I Hate Flying

I hate flying. The rush to reach airports through messy traffic, the queues waiting for check-in and then security check and then boarding the coach and the airplane and then to de-board the plane. All this while glaring at insolent fools jumping queues or reclining straight into your knee or loudly socializing on an ungodly early flight, comprehensively crushing the feeble hope of catching a wink or two before a grueling day. In some insane way you end up associating flying with the worst side of us. For, what passes off as illiteracy or lack of social skills on a train or a bus cannot quite hide behind those cloaks in the playgrounds of the rich. And that final hope, the omnipotent Ambrosia: Education also seems to fail against our…well humanness.

But all those losses I could have accepted, what so saddens me is how easily this rude side robbed me of all the charm and memories and hope which that first flight and many subsequent ones stood for! My first to the airport was as an impressionable 5-year-old, who went to see-off a rich NRI cousin. Looking at that aircraft take flight, nose pressed against the glass windows on the first floor of Ahmedabad airport, the young kid was over-awed by everything flying represented. The huge aircraft met every expectation of an infant imagination and then some more. The airport was a departure from the untidiness of railway stations, the language a sign of refinement and most importantly the wealth, all of which which left a yearning to be a part of that elite group. That simple visit to the Ahmedabad airport set off a long string of firsts which would come to represent emotional and important moments which I so cherished and then somehow forgot.

If there is one thing I have inherited from my parents, it’s their audacity. Ever an independent man, my father didn’t see eye-to-eye with his brothers and one fine day he had had enough. He collected his all of 17 days old son, a devoted wife and nothing else to his longest and most amazing adventure. For a wanderer far greater than I can hope to be (he measured every nook and corner of this country over and over) flying should have been merely an extension of his success. But the wonder in his eyes and the pride when he first bought a plane ticket for the three of us told a different story. For this was a testimony to the maverick, the adventurer, who had simply staked it all on his self-belief and found a willing and able (and many a times better) partner in my mother. And as if to extend a cosmic justice, we flew from the same airport at Ahmedabad.

The next time we flew, my doll of a sister, had joined us and that became her first flight. The previous flight, as much as it was a statement, was also a necessity. Jaipur had been burning because of communal riots and all road & train services had been suspended, rendering flying the only option or waiting for tensions to subside. Her first flight however was a choice, a reassurance of sorts. And the culprit was again that same Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport in Ahmedabad.

Many other firsts would follow: A flight to Hyderabad to appear for Google’s interviews, where I was one of the only 2 people out of a staggering 5000 who appeared for the long drawn process to have made it to the HQ of the internet giant. The first corporate flight in summers which felt like a silent whisper in my own mind: “You are someone”. The first flight abroad, which befittingly was me, flying alone and perhaps free.

Looking out of the window on a clear night, as I looked at the Bombay sparkle disappear beneath me, suddenly all those memories came rushing back in. For the darkness of the Arabian Sea somehow seems to engulf all the glitter of Mumbai into a sudden full-stop. As if a power beyond ours has drawn a neat little limit, reminding us of its totality. “This is it…play all you can but remember you are only human”. And just when you begin to accept this pivotal truth you notice jetties extending into the seas, awash with light, fighting the finality of darkness. Sparkling with the joy of everything that defines 'human' and more than anything else…that one thing which is our most incredible ability: Audacity.

I started off from Mumbai airport about an hour back, having waited for a few hours for a long delayed flight, crabby and worn-out. Perhaps the next time I am frustrated, I’d remember the worth of that next flight, which could turn out to be another glorious first and accept the existence of that greater hand at play and yet know that to make the best of that hand…I’ve to be human.