sit in places like Australia or England and pretend such extreme poverty doesn’t exist. I hope, for my part, that my skin doesn’t thicken to the point where I find myself overlooking the slums, the beggars and the naked children here. Empathy is what hopefully nourishes and comforts us as human beings. While my skin is thickening, it’s a special kind of coating: one to protect Sally and myself from the unguarded looks of others. It’s a shield constructed exclusively for Sally. I mustn’t be guilty of putting up the flyscreens too much, otherwise I might overlook those less fortunate around me.
We are leaving Australia once more for another posting, for another adventure abroad. I was as restless as a monkey in a cage in Sydney. Not that I have anything against Sydney. It’s one of my favourite cities. I love the harbour, the Northern Beaches and my mates there. Yet I couldn’t settle. I caught the expatriate bug sometime in the 1970s when living abroad with my parents and have never been able to shake it off.
My husband, Michael, and I had talked about moving back to Asia for some time. A trip to the UK via Hong Kong last August rekindled this fire. I had in mind a posting to Indonesia, something close to home, so when Michael told me that we were heading to India with his work my initial response was ‘But I said Indonesia?’ He replied, ‘Hey, it’s close enough. India starts with an In and ends with an A.’ For a couple of weeks I didn’t think much more about India, retreating into an effortless head space that said let’s pretend this isn’t happening. One day I reluctantly read a book on India, followed by another. Then all I wanted to read were books focusing on the country. In a reverse of sentiment, I packed my bags two weeks ago with a measure of excitement about moving to this diverse and rich culture.
My flight to Mumbai brought to mind many other long journeys with Sally. This trip was just as exhausting as the rest but this time around I didn’t seem to care so much about the other passengers’ feelings towards us. In spite of my seemingly cool composure, I’m often moaning inside on a plane journey with Sally. You know the sound of a babbling baby on a plane? Yep, it might be us, except that Sally is much older than a baby. It leaves with me with a feeling of despair and despondency. Time, thankfully, seems to have eroded many of these attacks of anguish. My skin is tougher, wiser. I now see the looks of disapproval on the strangers’ faces in a room, or at the airport, or on a plane, but I don’t see them as much either. I call it the flyscreen effect. The comforting thing about flyscreens is that you can look out from the safety of your arm chair but catch only what you want to see.
Does this mean that I am an embittered person? Am I less mindful of others’ feelings? Nope. I think there is a still a kind and compassionate person inside there. I’m just more resilient to others’ expressions. I also hope that Australian society is mature enough now to accept everyone in their society, disabilities and idiosyncrasies and warts and all.
I have been in Mumbai for all of seven days now which, admittedly, only gives me a sneak insight on this dazzling place. My first impressions run along everything that I had read about in the Lonely Planet guide: a messy city, polluted, a contrast of the extremes of rich and poor people, and, yet for all of this, it’s likable. Mumbai reminds me of a set of dentures whose beauty is masked by too many stains, cracks and lack of care. Behind the grime lies the architecture and soul of a magnificent city, once the jewel in the British Crown. There are avenues lined with proud, statuesque buildings, hidden under grime and decay. The edges of the well designed avenues fight for space against open rubbish, mangy dogs and makeshift homes constructed out of others’ leftovers. There is a song in the air filled with Bollywood music and the tooting of the traffic. Sally is transfixed by the colour and confusion; I’m agog at all the culture.
When Sally and I flew into Mumbai, our plane closed in over a range of flat-roofed mountains resembling a checkered grey and sandy tablecloth. If a Martian had arrived on Planet Earth and landed on this mountain range, it would have thought our planet was disarmingly similar to his own home. But if the Martian had arrived further west and planted itself into Mumbai, it would naturally think that Planet Earth is a populated and polluted place. Mumbai, I have read, is the most densely congested city on the earth. It feels busy. It looks tightly packed from the air too.
As the plane descended onto the tarmac, we flew between suburbs of densely packed apartments glued together by wedges of slums. In every corner of Mumbai there are shanty homes sealing up the cracks in the spaces. The poverty is relentless.
You can cushion yourself quite easily from this other side. We are staying in a spacious serviced apartment featuring a swimming pool that overlooks a lake allegedly populated by crocodiles. Michael’s driver drove Sally and me around Mumbai yesterday. When we had half an hour to fill at the end of the outing, he took us to one of the top hotels in the city for a coffee. I had never seen such grandeur. And I have lived in the ostentatious splendour of the Middle East. In the foyer there was a scattering of well-heeled gentlewomen. They shared the same countenance of those with a certain wealth: it’s a gaze that passes over you, an invisibility, making you feel slightly unnoticed. So I got the impalpable look of not quite existing on this Planet Earth. Except that these very women glanced back at us. Not at me, exactly, but at Sally. I think Sally’s disability was as alien to them as a Martian landing on Bond iBeach. When something is so unusual, so disarming, it makes you look twice. We rarely get the second look any more in Sydney.
I hope that I never see past the disadvantaged people of this country. Michael says there is poverty and wealth everywhere in the world, and you can’t sit in places like Australia or England and pretend such extreme poverty doesn’t exist. I hope, for my part, that my skin doesn’t thicken to the point where I find myself overlooking the slums, the beggars and the naked children here. Empathy is what hopefully nourishes and comforts us as human beings. While my skin is thickening, it’s a special kind of coating: one to protect Sally and myself from the unguarded looks of others. It’s a shield constructed exclusively for Sally. I mustn’t be guilty of putting up the flyscreens too much, otherwise I might overlook those less fortunate around me.
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