Algeria: The role it played in my marriage

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Day: Saturday July 5, 2008
Location: Delhi
Time: 11:00PM

As I write about the role of this dry African country in my marriage, I realize that it might make sense to give some colour around my experience there, to begin with.

Rewind back to 2006
This is right about the time of April-May, when I was working with the Corporate Audit Staff and we were about to know the specifics of the subsequent trimester's assignment. Having put in a request for some cool locations, I was quite hopeful that I'd get one of them....until one day, when I got a call from HR and one of the senior leaders asking me if I would be interested in being part of the first ever audit team in North Africa - I was told it was a Group 1 country, but we would be provided with security 24 x7!!!!! So much for "cool locations"....I replied that I'd take some time to revert back to them.

As I was thinking about it and enquiring more, I heard that quite a few people who were approached prior to me, had already denied to go there...talk about motivation, right?!!!? But that actually helped me in my decision....I decided to take it up, not because of anything else, but just because of the story I'd be able to tell everyone after that! And....what a story I have!!

Come June and we were gearing up to go to our first country - Algeria. We had obtained the necessary visa, corporate security approvals and were on our flight to Algiers. When we landed in Algiers, we were greeted by a security official to escort us through immigration and then take us to the baggage claim area. As we reached the baggage claim section, this official left us in the safe hands of a few other officials who were to transport us from the airport to the hotel. All this seemed quite manageable so far and I wondered why I was so worried about the security at the first place!

The next day we were to fly out to this place called Hassi R'Mel, which I was told is in the desert area and has one of our business locations where we were supposed to work for the next 3 weeks. At 8am in the morning, we got on this tiny ~20 seater Air Algerie flight; and, as I wasn't really able to sleep well at night, I fell asleep way before the flight even took off.

The next thing I realized was that the aircraft was making an extremely shaky landing and there were loud noises everywhere. I sat up and tried to wake up from my half-sleep half-awake state, still not sure of what was happening around me. As I got my eyes to open up, I looked out of the window and all I could see was a vast stretch of desert land. "SH*T" - yes, that is exactly what I exclaimed thinking that our plane might have been hijacked and forced to land in the middle of nowhere! I quickly turned around to see inside the aircraft and saw people getting their luggage out of the overhead compartments as if there was nothing to worry about. I looked outside the window again and then inside and then outside again...did it a few times until I felt that this vast stretch of desert land with no runway where my flight landed was in fact the airport! I murmured to myself, "WOW"!!!

So I got my bag and stepped down the stairs from the aircraft and looked around...and was intrigued to find no infrastructure that could anyway relate to that area being an "airport"!!!! So what would a normal person do in this situation?? Take a few pictures, right? Yeah...that's what I did...I took out my handy cam and started taking pictures and doing a short recording. As I was doing that, I began to hear loud voices from far behind that sounded Arabic. Thought to myself, why do I need to pay attention, obviously no one would be talking to me here. So I ignored that, and continued with my wide-eyed video recording! In no time, six huge Algerian security guards were around me and before I could realize what was happening, I was lifted by those 6 giants, one each lifting my 2 legs and 2 hands and the other 2 around them. After about 5 seconds, when I realized that my act of taking shots of the airport was being construed as a part of some anti-social plans to obtain schematics of the area to plot attacks, I immediately panicked!!!! And, then started telling them in English, Hindi, Urdu (all languages I knew) that I was just taking pictures of the airport and had no other intentions. They took me into a dark room and started talking among themselves in Arabic, paying no attention to my existence...and then, I heard the word "jail" among fluent Arabic conversations. I thought to myself, am I going to be arrested??? Holy crap....how would I even let my folks know about this, I thought to myself. Scared like hell, I tried to tell then that I was innocent, but who knew English there?? This whole thing lasted for about 30-40 minutes, and trust me I was pretty much reconciling to the fact that I'll be put into an Algerian prison for the rest of my life!

Now, since GE had arranged an official to pick us at the airport, he was obviously worried outside that why did one passenger not leave the airport when the flight had landed. Somehow he managed to come inside and find me in that dark room. (Its hilarious, when I spoke with this person later, he said that I was sitting so quietly in the room when he entered, that he thought I had accepted my fate to be in prison! ha ha). After a few minutes of explaining to the policemen in the room, he came to me and asked me to delete all the pictures/video from my camera. I took my camcorder and deleted all but one picture (my heart didn't allow me to delete everything since this was a one of a kind airport and I wanted to have one photograph as memory), thinking that how would the policeman ever get to know!!! Boy, wasn't I wrong??? The guy took my camera and spent the next 20 minutes checking all the photographs on my memory stick.....and yes, found that one picture finally! Damn...!!!!! He looked at me with a dirty grin on his face as if telling me, "You kid, did you think I was an idiot?", and I silently took the camera and still with a heavy heart, deleted that last picture as well. After the GE official convinced the policemen that I had nothing else they should be worried about, they let me go!

For the next three weeks, we lived in a small container inside an area that was guarded by a huge gate with barbed wires all around it, under extremely heavy security and ate pasta arrabiata for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day!

Interesting story, right???

Forward back to 2008
I had just broken the news of my decision to marry Neha to my folks, and quite contrary to my expectations of them objecting to our inter-religion marriage (I am a Hindu and Neha, a Jain)...everyone accepted it much easier than I had thought of. So I was quite thrilled! And we were on our way to let Neha's parents know. Now, just to give some perspective, I had never met Neha's parents before and since I was returning back to the US the next day, all I had was that night to let them know, since Neha wanted them to know before I flew back to the US...more so, she said she was extremely scared to tell them herself and wanted me to do it! Ha...examination time, dude...I wondered to myself! I had exactly 10 minutes to prepare my speech to them - the distance between our homes!!!!!

It all feels like a complete masala-filled Bollywood flick to me now, as I write this. Anyways, so as we were sitting in the living room at Neha's house, her parents, obviously having no idea of why I landed up at their place at 11pm in the night, were making small talk with me by asking me about my job and my life with GE etc. Somehow, in between all of this, the topic of Algeria sprung up and I narrated the entire story above, and Neha's family was laughing hysterically, all along!!

Suddenly, I looked at the clock and realized, I needed to get to the main point now. So I made eye contact with Neha (who was so nervous that she avoided sitting with us) and made a gesture to her, to come over and sit with me. Once she was with us, I told her parents that we had decided to get married. For the next 10 minutes, there was pin-drop silence in the room. I knew they were in shock and therefore, waited for a response quietly. Then her mother broke the silence and said, "Sorry, son...this cannot happen, we would not support this inter-religion marriage". I realized now was not the right time to say anything further and replied, "Please think and I'll talk to you all tomorrow again", and then decided to leave at that time. As I stood up, about to leave for the night, Neha's dad spoke, "Wait, a second...please sit down". Jumping with joy inside my heart, I maintained a poker face and sat down again. He continued, "I don't think I have a problem with this marriage...we'll have to convince a few people but I am ok with this".

I smiled gently, and thought in my mind that my story about my experiences in Algeria had, perhaps already sown the seeds of acceptance in his mind!

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Next post: My top 10 all-time favourite movies on June 6, 2010