A for Aeroplane: My first two flight experiences

Hawaai Jahaaz... hehe. I remember feeling so elated on seeing airplanes from my rooftop in my childhood.

And It took me almost 21 years to get into one. (Two within a week, for that matter) But given the fact that nobody from my family, near or far has ever had the privilege of boarding a flight, I guess my late blooming in this area gets justified.
After all, If you can go from A to B in 500bucks, why waste 5000? So, till now it was a question of sheer affordability.

Not this time. It was all paid. I was supposed to travel from Delhi to Mumbai and back in a week.
And the best part? I had to travel alone. I had to explore it all. By myself. I loved the idea. :D

So, Goindigo airbus was destined to be my first flight. Frankly speaking, I didn't remember seeing any 'goindigo' aeroplanes in the sky. What the hell, "beggars can't be choosers", I thought.
Only to find out in the plane that had I given the option to chose, I would have never been able to choose by myself such a flight with such gorgeous models/ air hostesses. :D Will come to that later in the post.

Getting into the plane was a no- brainer. I just had to follow the line. First getting the board pass, then waiting near the destined gates and finally getting into the plane after having been taken to it by an 'goindigo' bus.
While on the runway, I could see scores of airbuses idling in a line.
Lol, I was still relishing my childhood hobby of watching planes. :D

And then I entered it.

The plush interior of the plane was luxurious enough to make me justify the fare price. And plus, the prospect of flying... :) I sat on my passage seat.
They said the cliched thingy, "Please fasten your seat belts." I felt the same feeling that I had last time when I went to get a 'Passport-sized photograph' clicked for my 'Passport'!

Semantics. Amuses me, every time.

Then came the air hostesses. Man, they were gorgeous. I felt like sitting in the front row next to a fashion ramp. (I had the passage seat. :D) They came one by one, greeted us, offered us water, sold us packeted eatables, and gave flight safety instructions.

I would definitely be lying if I said that I was not overwhelmed by their beauty. Especially one girl, Aanchal ( If I'm not mistaken), had this cute smile and she was just letting it get bestowed over every single passenger.
Hah, if only the train vendors were this beautiful, or be female, to ask the least. :D

But apart from the hostesses, everything else was pretty boring. The plane took off. I felt this pain near my ears. The distant windows appeared hazy. I felt as if I was seeing google earth on the screens fitted on the windows.
Normal. Boring.
One thing I disliked about indigo was that they were selling stuff onboard, and that too, on ridiculously high prices. Whatthehell, I took a mirinda. She came, and there came the smile with her. I knew her cute smile had made yet another passenger fall in for the high priced crap. I didn't mind. Not everyday did stuff like these happen.

(Okay, I know I sound terribly childish in this post. But truth be told, I deserve this childish explorations. After all, I was in my childhood dream machine...the aeroplanes.. :D . So readers, please don't mind the extra enthusiasm.)

And then, just when I had started to get the hang of it all, came the announcement of the end of the drama. The pilot/ co- pilot announced that we were gonna land. After 15 minutes of mindless hovering round and round over the Santacruz airport, we finally landed. And that was the end of it. :(

No wait, while we were un-boarding the plane, Aanchal said 'Bye'. So that's how my sweet little romance with her ended. With a blushing smile on my face and an un-hearable sound from my throat, that was supposed to sound - "Bye."
But never the less, I was happy. Happy because I had just done one new thing in my life. Flying. :)

----------------*---------------------------*-----------------------------

My Mumbai stay was awesome. A pre-booked guestroom in walking distance from the Taj and the Gateway of India, and of course, the Sea. With my Office in the famous architect Stein's skyscraper, the Express towers, spending my evenings on the Marine Drive was effortless for me.
I finished my 10-days' work in 7- days, and got my return flight booked on 21st night. This time it was a night flight, an 11pm one. I thought that as there was nothing to see in the night, I would sleep it off.
And plus, it was Air India. So I could not expect anything more than Saree clad aunties smiling sheepishly. And I ain't a milfhunter anyways. :|

But dude, I was so wrong... (No no. not about me NOT being a milfhunter. :P)

----------------*---------------------------*-----------------------------

Air India. Sarkaari. Luxury was the last thing that I had in my mind which had already been spoilt by the goindigo flight, and Aanchal, of course.

And it started as expected, when I reached the boarding gate of the santacruz airport only to find out pissed off passengers arguing with the air India officials over something. Apparently, the plane was on the airport, but the plane crew were still to come. And man! The passengers were furious about it.

I didn't mind the delay. Hah! 30 minutes. Does that even count as a 'delay'? I remembered my 64 hours' train ordeal from Bangalore to Patna, in which the machine was more than 10 hours late. Friggin' twenty times this half an hour delay. :D

And then something inside told me to ask them whether they were arguing over the 11pm airplane only. (Mine was the 11pm one).
Along came the realization that this all hue and cry was for the 9pm wretched one. So, it was neither my plane, nor my fight. I sheepishly took my backpack, and went to the other boarding gate, which was supposed to be the one for my 11pm one.
2 hours 30 minutes delay. Yes, now they were justified in getting pissed off. They were supposed to be in delhi by now. Who cared! I waited alone in the empty hall with scores of seats and some LED tvs displaying CNN.
Muted.

I started reading the stock numbers tagging along on the bottom of the screen. Made no sense to me. Switched to playing mario on my cell. That made some sense.

And then in around an hour, the entire hall was filled with passengers with backpacks tagged with air India. Half an hour more, and I was in the aeroplane.

The scene had changed entirely. No blue interiors of Indigo this time. No airhostesses/ models with skirts.
But two things were common.

One, Luxury.
Two, Smiles.

There came air hostesses. No, they were not aunties. They were really good looking girls, somewhere in there twenties, decently clad in air india sarees. And once the second girl smiled, something reminded me of Aanchal. The same smile.
Smiles have such a positive effect on one's mind; be it a skirt or a saree.

And by the time my fellow passenger (a middle aged guy) noticed we had small screens fitted in the backseat in front of us, I had already explored all the audio and video channels that were being aired.
I switched to an english teen comedy. The aeroplane took off. The same pain in my ear. The video was running in front of me. I was not interested. I had the window seat, so I couldn't look at the air hostesses all the time. No seats in front of the ramp, you know.

And then while I was trying to lower my seat back, I noticed something out of my window. Something like this.


Imagine a vast black motherboard, and solder to it millions of shiny golden and silver circuits of light. and then one would get a feel of what I was seeing below from my window. The roads were like rivers of light. The street lamps,  a series of shiny circuitries. And as the plane flew higher and higher, it only got better.

I switched off the damn video, pulled off my earphones, switched off the reading lights above me and put both of my hands close to my eyes so that I could see nothing else, except this...

 And after sometime, it felt as if I was hovering in a galaxy. The stars in the high unlit nightsky were twinkling clearly. The golden specks of light on the earth were complementing them. It felt as if I was standing in between stars.
As above, so below.

The next one and a half hours saw me staring unblinkingly to the beautiful vision. It was uplifting, seeing the human achievement in totality; from a distance. I felt like capturing that eyeful of vision forever. It made me forget everything. The tasty chicken biryani served by that pseudo-aanchal, the lemon juices... the coffee (yes, they all were free this time.) And as we started landing in New Delhi, the night show reached its climax. Acres of planned and unplanned three dimensional series of lights- a multitude of colors, intensities and auras. I could see a series of cars running on the highway. There crossed the hockey stadium, all well lit but empty. There went the never ending series of similar apartments with no individuality. There crossed the brightly lit roads of bazaars and dimly lit lanes of the small hutments... There went the entire human establishment of Delhi in front of my eyes.

And then? thud. touchdown. Some minutes of the plane racing along the runway, and it was over.

I came out happy. Air India had given me something that the goIndigo one couldn't. Everytime when I wanted to forget everything around me for some time, and concentrate on a passive happy moment of my life, now I knew what to imagine in my mind's eye.

The giant black motherboard with golden circuitry.

Alok K.

Calling me back to my home...

Dear blog,

Almost 5 months have past since I last went to my home. And I am growing home sick like never before. Coming from a joint family has its own share of disadvantages. You get pampered. Not to luxury, but emotional security.

I have a really big family. I have 'em all. To start with, a very religious and ever blessing pious soul, my grandmother. The lady of practical wisdom who introduced me to the world of numbers through her 'pahadas' ie, the multiplication tables, that she still remembers. She is the gentlest creature I have ever seen. At least to me.
She doubts whether she will live long enough to see me getting married. So whenever I sit beside her, she starts singing the traditional marriage lokgeets with me being the groom. And I listen to it all. Its not that I am even slightly interested in my marriage prospects. I just like listening to it when she sings.
And she sings to her heart's content before going back to her daily worship  bhajans.
Sometimes I feel like recording her singing for me. Maybe this vacation I will.

Then my chronically unhealthy but really wise grandfather. He is THE man for me. The sole savior of my entire family tree, when it needed him the most. Had he not come in Patna to accept the clerk job and retire as the 'Bada babu' of the energy deptt., Govt. of Bihar, I would have never reached where I, and my family are right now. We might have been just another farmer in the small village at the Jahanabad- Nalanda border. Or may be worse. And though he knows I am more interested in doing an MBA, he still continues to inspire me to become and IAS. I know he means it when he says that he has envied Govt. high ranking officials all life long.
Though he suffers from constant stomach ailments, he just can not stop eating fish - the root of it all.
My grandfather will never change. And I know it. That's why I enjoy eating fish - with thick mustard paste rich curry, sitting just beside him. Over the years, even I have developed this strong relish for Fish. Its my grandfather's dominant trait, after all. :)

My mother. Do I need to write about her? Doesn't being a mother to me explain it all? She is the root from where my soul has grown. She has treated me like a king. Always. I had always been the thin - frail kid, shorter and weaker than almost all others of my class. And still if I can find one reason why I was able to be the star of the school, the topper among the toppers, the one who had the guts to represent the whole class in front of any teacher, the one who was the district topper with 97% in CBSE Boards, the one who never accepted any other rival's reign... was because I knew my mother believed in me. She said that there was  no connection between being physically weak and being emotionally weak. She believed that there was nothing I could not do. And she has been right, I guess. :)

My father. Oh, he is my idol when it comes to public speaking. Being a successful entrepreneur after having failed as a university lecturer, my father knows how to do business. But more importantly, he knows how to deal with people. Whenever he and I sit beside the bookshop counter, he tells me how dealing with people is the most important trait of a successful businessman, and a successful person. He has this strange quality of recognising the region and the local ethnicity of any arbitrary man through the accent of hindi he uses.
An expressive master of spoken hindi dialects. That's my father.

Then come my siblings. My elder sister. I know I have fought a lot with her. Over petty issues. My first 12-14 years of life have gone busy fighting with her. Now whenever we meet, we remember our old play days and laugh about it. She has matured now. Doesn't speak to me much, But is very much attached to the family, and is one important part of it. She likes to watch regular K-serials, worships Shahid, Hrithik and Shahrukh, and is deeply religious. And yes, she cooks real good. She knows I am the biggest fan of her cooking skills.

My younger brother. Amit. He is the style icon. Is way more smart and good looking than me ( average looks), knows what's in vogue, sports an updated hairstyle, and perhaps has a girl friend too. But from inside, I know he's a kid. And a lovely one. He is so loyal. Worships me. Has full faith in my abilities. Never fails to boast about my academic achievements, amongst his friends.
In my last vacation, a lizard was squashed between the jambs of our study room window - the room where me and Amit sleep. I almost vomited seeing the innards hanging loosely of the poor lizard. Ran short of guts to touch it even with a wooden stick. And then Amit came to my rescue. He pushed away the Lizard using the stick.
And we both discovered rather nauseatingly that the poor lizard was still alive. I knew I could do everything save poking that lizard with that stick. And Amit took the baton from me, literally. :)

And then come my two uncles... my aunts... their kids... I miss them all. My youngest cousin sister, Meethi has just joined her KG classes. When she sports that pony tail (sometimes double), she becomes the cutest creature on this whole earth.
Man, I miss her a lot.
Once I told her that I will give her whatever she wanted as her birthday gift. She told me to get the title track of 'Don'. :)
 Loves Shahrukh Khan more than any worldly stuff. Till now. :P

I miss them. I miss them all. I want to leave this internship right here. I want to get back. Get back to my roots. Get back to the people to whom I belong. Go to my village and lay on the low-lying mango branch as I always used to do in my childhood. Go to my bookshop and help my father in dealing with the customers. Sit beside my grandmother and listen to her folksongs, with me being the hero. Sit beside my grandfather and eat fish curry- full of thick mustard paste.

Here I feel very lonely. Every person seems like a stranger. I can not stand my loneliness anymore. Have to get revitalised.

But I guess I have to complete another month of my internship before i go back.
Sad, but true.


Alok K.
May 11th 2010

 

To Death.

Recently some near one of mine lost one of her dear ones to death.

And I again felt the same black hollow feeling of nothingness. The one that I felt when my cat had died. All I could do was to watch the cat lie lifeless with eyes that still shone with the brightness once bestowed by life.
Why do we use 'life' as a positive term in literature?
Why do we hugely undermine and ignore the ever lasting quality of deception that this 'life' so shamelessly sports and slaps on each one's face at the final moment of one's ... err... well, life?

Thinkers and philosophers have always thought upon this. Meaning of life, aim of life and all.
I haven't. I ain't no philosopher. Have only heard and read people thinking their thoughts loudly about life and death.
And have appreciated and condemned many thoughts wandering in the space.

Let me think about it, now.

We hear, life and death are the ultimate antonym sets of this mortal world. Well, thinking again, are they?
Its a no brainer that death is the absence of life. As simple this axiom may seem, but this has a big impact on people who'd try to follow my train of thoughts.
Death being the absence of life denies the very existence of death as a separate entity. Either you are alive, or not. There is nothing we can call 'death'. This leads us to rethink another 'axiom'.
The principle of duality.
Light- Darkness..
Positive - Negative

Matter- Antimatter ?...

Does every magnetic pole need to have an opposite magnetic pole for the validation of its own existence?

Indeed life is the only truth that we know of. Or the absence of it. Everything else is propagation of our own self comforting beliefs, that we believe to be true. 
I know it sounds kinda rebellious, but even the axiom of 'family' appears superficial to me sometimes. When Arundhati Roy refers the two egg twins (brother and sister) in 'The God of small things' as strangers who had a chance encounter, I can do nothing but admire the truth.

Yes. We all are alone. One by one, the whole mass is alone. Every single soul wanders with only itself as the journey pal.

In the childhood, when I read about a Siddharth leaving his family to become a Buddha, or a Vivekananda becoming a wandering monk, leaving his family for some greater cause, I used to feel bad.

Now, I don't. Its not that I too plan to leave my family some day. No. I love my joint family and every single member of it. But I have just realized that what made Siddhartha and Vivekananda, and many other thinkers and philosophers to leave something good for something better was this.
Management of the mortal span of life that one has been bestowed with. They might have believed in afterlife, but surely none of them would have been sure of it. That's why they left their loved ones for some worthier cause before their life ended. (read, before their death arrived.)
That effectively means that life is a non renewable resource which needs heavy and diligent resource management. And that demands for a serious set of priority lists.
May be that's the origin of the eternal question... "What do I want out of my life?"
I dunno. I ain't even in the position to know. But would definitely like to know.
But wait, would I? To give it a second thought, If I know what I want out of my life, wouldn't it end all the uncertainties of life I so dearly cherish? Wouldn't it be like working in a chemistry lab, then?
*Aim of the Experiment:
*Materials:
*Theory...
*Procedure...
*Precautions:...

It frightens me and disheartens me at the same time. And I know why.
Life, as we see it, is humane because we have got limited controls over it. I might know that I have 'x' amount of money in my bank balance, I might know that I like a girl; I may also know that the girl also likes me to an equal degree, but still I don't know many truths. Let alone controlling them. I don't know whether I would live long enough to enjoy my life with the bank balance I have. I don't know whether the girl I like would be as reciprocating in the future as well...
And a truth can not be controlled anyways. It can only be known. And told.
But again, even if I were told the truth, would it actually help me? I would find newer questions. And newer answers. And newer-er questions.

If I know for sure what I want out of my life, I know I would be overdriven to achieve it. I would bend hell to fight for it. In some slight but non ignorable probability, I might achieve it too.
Then what?

Life would still end, and take with itself all my successes, all my failures, all my pains, all the smiles that I had on my lips and on others' because of me, all the knowledge that I gained every time I stumbled upon some presumed notion of having known it all, the blessings of every good act I did, the curse of every sin I committed... life would end with itself the whole drama of life. The paraphernalia. Gone.

And an even hard hitting truth awaits for its disclosure now. Whatever I wanted out of my life would be taken away from me. Like a strange delusion. I wanted an alarm clock. I got loads of shiny bright alarm clocks around me in my dream. I woke up. Gone. every single one of them.
So, if having an alarm clock in a dream doesn't count, why should achieving some worthy goal in one's life count?
 They are all gonna be snatched anyways. Family, love, life, deeds... alarm clocks...

The touch of death scene touches me hard. It makes everything look futile. A strange sense of non-association creeps in. It feels all hollow. Every goal seems not worth pursuing. It all turns grey.

And then a strange thought infects me. I smile. Because every goal that I had ever wanted to achieve would have given me nothing more, but smile. Money? Yes, only to be gone. Sense of success? Yes, Only to be overtaken by some worthier goal to be pursued and succeeded in. 
But a smile, like an entire lifetime would bloom, so thanklessly in my mind. A sense of satisfaction not for achieving anything, but just for the sake of nothingness. 


A pure, white smile.
Death, you can take life away ( For argument's sake, I bestow you a separate entity. But I would take it back.) But you can do nothing to a smile. You can not take a smile away because it was not physical anyways. You can rot the lips, but what about the strange sense of unadulterated satisfaction that the smile gave to none but the one who smiled? 
He would take that ethereal smile with himself, wherever he goes.
Before death. After death.

To Death: You can not take a smile away.

Monday, May 03, 2010
Alok K.

( Image courtesy: DHRRA Malaysia)

Getting back to my sadder self?

Well, things are changing. I am getting back to my sadder self. Everything seems colorless now, for some moments.

Nothing has changed, nothing. May be I am just sad that it's all gonna end anyways. However happy I might get,  a day will come when it will all end.

And I would be all alone again.

Words worth their Salt.

पंद्रह का पहाडा...
पन्द्रा एका पन्द्रा
पन्द्रा दूनी तीस
तियो पैंतालिस
चौके साठ
दाम  पचहत्तर
छक्का नब्बे
सते पछोत्तल
अट्ठे बीसा
नवे पैंतीसा
पन्द्रा दहा डेढ़ सौ...

-- These were the unforgettable words of wisdom which my grandma made me remember when I was new to the world of numbers, and literacy as a whole for that matter.
Decades have passed.
But the words still hold true, and still help me solve the petty mathematical solutions of my life.
Thanks, Grandma.

A Realization.

We all are pathetically so same...

Confused Insecure Minds with corporal limitations. 
The only variable being luck.

A Fantasy.

I strain my eyes again. Its not hard to ignore one Shahrukh Khan on the big screen, though in the background, when the foreground is shaded with the silhouette of her face and her shoulders, which quite convincingly, snug inside my arms. The raw emotions let loose, I think about kissing her on the lips. But that seems cliched. How about the soft temple, just below her earlobes?
No. Its a bad thing to do. Evil tries to overtake me. I feel the rhetoric hormones pushing my nerves hard, but I refrain.
The movie is progressing. Shahrukh is looking up in the sky full of promising clouds, helplessly.
I give a damn. Let's concentrate on her. I can feel the warmth of her pulse getting conducted to myself through the skin. Shit. Why am I thinking about the concepts of heat transfer? May be last semester the course on air conditioning was successful in taking its toll. I undo some thoughts. Heartbeats were tangible feelings. More than sheer transfer of heat by conduction through the skin.
Shahrukh Khan is crying now. I get irritated. Closed my eyes, feeling the immoral proximity between us two. Like the proximity between a dining hall and a pantry room.

What the hell! Architecture! It should have been the last thing to crop in my mind at this point of time. But like every other 'last' thing, it hits me first.

No, concentrate. My other hand can feel her other arm. Soft, warm skin. It feels pious. And devilish, at the same time. Still contemplating whether to kiss her or not, I realise that I am drifting towards my previous experiences of girls and my expectations from them.

Having a light hearted conversation, a small dinner, and a slow walk on the street before I doze off in my bed.

Watching a movie together and eating out at some place afterwards.

Holding a hand and feeling happy about it.

Kissing someone?

Is it that big a deal? I can see that Kajol has joined Shahrukh Khan in crying over their dead son. As if it made any difference.

I think about the morality issue again. Is it bad to show somebody that you care for her? Should I be answerable to the society for every single activity that I do? Is it that necessary to follow the ethical norms of the people around us?
Is kissing a girl really a bad thing to do?

Whattheheck. I turn towards her face. Barely inches away. Trying to find some connection between Shahrukh's overacting and Kajol's underacting. Too calm to panic if I try kissing her. The fragrance of her hair overtakes me. I inch closer towards her. She's still looking forward. I still inching closer.

Should I? or should I not? Good, or Bad? Right, or wrong?
.
She turns.
.
.
.

(No, neither does the alarm beep, nor does my dream shatter off the slumber. For a change.)

Shahrukh Khan smiles at the audience. I smile back and get off the soft seat with her. Have to drop her off to the metro station.

Alec.
Feb 16 2010.