One is the Loneliest Number

Being a business woman in Asia still means I'm often the 1) only female in the room or 2) the only Caucasian in the room or 3) the tallest in the room (I'm 5'9").

Almost all of the above were slammed home last night when I flew from Hyderabad India to Mumbai, and my flight left 4 hours late. I had spent the weekend with good friends between a week of business in New Delhi and this week on the west coast of India.

It was one of those flights that you hear about when people complain about the dearth of information given by the airlines when things go wrong.

The Hyderabad airport is not large. But it does have two levels for loading passengers. The ground floor is for those passengers being transported by bus to the airplane, and the First Floor (ah - it's so hard for this American to get used to the European numbering scheme!) has the jetways.

I arrived at the airport way too early - more than 2 hours prior to my domestic flight - but traffic in India is always a crapshoot - and it's monsoon season at the moment. Roads can flood in the space of about 15 minutes, so one always leaves extra time. My flight was listed to leave from a bus gate, so I found a somewhat quiet chair and pulled out my book.

My flight was due to leave at 8:10 p.m. and due to begin boarding at 7:40. When 7:50 arrived, and no announcement had been made, I started getting antsy. At 8:10, we were told to proceed to the First Floor for boarding. When we arrived on the First Floor, we were told to wait.

At 8:10, they announced a 20 minute delay. At 8:30, they announced another 20 minute delay. Finally at 9:15, they announced that we'd be leaving at 11:25 p.m. At about 9:30, they asked all the people on the Mumbai flight to go outside of the secured area and proceed to a restaurant where we would be fed. It was at the restaurant that I noticed that I was the only Caucasian in the whole place. Luckily, I eat a mainly vegetarian diet, and I can tolerate Indian spices relatively well, so I thought the food was good! But I did start to notice the stares...

I've lived in Asia for a total of about 5 years now - a stint in Japan and now in Hong Kong. I've always stood out in the crowd (pun intended). And, I've learned how to "not see" the stares. But I guess my defenses were down last night since it was so late, and I felt the eyes. People in this particular country do seem to lack the sense that staring is impolite (how I hear my mother's voice in my head!). It doesn't really bother me - it's just that they are really curious - not that they are being deliberately rude.

But I did feel the isolation keenly last night.