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. 😀

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. 😀 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. 😀

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. 😀

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.. 😀 . 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. 🙂

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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)

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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. 😀

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.