America – from the plane and at the Philly Airport Transit Lounge

My first sight of America from the window of a Boeing 747 was not one the best of the earth below. Not as pilot, nor as passenger. I thought some not-so-beautiful parts of India look better.  The sky over Pennsylvania was some six octas in grey and the dark green patches in between did not combine well with gloomy grey. I was also very hungry. I was flying United for the first time, on a plane with some not so young flight attendants (who seemed to need attending themselves), some older than the ones you saw in Air India. You get the picture!

But moving on, I decided not to disappoint myself, and avoid quick conclusions, and stop being a critic. Something I saw myself fast becoming after my fortieth, though, friends might like to antedate that! 

I firmed up to be patient, to wait and watch. I did, but sadly it was only getting plainer. I could now spot clearly misshapen and unkempt urban patches that were possibly honest American attempts to being modern, but, as are many things American, the patches showed least concern for style.  My excitement greyed.  It was not what one saw before landing in a European city: aesthetically distinct, sharp and beautiful, an enduring image the mind captured for good. But then, Philadelphia was not in Europe and so my expectation of it to appear like a manicured lego-land from the sky was flawed!

Then suddenly I brightened up, seeing a complex cluster of flyovers; many of them stacked on top of each other like a giant jigsaw of complex arcs. I was fascinated. I was taken to those elaborate toy race car tracks of my childhood that could be assembled, possessed by boys who had globe-trotting fathers. I also scared myself for a flash, thinking, what if there was an earthquake!

When the undercarriage and flaps came down, my perspective was sharper. In a sense, it was a vision no more. I was landing in America, in one of its greatest cities!  And those cars below were real traffic, real stuff that I would be part of in the days to come, not in the same place exactly,  but somewhere similar, for the next 45 days. Pressing my face to the window I looked down and said to myself, this is America! You’ve seen it in the movies...  I braced up, confused and excited, and ran over my after landing check-list.

Between then and my wait at the lounge for my next aircraft, there was nothing significantly exciting. Boring yes, but there were many things to remember - visuals, sounds, tastes and smells, the first impressions to sponge for posterity. 

The wait at immigration was legendary both by measure of boring and irritating. I was tired and anything that added to that not-so-happy state, made me more impatient. I was looking for a place to stretch my legs, and, probably take a short nap.  I had never seen such a long queue before. But, the person at the counter totally reversed it. He was a complete opposite of the experience till then. He was courteous as a legend. 

(And I must make this note, that everyone I met at a POS or any customer counter from then on, everywhere else in America during that and later trips, were courteous and smart. Professional and quite the opposite of what one sees in Europe!)

I then reached a very large place, a mall of sorts, with a humongous food court. It all seemed like it was constructed yesterday. And then I saw some really huge black men. Not some, but many black men and women. I had never seen so many in one place before. Not like those trendy black people one saw in Paris. These were very casually dressed. American! Some wore track pants, some wore sleeveless Ts, they even spoke like in the movies and rap videos. And hey, this is not about black alone, there were badly dressed white and coloured men. Then, there were school kids who had baby faces but built like adults, big, strong, humongous, like the food court. Many looked like they were back from a summer camp. In similar track suits, charging at huge platters of food. 

Man, this is a country of eaters I thought, an unabashed eater myself!