Wednesday , January 21, 2004

I fix my eye hopefully on the opposite sidewalk, make a silent appeal to the broad spectrum of local deities from Ganesh and Shiva to Allah, Christ and whomever, and perform the death-defying feat of crossing Karaikal’s main drag at morning rush hour… braving a furiously-paced pageant of monkeys and mendicants, auto-rickshaws and motorcycles, roosters and nanny goats, along with bicyclists, bullocks, burkhas, businessmen and a couple of buses passing two abreast at full tilt, everyone’s horn wailing to high heaven.

Entering the Paris International Hotel, the town’s swankest lodgings, I’m perspiring heavily and it's not due to the sunny weather. Karaikal, a palmy south India town in the Tamil Nadu region on the Bengal Sea, is naturally air-conditioned. Ocean breezes perfumed by wood smoke and open sewers, the burnt sugar smell of a thousand pastry shops and the turmeric pungency of countless curry pots create a cooling effect. But crossing Indian streets on foot works up a sweat for any new visitor to the world’s largest democracy with its vehicular anarchy.

That includes me, and publisher/photographer Wayne, the only gringos around. We haven’t spotted any other Americans nor a single tourist from anywhere over the past few days of reconnoitering. This should change later today, if all goes right, with the arrival of the Rotaplast team from San Francisco, which is our whole reason for being here.

A lot could go wrong. More than fifty boxes of critical medical equipment and supplies, along with personal luggage must be offloaded at Delhi airport from the team’s Cathay Pacific international flight, cleared by customs, sorted and hand-trucked six kilometers to the Jet Airways domestic area for the plane south to Chennai. With only three hours between flights, and all of the vagaries of this part of the world conspiring against success, this will require more assistance from the panoply of local gods.

Mr. R.M. Bairavan, the Chairman of the Rotaplast committee of the Karaikal Rotary Club, host group to the medical team, has put all sorts of contingency plans and strategies in motion. He and his fellow Rotarians - an energetic group of progressive businessmen and leading local citizens - are working across the span of Karaikal’s culturally diverse community to ensure the success of the team’s mission; to help change the lives of over 100 children and young adults with cleft lips, palates and other facial deformities.

Mr. S.D Emile, with whom we’re meeting this morning in the Paris lobby to go visit some of the pending patients and their families, says the cooperation of the Indian Civil Aviation Authority has been assured. Various governmental agencies from the capital in Delhi to the regional seat of government in Pondicherry have been alerted. But official manpower and bureaucratic attention span are limited due to preparations for India’s national celebration of Republic Day on January 26th. So a handful of Delhi Rotarians have pledged to be on hand at the airport to help.

Two years of cutting red tape and working out local and international logistics are at stake. Dead set on not dropping the ball now, the Karaikal Rotarians are pulling out all the stops. At a surprisingly well-attended press conference Monday night on the roof of the Hotel Nanda, Mr. Bairavan and Karaikal Rotary President Joseph Regis stressed the group’s commitment to bringing Rotaplast to Karaikal and getting the job done.

A local Tamil newspaper reporter, bent on provoking a little controversy, challenged Regis: Why was the Rotary inviting a local government minister to take part in the welcoming ceremonies when they were getting no financial aid from the government?

Regis coolly refused to take the bait. “We want to include everybody in this effort,” he said. Later at Regis’ home, over a tasty fish dinner (accompanied by a delightful. homemade wine) prepared by his wife and teenaged daughter, Regis chuckled, “The papers will probably misquote me and have me saying something critical about the government.” Being a journalist, I admit it happens.

Nonetheless, from what Wayne and I have seen, the Karaikal Rotarians really are including everybody, from the Catholics, Hindus and Muslims among their membership, to a factory owner (Bairavan), a shrimp farmer (Regis), a rocket scientist (Emile), an LA publisher/photographer (Wayne) and, at this juncture, yours truly.

I’m about as far from a Rotarian type as one can get (despite the applause my speech about Rotaplast’s worthiness received at the press conference) and, at this moment, light years from my usual Hollywood haunts. I’ve already eaten more rice in three days than in all the sushi joints I’ve patronized from New York to LA combined. I’ve stepped unshod foot into more religious places here than is probably healthy for a professional sinner, and shared extraordinary confidences with imams, priests and nuns.
It’s probably good for me, says Wayne. That’s fine, but my aim is to get a good story, see a bit of India and if this helps the Rotaplast people do what they do, that’s good enough for me. And I can probably go without a steak and a vodka martini for a couple of weeks.

Everyone involved is making personal sacrifices. Emile, a retired space engineer, rocketry expert and key member of the team that put India’s six telecommunications satellites into orbit, left K-town at before dawn last Friday to make the seven-hour drive north to meet Wayne and I at Chennai airport. With him was fellow Rotarian Subhash, an executive with KSAT, one of the major local cable companies. After an overnight stay at a $2/night truckstop motel we all went back via the south coastal road, Emile’s driver, Natchatthiraraj at the wheel of our pepper-red Toyota jeep and our lives in his hands.

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