Coming Home: A Rebel Without a Cause

‘This guy is a rebel without a cause’, I overheard someone commenting about me to the chauffeur who had come to pick me up from the Havana airport. What did I do to provoke such a response? And yet I am fascinated by the cinematic allusion. I have been analysing Nicholas Ray’s film in class for many years now.

As the wheels of the aircraft touched Cuban soil, all the passengers burst into applause. This does not happen anywhere else! I wonder why. Is this a celebration of the relief of having survived another flight across the oceans – of the triumph of life over death - or is it the joy of arrival specifically to one place, ‘coming home’?

As I come out of the aircraft, I hardly have time to wonder if anyone had come to pick me up. Immediately after emerging out of the tunnel, I see a placard almost stuck in front of my nose that declares my name. I follow the woman as she insists that I must go straight to the VIP lounge. First I have to clear immigration. I see a long line of people and stand behind them but the lady in uniform who has been sent to escort me insists that I take the ‘VIP channel’ where there is no one. I feel utterly embarrassed, full of self-contempt as I wonder what have I done in life to merit such a treatment of jumping the queue in Cuba. Soon after, I insist that I pick up my luggage. She doesn’t give me an option but ushers me into a silly VIP lounge that I hate with a passion, the ultimate horrifying expression of which is the Bollywood salon I had seen at Bombay international airport: utterly ultra-kitsch. My usher’s duty involves offering me a drink which I decline as I am more concerned about my luggage going round and round in the conveyor belt without being picked up or worse, it may not have arrived from Madrid. She finds me strange and unfriendly since I have travelled all the way from India and must be tired. In fact I am not. I am coming merely from Madrid and slept well in the plane because there was no LCD screen behind the seats in the aircraft and Air Europa has some kind of a ridiculous rule that you have to buy the headphones from them. I totally refuse to give in to their pettiness even if it is in the name of recession. I have also learnt that the smartest way to avoid jetlag on long flights is to cheat your body into thinking that your sleeping time actually coincides with the sleeping time of the country of arrival.
Anything to eat?, she asks me.
No, thank you. I want to go and find my luggage.
‘This guy is really a rebel without a cause’, she tells Capote, the chauffeur.

As I get into the car, there is a student of the film school who wants a free ride. I am glad to oblige him but another girl follows and then there is a complicated situation. The car has the luggage of someone who cannot be found and that happens to be the girl’s boyfriend. She is a documentary filmmaker from Peru and when she learns that I am an Indian, she tells me that she was in Bangladesh over the past month making a film about the success of the micro-credit system and the Grameen Bank.

How was the experience, I ask her.
She garners all her force and says, ‘Bastante brutalista’ (Very brutal). The poverty is pornographic but there is a lot of human warmth.

As I am fascinated and want to know more about her experience, she starts talking enthusiastically about her documentary which gets my chauffeur Capote very annoyed. It is late at night. He just wants to drop me and go home and this girl is making him (and me) wait for an elusive boyfriend to arrive. She senses the irritation and gets out of the car but assures me that she will tell me the whole story.
‘I can go on talking for hours about it’.

I was looking forward to hearing her story but I never saw her over the three weeks that I stayed in Havana. The boyfriend must have finally arrived.