February 06, 2007

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

jeete raho, udte raho, khush raho!!
love u!

karrvakarela said...

About flying with the flu: it can be excruciatingly painful especially when landing as the Eustachian tubes are blocked and the ears have nowhere to acclimatise to pressure changes. A good idea is to take a nasal decongestant a few hours before flying, or at check-in, and then a short while before landing. This helps to take the edge off the pain. Otherwise painful barotrauma can occur.

(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001064.htm)

Anonymous said...

None of my business actually but why dont you change the location in your profile to India and remove Great Britain since you are not in GB any longer? Just a suggestion - dont mean to interfere in your personal matters. On a different note, even I have recently got married and I could relate to your previous article. you write well. I tried to send this msg as myself but google just wouldnt let me login. So, you may not publish this if you want. :-) take care and keep writing.