The Indian cats' big adventure

A week before my cats were due to fly from Mumbai to London, my worst fear was realised: I came down with fever, diarrhoea and vomiting.
The diarrhoea was, in fact, green. Loss of appetite was unsurprising.
That same day the freight forwarding agent, that I had been forced to employ, to fly two non pedigree Indian felines back to England (since cats are only allowed to fly as cargo to the UK) rang me and said he required a load of original documents, even though I had scanned in dozens the week before.

I could barely move. I spent the previous three days in bed, unable to eat. I could not think of a single person I could ask who would be prepared to carry the documents to his office for me, and was certainly not going to trust a courier company with them, so I sank into a low point, wondering if I had any ‘real’ friends in Mumbai.
Yes, I had plenty that wanted to meet in a café or a bar for a glass of wine. But who would voluntarily do some work for me? I rang a Bandra friend, who had a car, to see if he would at least drive me to the guy’s office, so that if I had ‘an emergency on the way’ (read: diarrhoea) he could stop the vehicle; since a regular cab driver may not get it if I started waving my hands wildly. But my car-owning ‘friend’ did not answer my calls or texts.
Next my maid showed up. Every day when I was sick, her first concern had been my health the minute she walked in the door. She offered to accompany me to see her doctor. It dawned on me, that apart from my cats, she was my only real friend.

I told her my latest dilemma and we agreed I had no option but to go myself, despite my ill health. Together we packed four loo rolls and towels for the event of ‘an accident’ in the cab, and off I went…scared.

But luckily God was on my side as the cab driver a) spoke English and b) was unfazed when I told him my predicament (that I may vomit or have diarrhoea in his vehicle.) In fact, I have always found in India that whenever things go really wrong and reach their lowest point, suddenly there will always be a silver lining. And there was. So, I reached the office ‘sans’ accident and the cab driver, clearly feeling for me, gave me his number and told me he would pick me up later. I felt less like the world was caving in all at once.

After several hours of signing forms in the cramped hot freight forwarding office, I felt faint, having not eaten for three days, so bought a mini Five Star bar from a dusty roadside stall outside.
Ten minutes after eating it the same bar reappeared in vomit all over the freight forwarding office bathroom. I was amazed at how much sick a tiny chocolate bar could produce.
The office had a water shortage (as did several parts of the Mumbai suburbs at that time) and there was no running water from the tap. Wrenching at the sight of my own sick, and feeling embarrassed to have ruined the office’s only bathroom, I promptly left.
Outside I rang the cab driver who said he would be an hour, so I took a rickshaw to a nearby five star hotel. As always with Indian five stars, you are treated like God, even though you may be pale, have fever, vomiting and have not have eaten for a week.
The fact I was carrying two large cat carriers did not faze the poshly-dressed doormen either. I glided to the hotel bar, pretending I was Julia Roberts, and sat down, hoping no one would realise I may vomit any second.
Despite the waitresses attempts at suggesting I order a special creamy mocktail, I went for a lime soda. “I am a tad under the weather, and can’t really handle a mocktail,” I said in the biggest understatement of the year. After barely sipping a fifth of the Rs200 drink, the cab driver rang me to say he was outside. I glided to the Ladies. 10 times the amount I had consumed of lime soda suddenly appeared as vomit across the five star hotel’s Ladies’ toilet. Wrenching at the sight again, I left the hotel and got in the cab. My godlike driver drove the cat carriers and me home.

By the time the day of the cats’ flight came, my infection had cleared up owing to a powerful drug called Orni-O …But the bureaucratic marathon was far from over. Despite having spent weeks filling in forms, photographing the cats, getting vet certificates and letters and scanning them all, in, nothing appeared to be ready and everything still appeared to be chaotic.

Getting ready to fly

I reached the freight office and for the 100th time the cats had to get weighed and measured, more documents needed sorting, before we arrived Nightmare on Elm Street 13 aka Mumbai cargo complex. This is a dark, scary, noisy place. Thirty men immediately surrounded the two cat carriers plonked in a wheelbarrow and me.
“To them, what you are doing is like putting two cockroaches in a cage and taking them back to England,” a helpful English friend had told me.

The flight cost Rs 50,000 and the quarantine at least four times that…”Would you spend that amount on a human?” an Indian friend had asked me earlier that week. “No,” I had said.
And I had meant it… Well, not unless the human meant as much to me as my cats. Would my Indian friend spend that on a random human? Unlikely.
My English friends were equally bemused at the cost. But do I judge them on what they spend their money on? Like skiing holidays… No. My cats are priceless. A value cannot be put on them.

I did not sedate the cats, despite several Mumbai vets recommending this. The customs official was nastier than expected…He told me to open both cages and let the cats out in the middle of the open cargo complex, with planes taking off and vehicles moving everywhere. I refused, pointing out the cats may escape as they were scared stiff. He would not budge. In a naïve moment of exhaustion and anger, I said “Do you realise I am a journalist?” He replied: “ I don’t care where you work” and our relationship soured even further. I quickly realised that comment had not been the best move, and there was every chance the cats may not get on the plane, a point reinforced when my freight forwarding agent helpfully informed me that the previous night a dog flying to America had not been allowed to board as at the last minute as the customs official had deemed the cage to be too small.

There was no vet present and no animal handler to hold my cats, and there was every chance they would escape. But with little option, I unwired the cages and lifted them both out.
Luckily they were so frightened, all they wanted to do was jump back in the cage.
Next the customs official demanded a funnel to feed water to the cats. Naturally, we didn’t have one.
Where anyone would get a funnel from at 10pm near Mumbai cargo complex was beyond me. But miraculously, it was possible. The agent sent off some boy and he returned with a funnel round his neck.

Several hours later, after the customs official had leafed through all my documents, and scared me and my agent as much as possible, claiming documents were missing then magically finding them, I was told to leave.

Needless to say I did not got to bed but stayed up all night tracking the flight on the web.

At 5am I rang Heathrow and, using my journalistic skills, managed to get through to the exact people who collect animals from planes…Amazingly my cats were expected!…. At 7.30am I rang again and the cats had landed. “Are they alive?” I asked. “ I think so,” the man said. My heart skipped a beat. “Please check.” I heard his feet patter off. Silence. He retuned “Yeah, they are alive.”…”Do they need feeding? Are they ok?” Silence followed apart from the patter of his feet. “They look alright to me.”

Hours later, an email arrived. “Your cats have reached the quarantine kennels,” is all it said. I nearly fell off my chair. I rang up the kennels straight away from India. “Are they covered in urine? Are they starving?

“No, they are fine.”

“It’s a miracle. How did they get there in one piece?”

“We didn’t expect anything less. We do this every day,” she said. “Goodbye.”

Sleep-deprived, I collapsed on a heap on my bed in my Bandra flat. “Its normally the pet owners that require sedating more than the pets,” the freight forwarding agent had told me. He was right.

If you need any kind of advice on flying pets overseas, please put your question in the comments section and I will be happy to reply.

A frightened cat knowing something is up

Not leaving in style

I am convinced my mother has been praying in the village Catholic church every week since I moved to Mumbai, asking God to get me to come home.
Not that she has anything against India, but she is my mother, and wanted me back.

When I left England, I kind of anticipated I would stay three years, with a back-up plan to stay longer, if I really fell in love with the place (or with any person), or less if I hated it. So, I did stay three years. My British friends had all placed various bets on how long I would stay at my London leaving party, so I guess one of them has, err won.

After umming and ahhing and changing my mind about whether to come back, or not, I finally decided to in July, against the advice of everyone in India, but matching the advice of my mother and several friends in England. The ousting of Labour, and David Cameron coming into power with the Lib Dems, kind of influenced my decision, as I was pretty sure England would get back on its feet with a new Government in place. That combined with missing my favourite supermarkets in England (read: Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury's) and the vast array of food products I can get here, as well as missing the advanced infrastructure in England, the NHS, ambulances, more comfortable trains, higher quality accommodation, drinkable tap water, more polite taxi drivers, more efficient police and overall  better quality of life, kind of spurred the decision on, with some divine intervention too, it seems.

I also felt I had given India what I could, at this stage of my life, written all the stories I wanted to, and India too had given me back what I had wanted - allowed me to experience its vast diverse self (read: cuisines, languge, tribes, religions, races), and taught me that the country has a rich culture and history that takes years to unravel, but that will always be unique and steadfast and from which the West can learn a lot.

The end of an era

I will miss the fantastic nightlife in Mumbai, the year-round T-shirt weather, my Indian friends, the great social life, endless parties, vast array of soft drinks, Indian dress, Indian food, the fantastic cinema-culture, Indian theatre, the cafe culture, the work-place culture (read: daily cakes) the beaches, the roof-top bars and so on..

But for me, it was time to move on to the next phase. There are hardened British expats in Mumbai, who will never leave...they often retain very negative impressions of England...I was not one of those...I feel as though it is more the Mumbai expats from London that feel they have 'little to return to' in England, whereas people from outside London, like me, tend to have better quality lives here and so there is ''a lot to return for."
However, when I had dreamt of leaving, I had imagined I would have several huge parties, and spend my last few days meeting friends, and going for walks in my favourite places, like Juhu beach. But it was not to be. I have noticed that every expat that leaves India  leaves disastrously and I kind of did too.

I had a few days off work before my final departure, and managed to come down with fever, vomiting and  diarrhoea. This seriously curtailed my ability to pack, or rather clear out my flat and I was reluctant to see a doctor, as I had had a few bad experiences, being ripped off. One Mumbai doctor, who is recommended by the British High Commission, had on a previous occasion, made me pay Rs 800 for an appointment, when every Indian who went to him paid Rs 300, and he did not diagnose me, or offer any medicine, and was plain rude. Another at a private hospital had told me to have Rs 10,000 of blood tests, which I did not do, as I felt it was unneccessary...(This is one good thing about the NHS as they are reluctant to make you have blood tests unless you really need them..In Mumbai it seems to be what every doctor wants you to do..they have lost the ability to diagnose you from your symptoms or using their gut instinct. This is prevalent in the US too where healthcare is privatised).

Anyway, luckily an Indian friend's dad who is a top notch doctor, diagnosed me on the phone without charge and I got the Orni-O drug that slowly cleared up the infection, but it heavily delayed my packing. While friends did not stop calling me, asking me to "meet them"I was faced with the prospect of clearing out my flat. Stupidly, I had not sent anything by freight. Bin liners piled up outside my flat and every day the recycling man came to collect them.  He paid me Rs100 to Rs 150 each time and took 10 to 20 bin liners of everything from newspapers to old clothes. I quite liked this system. In the UK you would have to pay for a skip to come to your house, or you would have to pay an extortionate fee to dump it at a landfill site. There in Mumbai, someone was paying me to take away my rubbish.

A world apart - that was Mumbai

I gave most kitchen items to my maid, as well as my TV. Other valuable items I gave to friends that wanted them. I cannot understand why expats hold sales of their items, when there are so many people you can give them to...Seems really selfish, especially after living in India, when watchmen and maids could make use of these items. I felt really glad that eveyrthing was going to a good use. The only problem was I had more items than even I realised..

I lost all in interest in having a leaving party, as I had bank accounts to close, bills to pay and kgs of stuff to sort through. Luckily a friend agreed to host a leaving party for me for close friends, which was very generous. Luckily none gave me a leaving present, as it would have ended up with the recycling man.

As D-Day grew close and I realised I had more items than even I realised and so on the day I was meant to be leaving my flat, I was surrounded by boxes and bin liners. My friend dropped round and nearly fainted. She tried to help me, but most of the work (sifting through stuff and working out what to throw, what to give away, and what to keep), only I could do. My landlord gave me an extra night to sort it all out...I stayed up all night...and just met the 8am deadline of handing over the keys, then shifted 100kgs to a hotel...

 So, my ideal leaving scenario of sipping cocktails on my last night overlooking Mumbai beach were dashed. I again stayed up all night, and ended up leaving tonnes of stuff in my room for the hotel staff.
Then utterly sleep-deprived with a friend, I shifted 60kgs to the airport. My plan? Hoping they wouldn't notice. But dressed in a raincoat and a fleece to  "lessen the luggage,"  they did.

Looking rather ridiculous, I was singled out straight away as someone over the luggage allowance before anyone weighed it. The airlines man even grabbed my hand luggage, which weighed 15kgs. "It's bad enough you have 60 kgs of check-in luggage but 15 gs of hand luggage when you are meant to have 7kgs takes the biscuit. Go and get rid of some," he said.

The line about leaving India after living here three years didn't wash; in fact it seemed to exacerbate his desire to charge me extra..So,.I shoved all my cat's toys into my raincoat pockets, handed a load of stuff to a friend outside the airport, then got stung with Rs 8,000 excess baggage (= £117)...

Feeling like shit, exhausted and drained, and upset to have left half my life in Mumbai, I ran to security as I was about to miss my flight..

As I boarded the aircraft, looking ridiculous in a raincaoat stuffed with toy catnip mice, and feeling very depressed, the airline official suddenly said: "You have been upgraded, máam." He then took a biro and changed my seat number. My final flight home was business class.
"I would have dressed differently, had I known, " I said, wiping the sweat off my face.
"What would you like to drink," I was asked after sitting down on my horizontal bed. "Dom Perignon,"I replied...I guess in the same way weddings never go as you fantasised, nor does leaving India.