The summer day was drawing to a close and dusk had fallen on Meenambakkam International Airport. The air was filled with excitement for the students and very sentimental for the parents; especially for the mothers who are dedicated believers in the maxim of early to bed and early to rise works in the modern times. It was very much the same for my mother because I left them for a project assignment and they now had no one to pass this maxim on a daily basis. The airport during this season in Madras is always worse than Central Railway Station. The noises of each mother giving their Son/Daughter their final advice. (Most of them didn’t care … so was I)? Hence like all the others I too received it with a gratified nod in the good old English way.
Now left alone in the Immigration check, I was trying to uplift my mood with a better walk than my normal one. Hence, I tried a Walk like an Egyptian but it turned out to be more precisely like John Wayne. This was not the final; my eyes, which for some reason that I can’t state explicitly were bulging out, like the Wolf in Looney Toons. This was when I started walking towards the journey across the Atlantic. The main reason for this trip was in fact to flex some muscles in my head, which for some reason or the other had not been used at all. (The Medulla Oblongata is quiet close for a first wild guess.) I was gloomy and it must have been from the fact that solitude and further adjusting to a new environment made me look stupefied. To be more exact a look like seeing KAJOL come by and invade you in your fantasy and send our hearts beating faster than a Pentium IV processor clock. Sometimes in these crisis situations I found that it would be possible to divert the mind from the item uppermost in the agenda to something lower and uninteresting like work, documentation, physical exercise etc. I am sure that this idea works practically in all cases in a male employee. (Never cared about the Female section)
In all this time, I was strolling away and was now just steps away from boarding the plane. I really felt as though each small step of mine was indeed a giant leap to mankind – OK not mankind but at least for the frog-kind. The closest approach to a real plane previously was around 10 KMS, though I was just 10 millimeters if you considered playing Flight Simulator on Playstation-II. This also marks my first sighting of those gorgeous airhostesses who were wishing us all a happy journey. For a long time, this was the moment that looked like bringing me back to my own mood, but then there was an announcement that there was a ½ hour delay. It was probably the worst ½ hour in my life; the agony of the wait still makes my blood boil.
I sat in the lounge for several minutes motionless with my limbs and brain (goes without saying) totally inert except my eyes which were working with a speed such that it always accompanied the imminence of the perils that lie ahead. Luckily this day was not so since I was confronted with a situation in which no single man on the world could handle it alone. The plot here is that the next seat to mine was occupied by a girl (Still can’t find words to describe her) with whom I had written my TOEFL exam.
Many of my friends have known that my mouth which rarely shuts and now with an added catalyst, a cute female, with whom I can say that I have had a good acquaintance with her, it wouldn’t. This made my mouth work merrily of all the organs in my body. One has to be very careful about the first few lines when we open a conversation. I think I got it right this time, it was of course all babbling about my chivalrous anecdotes in acquiring the VISA. It was after a few lines into the conversation, which right now was a plain monologue; it was thrust upon me the fact that snakes could sometimes even penetrate into the most Gentlemanly Garden of Eden. One such snake was coming along my way at this moment. He was brushing aside me like those flies around the steaming hot Jilebees during deepavali. Hence, this was one more effort of mine down the drain.
It would have been possible that had the meeting taken place a bit earlier, I would have been in a better frame of mind to break this news to my cousin. He, a man of many words, sort to narrate his own version of this meeting to all my friends. Of course to expect a sensible and plausible defense for me in a matter like this cannot be given and nor will my friends agree to give me a chance. This news spread faster than a forest fire in Amazon and made me look like a zero when moments ago I was a hero. This was the precise moment that the captain announced our Takeoff.
And finally the plane took off in a sensational manner. We had never been on a flight before this and hence the first lift from the gravity of earth was just GREAT. This is what we were thinking until an old lady in the next row to mine disgruntled at what a rough take off. Nevertheless it was a fairly good one for us. The pilot from Madras to Bombay was an amateur I suppose from the way he chartered the trip on mid-air. Once up in the sky we saw Madras buy night for the last time. It was a good picture of Sodium lamps lit throughout the city. In fact the whole city looked so small to us. The strangest fact was that even Jayalalitha’s biggest cut out was as tiny as a passport size photograph. After viewing this we settled down in our seats and started to relax.
The night was very young and very still. From somewhere in a distance came faintly a sound of a ravishing young female while near at hand I could hear my friends whispering about her like hooting of a white or more definitely some brown owls. Thus an impressive urge swept over me to take a look at her and I made no attempts to resist it. Feeling damped that I might damage my image, I thought for a while and then not discouraged by the damage I rose and saw her. Stretched on her heels and breathing gently through her nose, she was enjoying her job of serving beverages to all the passengers. A glance of her was enough to tell anybody to what an extent she would be in the dreams to come for me. Albeit the glance was brief, it had the most invigorating effect on me. All, I felt, was for the best of all possible worlds and made an effort to converse with her. To my rather good or bad luck the hostess was also from Madras and to be precise Triplicane. Thus, it drew me like a magnet towards accosting with her.
The fact that she was from Madras was not so important but the fact that she conversed with everyone around me in English and to me alone in Tamil made my image look worse especially with a female sitting next to me. While people all around me could not help from keeping their eyes open and took to natures way of curing this problem … SLEEP. Hence with nobody awake around me I went for the bell. Surprisingly all my calls were answered quickly and this started the acquaintance with her. After a while of talking, the English tongue gave way to Tamizhl.
All the while when I was talking my cousin used to wake up, but for my luck, it didn’t take him much longer than 5 seconds to fall asleep again. He was one of those fortunate guys who had no need to count sheep’s but to drop off directly the moment the head touches the pillows. With the air around the aircraft chilled due to controlled atmosphere, Mother Nature started to call me. I thought that I might hold it for some time but then nature won over my tolerance and I decided to unseal my hands towards the famous Bell but controlled this urge. I preferred to postpone this revelation till dinnertime, but this did not appear with the spheres of practicality. Hence I reached for the Bell, the bell to me sounded like that of the "Big Ben" but for my luck, this call seemed to be invalidated and my desperation grew. I stood up and started looking around in a state of flux. Something had to be done soon, having decided to go for it; it was like a point of no return, a dead end street. There were several moments during this short wait when I would have been glad to be interrupted by somebody, which was not happening now. Then from my back a sharp pat came on my back, it was the Hostess. She could easily see a striking resemblance of me with a Tamil proverb "INNJI THINNA KURANGGU POLA" which roughly translated means the facial expression off a monkey when swallowed a gingerroot. Of course this was not the best of times when I should moot over my resemblance with my ancestors and hence I rushed to the restroom.
It can never be an agreeable experience for any passenger to find his seat taken over by somebody else and the owner cannot be censured for allowing him to disconcert him. Of course you got it correct, my cousin had taken over the seat that I held during the short trip to the rest room. If there was someone as determined as me, then there is a simple and easy way to cope with these types of situations. Let my cousin have it in his own way.
Now left alone in the Immigration check, I was trying to uplift my mood with a better walk than my normal one. Hence, I tried a Walk like an Egyptian but it turned out to be more precisely like John Wayne. This was not the final; my eyes, which for some reason that I can’t state explicitly were bulging out, like the Wolf in Looney Toons. This was when I started walking towards the journey across the Atlantic. The main reason for this trip was in fact to flex some muscles in my head, which for some reason or the other had not been used at all. (The Medulla Oblongata is quiet close for a first wild guess.) I was gloomy and it must have been from the fact that solitude and further adjusting to a new environment made me look stupefied. To be more exact a look like seeing KAJOL come by and invade you in your fantasy and send our hearts beating faster than a Pentium IV processor clock. Sometimes in these crisis situations I found that it would be possible to divert the mind from the item uppermost in the agenda to something lower and uninteresting like work, documentation, physical exercise etc. I am sure that this idea works practically in all cases in a male employee. (Never cared about the Female section)
In all this time, I was strolling away and was now just steps away from boarding the plane. I really felt as though each small step of mine was indeed a giant leap to mankind – OK not mankind but at least for the frog-kind. The closest approach to a real plane previously was around 10 KMS, though I was just 10 millimeters if you considered playing Flight Simulator on Playstation-II. This also marks my first sighting of those gorgeous airhostesses who were wishing us all a happy journey. For a long time, this was the moment that looked like bringing me back to my own mood, but then there was an announcement that there was a ½ hour delay. It was probably the worst ½ hour in my life; the agony of the wait still makes my blood boil.
I sat in the lounge for several minutes motionless with my limbs and brain (goes without saying) totally inert except my eyes which were working with a speed such that it always accompanied the imminence of the perils that lie ahead. Luckily this day was not so since I was confronted with a situation in which no single man on the world could handle it alone. The plot here is that the next seat to mine was occupied by a girl (Still can’t find words to describe her) with whom I had written my TOEFL exam.
Many of my friends have known that my mouth which rarely shuts and now with an added catalyst, a cute female, with whom I can say that I have had a good acquaintance with her, it wouldn’t. This made my mouth work merrily of all the organs in my body. One has to be very careful about the first few lines when we open a conversation. I think I got it right this time, it was of course all babbling about my chivalrous anecdotes in acquiring the VISA. It was after a few lines into the conversation, which right now was a plain monologue; it was thrust upon me the fact that snakes could sometimes even penetrate into the most Gentlemanly Garden of Eden. One such snake was coming along my way at this moment. He was brushing aside me like those flies around the steaming hot Jilebees during deepavali. Hence, this was one more effort of mine down the drain.
It would have been possible that had the meeting taken place a bit earlier, I would have been in a better frame of mind to break this news to my cousin. He, a man of many words, sort to narrate his own version of this meeting to all my friends. Of course to expect a sensible and plausible defense for me in a matter like this cannot be given and nor will my friends agree to give me a chance. This news spread faster than a forest fire in Amazon and made me look like a zero when moments ago I was a hero. This was the precise moment that the captain announced our Takeoff.
And finally the plane took off in a sensational manner. We had never been on a flight before this and hence the first lift from the gravity of earth was just GREAT. This is what we were thinking until an old lady in the next row to mine disgruntled at what a rough take off. Nevertheless it was a fairly good one for us. The pilot from Madras to Bombay was an amateur I suppose from the way he chartered the trip on mid-air. Once up in the sky we saw Madras buy night for the last time. It was a good picture of Sodium lamps lit throughout the city. In fact the whole city looked so small to us. The strangest fact was that even Jayalalitha’s biggest cut out was as tiny as a passport size photograph. After viewing this we settled down in our seats and started to relax.
The night was very young and very still. From somewhere in a distance came faintly a sound of a ravishing young female while near at hand I could hear my friends whispering about her like hooting of a white or more definitely some brown owls. Thus an impressive urge swept over me to take a look at her and I made no attempts to resist it. Feeling damped that I might damage my image, I thought for a while and then not discouraged by the damage I rose and saw her. Stretched on her heels and breathing gently through her nose, she was enjoying her job of serving beverages to all the passengers. A glance of her was enough to tell anybody to what an extent she would be in the dreams to come for me. Albeit the glance was brief, it had the most invigorating effect on me. All, I felt, was for the best of all possible worlds and made an effort to converse with her. To my rather good or bad luck the hostess was also from Madras and to be precise Triplicane. Thus, it drew me like a magnet towards accosting with her.
The fact that she was from Madras was not so important but the fact that she conversed with everyone around me in English and to me alone in Tamil made my image look worse especially with a female sitting next to me. While people all around me could not help from keeping their eyes open and took to natures way of curing this problem … SLEEP. Hence with nobody awake around me I went for the bell. Surprisingly all my calls were answered quickly and this started the acquaintance with her. After a while of talking, the English tongue gave way to Tamizhl.
All the while when I was talking my cousin used to wake up, but for my luck, it didn’t take him much longer than 5 seconds to fall asleep again. He was one of those fortunate guys who had no need to count sheep’s but to drop off directly the moment the head touches the pillows. With the air around the aircraft chilled due to controlled atmosphere, Mother Nature started to call me. I thought that I might hold it for some time but then nature won over my tolerance and I decided to unseal my hands towards the famous Bell but controlled this urge. I preferred to postpone this revelation till dinnertime, but this did not appear with the spheres of practicality. Hence I reached for the Bell, the bell to me sounded like that of the "Big Ben" but for my luck, this call seemed to be invalidated and my desperation grew. I stood up and started looking around in a state of flux. Something had to be done soon, having decided to go for it; it was like a point of no return, a dead end street. There were several moments during this short wait when I would have been glad to be interrupted by somebody, which was not happening now. Then from my back a sharp pat came on my back, it was the Hostess. She could easily see a striking resemblance of me with a Tamil proverb "INNJI THINNA KURANGGU POLA" which roughly translated means the facial expression off a monkey when swallowed a gingerroot. Of course this was not the best of times when I should moot over my resemblance with my ancestors and hence I rushed to the restroom.
It can never be an agreeable experience for any passenger to find his seat taken over by somebody else and the owner cannot be censured for allowing him to disconcert him. Of course you got it correct, my cousin had taken over the seat that I held during the short trip to the rest room. If there was someone as determined as me, then there is a simple and easy way to cope with these types of situations. Let my cousin have it in his own way.
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