One Flew Over...

I’ve flown often enough inter and intra-nationally in the past two years to have become a privileged member of Jet or Kingfisher (which I didn’t because I always flew their cheapest fare and my boarding pass practically said “Class: None”). However, I still cannot help feeling all important and grown up when I take a flight, especially alone. I know it’s stupid in an age where practically everyone’s resorting to air travel, but I’m just a child of the age when flying was a huge deal!

So yesterday I flu (which means flew with a bad cold) from Bengaluru to Dilli, seated between two (other) executives from the telecom industry (coincidence?) who were not just acting cool like me, but were actually pretty cool about flying. The uncle promptly fell asleep and the girlie replied to an inbox full of mails on her laptop all the way. I just blew my nose and sneezed, and did not even get a chance to look important and grown up, but across the aisle was a girlie who was affected with the same syndrome as me, to an even greater degree.

When the air hostess offered her buttermilk/orange juice, she asked for the choices to be repeated maha-eagerly and then chose buttermilk with such enthusiasm that I felt like bopping her on her head! Idiot! Even I’m cooler than you…don’t you know it’s always buttermilk on Indian and Tomato Juice on international flights? (I think that’s only my rule, but what the hell?)

When my cold-infested ears popped painfully while landing, and my nosy-tissue and eye-tissue and cough tissue all became pulp by the end of my flight, I sighed at the lost opportunity to be cool, decided to fly more, and to think less highly about it from now on. I’ll become the laptop-murdering girlie on the right, or the sleeping uncle on the left, or the female version of the husband, who flies so much that I’ve had to cut slits into his vests where he’s sprouting evolutionary little wings, and who treats flights like auto-rickshaw rides.