Estha was wearing a long-sleeved red shirt with a pointed collar and black drainpipe trousers. His puff looked crisp and surprised. Like well-whipped egg white.

Estha-with some basis, it must be admitted-said that Rahel looked stupid in her Airport Frock. Rahel slapped him, and he slapped her back.

They weren’t speaking to each other at the airport

Chacko, who usually wore a mundu, was wearing a funny tight suit and a shining smile. Ammu straightened his tie, which was odd and sideways. It had had its breakfast and was satisfied.

Ammu said, “What’s happened suddenly to our Man of the Masses?”

But she said it with her dimples, because Chacko was so burst. So very happy.

Chacko didn’t slap her.

So she didn’t slap him back.

From the Sea Queen florist Chacko had bought two red roses, which he held carefully.

Fatly.

Fondly.

The airport shop, run by the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation, was crammed with Air India Maharajahs (small medium large), sandalwood elephants (small medium large) and papier-mâchâ masks of kathakali dancers (small medium large). The smell of cloying sandalwood and terry-cotton armpits (small medium large) hung in the air.

In the Arrivals Lounge, there were four life-sized cement kangaroos with cement pouches that said USE ME. In their pouches, instead of cement joeys, they had cigarette stubs, used matchsticks, bottle caps, peanut shells, crumpled paper cups and cockroaches.

Red betel spitstains spattered their kangaroo stomachs like fresh wounds.

Red-mouthed smiles the Airport Kangaroos had.

And pink-edged ears.

They looked as though if you pressed them they might say Mama in empty battery voices.

When Sophie Mol’s plane appeared in the skyblue Bombay-Cochin sky the crowd pushed against the iron railing to see more of everything.

The Arrivals Lounge was a press of love and eagerness, because the Bombay-Cochin flight was the flight that all the Foreign Returnees came home on.

Their families had come to meet them. From all over Kerala. On long bus journeys. From Ranni, from Kumili, from Vizhinjam, from Uzhavoor. Some of them had camped at the airport overnight, and had brought their food with them. And tapioca chips and chakka velaichathu for the way back.

They were all there-the deaf ammoomas, the cantankerous, arthritic appoopans, the pining wives, scheming uncles, children with the runs. The fiancâes to be reassessed. The teacher’s husband still waiting for his Saudi visa. The teacher’s husband’s sisters waiting for their dowries. The wire-bender’s pregnant wife.

“Mostly sweeper class,” Baby Kochamma said grimly, and looked away while a mother, not wanting to give up her Good Place near the railing, aimed her distracted baby’s penis into an empty bottle while he smiled and waved at the people around him.

“Sssss…” his mother hissed. First persuasively, then savagely. But her baby thought he was the pope. He smiled and waved and smiled and waved. With his penis in a bottle.

“Don’t forget that you are Ambassadors of India,” Baby Kochamma told Rahel and Estha. “You’re going to form their First Impression of your country.”

Two-egg Twin Ambassadors. Their Excellencies Ambassador E(lvis). Pelvis, and Ambassador S(tick). Insect.

In her stiff lace dress and her fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo, Rahel looked like an Airport Fairy with appalling taste. She was hemmed in by humid hips (as she would be once again, at a funeral in a yellow church) and grim eagerness. She had her grandfather’s moth on her heart. She turned away from the screaming steel bird in the skyblue sky that had her cousin in it, and what she saw was this: redmouthed roos with ruby smiles moved cemently across the airport floor.

Heel and Toe

Heel and Toe

Long flatfeet

Airport garbage in their baby bins.

The smallest one stretched its neck like people in English films who loosen their ties after office. The middle one rummaged in her pouch for a long cigarette stub to smoke. She found an old cashew nut in a dim plastic bag. She gnawed it with her front teeth like a rodent. The large one wobbled the standing up sign that said Kerala Tourism Development Corporation Welcomes You with a kathakali dancer doing a namaste. Another sign, unwobbled by a kangaroo, said: emocleW ot cbt ecipS tsooC fo aidnI

Urgently, Ambassador Rahel burrowed through the press of people to her brother and co-Ambassador.

Estha look! Look Estha look!

Ambassador Estha wouldn’t. Didn’t want to. He watched the bumpy landing with his tap-water Eagle flask slung around him, and a bottomless-bottomful feeling: The Orangedrink Lemondrink Man knew where to find him. In the factory in Ayemenem. On the banks of the Meenachal.

Ammu watched with her handbag.

Chacko with his roses.

Baby Kochamma with her sticking-out neckmole.

Then the Bombay-Cochin people came out. From the cool air into the hot air. Crumpled people uncrumpled on their way to the Arrivals Lounge.

And there they were, the Foreign Returnees, in wash’n’wear suits and rainbow sunglasses. With an end to grinding poverty in their Aristocrat suitcases. With cement roofs for their thatched houses, and geysers for their parents’ bathrooms. With sewage systems and septic tanks. Maxis and high heels. Puff sleeves and lipstick. Mixygrinders and automatic flashes for their cameras. With keys to count, and cupboards to lock. With a hunger for kappa and meen vevichathu that they hadn’t eaten for so long. With love and a lick of shame that their families who had come to meet them were so… so… gawkish. Look at the way they dressed! Surely they had more suitable airport wear! Why did Malayalees have such awful teeth?

And the airport itself! More like the local bus depot! The birdshit on the building! Oh the spitstains on the kangaroos!

Oho! Going to the dogs India is.

When long bus journeys, and overnight stays at the airport, were met by love and a lick of shame, small cracks appeared, which would grow and grow, and before they knew it, the Foreign Returnees would be trapped outside the History House, and have their dreams re-dreamed.

Then, there, among the wash’n’wear suits and shiny suitcases, Sophie Mol.

Thimble-drinker.

Coffin-Cartwheeler.

She walked down the runway, the smell of London in her hair. Yellow bottoms of bells flapped backwards around her ankles. Long hair floated out from under her straw hat. One hand in her mother’s. The other swinging like a soldier’s (left left lefrightleft).

There was

A girl,

Tall and

Thin and

Fair.

Her hair-

Her hair

Was the delicate colorriv

Gin-nnn-ger (left-lef-right)

There was

A girl-

Margaret Kochamma told her to Stoppit.

So she Stoppited.

Ammu said, “Can you see her, Rahel?”

She turned around to find her crisp-knickered daughter communing with cement marsupials. She went and fetched her, scoldingly. Chacko said he couldn’t take Rahel on his shoulders because he was already carrying something. Two roses red.

Fatly.

Fondly.

When Sophie Mol walked into the Arrivals Lounge, Rahel, overcome by excitement and resentment, pinched Estha hard. His skin between her nails. Estha gave her a Chinese Bangle, twisting the skin on her wrist different ways with each of his hands. Her skin became a welt and hurt. When she licked it, it tasted of salt. The spit on her wrist was cool and comfortable.

Ammu never noticed.

Across the tall iron railing that separated Meeters from the Met, and Greeters from the Gret, Chacko, beaming, bursting through his suit and sideways tie, bowed to his new daughter and ex-wife.