Experience aboard flight AI 447 & IC 519

I was all geared up to head home to Bangalore on 14th June, when I got a mail that my direct flight from Singapore to Bangalore was cancelled and I had to first disembark at Chennai and then take another flight to Bangalore. Indeed I was disappointed! I was looking forward to going home and meeting my husband as well as my nephew (a naughty little boy, whom I can’t get enough of) and then Air India drops this bombshell that the direct flight is cancelled. I mentally braced myself up for layover at Chennai. I had to wait for 6 hours for my flight to Bangalore!

I checked in at Singapore and boarded the aircraft! As expected, the hostesses were matronly figures (one in fact, was limping so much that I was reminded of my grandmother!) and I had a “homely” feeling while in the aircraft. Of course I’m being acerbic when I say so! There is this perpetual scorn that each hostess adorns on her face. However, on this particular flight from Singapore to Chennai, the hostesses had every reason to show their disparagement! For the first time in my life did I understand the meaning of the phrase “cattle class” as coined by Shashi Tharoor! Bad enough you had to put up with halitosis and body odor around you; but the boisterous kids were the icing on the cake! They all but played cricket in the aircraft! Not to forget the innumerable trips passengers made to the cabin toilet. Honey, I shrunk the urinary bladders of all the passengers aboard AI 447 and now they are making a beeline to the toilet! It felt more like a travel in train than by an aircraft. I would have been happy had I traveled by train, if there could be one from Singapore to India. You at least had the luxury of fresh air breezing in from the windows or better, well air conditioned coaches with limited number of people. You wouldn’t have to be agonized by the flatulence of the passengers all herded in one aircraft, with no means of spreading the obnoxious stench emanating thereof.

Agreed, it is unfair to call the lesser mortals “cattle class” merely because they lack that sophistication of the civil society. But whatever in the world would make them think that it is alright to ask for as many bottles as they fancy from the bar in the aircraft? And then, when it is actually provided, the bottles go right into the paraphernalia of the passenger, than emptying the contents into the tummy! Geez! How uncouth can that get? And then there are passengers who are under the impression that by buying an air ticket, everything in the aircraft belongs to them! Cutlery and cabin shawls are pilfered!

When it was finally time for me to deplane, I actually let out a sigh of relief. Passengers, who were expressly requested by the cabin crew not to unfasten their seat belts till the signs were put off, and not to switch on their mobile phones till the doors of the aircraft were open, took pleasure in flouting those rules! That is typical Indian behavior. I’ve never seen any other national behave in such manner in an aircraft. As much as I take pride in being Indian, I’m also embarrassed and ashamed when fellow countrymen show no signs of urbane upbringing.

With my immigration procedures completed in Chennai, I headed straight to the Indian Airlines ticketing counter to collect my ticket for the domestic flight to Bangalore and a rude shock awaited me. “You have no booking for Chennai to Bangalore aboard IC 519!!! Good Lord! This is all I need now! From then started a four hour ordeal where I ran from pillar to post to get my domestic flight ticket. Air India directs me to Indian Airlines, and Indian Airlines directs me to customer care counter, which in turn directs me to the baggage counter!!! When I had enough of this running around, I just put my foot down and all but yelled at the staff. “I want to meet your duty manager now!” When that was agreed, the Indian Airlines duty manager says, “Sorry Ma’m, this pertains to Air India, you need to see the duty manager there. Though IA and AI have merged, it is still separate!” Whatever that’s supposed to mean! After what seemed to be an eternity, I finally got to meet the duty manager of Air India, who got my ticket issued. Thank God for small mercies. He didn’t make me run around anymore. When I first got the mail mentioning the change in flight, I wondered how I would kill 6 hours in the Chennai airport. I had no inkling as to what was in store for me! By the time I actually sat down to rest my stressed feet, it was time for me to board the aircraft again. This time around, I really didn’t care about the vociferous pandit who boarded the flight and realized he left his mobile phone while checking in at the security and demanded that the host on the flight get it for him; nor did the constant banging of my reclining seat by the passenger seated directly behind me while shifting his position, annoy me. All I could think of was getting home to see my nephew and my husband. The ill-mannered people could go fly a kite.

To Pa With Love

It seems, not so long ago that I held my Pa’s slender but masculine fingers while I tottered down the path in my flimsy frock, hair running loose over my eyes and my shoes quacking with every step I took. The mere touch of his hand gave me the warmth and assurance that he will be there for me, no matter what happened. I felt on top of the world when he lifted me up and carried me around, introducing me to everybody like I was his queen. He treated me like one and I felt like one. I felt indomitable in his mere presence.

I grew up without knowing the passage of time. Pa was always in the center of my world. “Pa, today I drew a “butthefy” (read butterfly) at school. It was very colorful!” Pa’s smiling response would be, “Is it my dear? How many colors did you paint?” Just a mere question as to what I did at school made me feel as important as a senior ambassador in the consulate office!

He was always around, watching me grow up with all the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of a bolshie adolescent, with a patient yet vigilant eye. I was given all the freedom I could fancy, yet, he instilled a sense of responsibility in me, the same responsibility which made me think a million times of the consequences, before I did/do anything. Letting Pa down was something I could never imagine. It would be over my dead body.

Time raced, I grew up and Pa certainly let me pursue my studies in accordance with my interests. Nothing was imposed upon me. And when I did slip up a bit, he was there behind me like a cushion, never letting me feel the thud of the fall. Pa was my shock absorber. I would run to Pa with the smallest of elations and the smallest of distresses. But his stoicism amazed me. I couldn’t see a trace of the emotions swinging to its extremes on his face. He was always calm and composed, serene and smiling. I’ve seen him brave the most difficult situations with the least bit of soreness and smarting. Pa has been a role model to a whole lot of us and we’ve learnt to be courageous by merely looking at him handle situations and people.

Right from the time he held my hand and taught me how to walk, till the time he handed me over to a wonderful person whom I call my husband, Pa has given me the best: the best education, the best values, the best family and the best life.

The only way I can show my gratitude Pa, is by being a good human being, and I hope I’m being one, as per your standards.

When I think of you Pa, I can only think of the poem written by Rudyard Kipling. You truly lived and epitomized the poem:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Pa, you are an institution. You have many students aspiring to learn from you and emulate you. Your legacy will live on long.

Pa, I love you. Pa, I miss you.

Kites - Movie Review

As is the case with all the movie releases, we went with lots of expectations to watch Kites. Especially when the makers and star crew were promoting the movie like there’s no tomorrow – a movie shot in Las Vegas and Mexico, the leading lady who is a Mexican beauty and what not.

The movie started well. J (Hrithik Roshan) is scraping his living in the US as a dance teacher as well as by being a “husband’ to illegal immigrants to get them green card. His only aim in life is to become rich, by hook or crook. He pairs up with Gina (Kangana Ranaut) for a dance competition when he realizes that she is the daughter of a casino owner. The dance rendition by Hrithik, needless to say was mind blowing. All the par excellence dancers take a bow. He is introduced to Gina’s parents (the casino crooks, if you please), who watch the dance show and is invited to their beach house to the betrothal of Gina’s brother Tony, a vicious egoist. J realizes that Tony’s fiancé is none other than Linda, his latest “immigrant wife”, going under the name of Natasha for the casino family. He is hopelessly attracted to her and comes to realize that she is indeed marrying the casino money and not the owner. On the eve of the wedding, Natasha requests Tony to spend time at her apartment to which Tony concedes. This step by Natasha is taken at J’s behest. The two spend the evening in each other’s company, and when they return home, they are confronted by the malicious Tony. Then starts the scuttle and scamper of the J-Linda aka Natasha duo. They run for their lives to Mexico with the vengeful Tony and the policemen in their pursuit. How they do it forms the rest of the story.

The music does not appeal much to the auditory senses. The title track is sung by Hrithik Roshan and I must concede it wasn’t unpleasant. What was appalling was the fact that the American police were shown in poor light. We know that the policemen in Bollywood movies are slipshod, but hey, whatever made the movie makers use the same logic for the American police? We see innumerable police cars turning turtle and flying all over the place in the hot chase scene! Duh! Where are the oh-so-famous American police round-ups when they are pursuing an offender? Guess they were flying kites!

Wait, there is more uproarious logic in the movie! A mighty rich casino owner marrying a penniless illegal immigrant only because she is hot and sexy! I’d rather appreciate if it were just a fling and nothing more. What’s worse, he actually goes all over the place chasing the destitute duo merely because he was deceived by them! Hey, I’d rather spend that time fleecing more customers at the casino and let the sidekicks take after the sprinting duo. Hang on, it’s not yet done. The icing on the cake is the insanity epitomized by the protagonist and his lady love. Well, which dunderhead on earth would be willing to dig his own grave? The fact that the duo would be ruthlessly hunted down if they betrayed the casino family was written all over the faces of the family members, then why did they run to their gory end? Love? Bosh!

After a long wait and looking at the watch countless times, the movie finally ended. The popular verdict after watching the movie was a collective sigh of relief from the spectators.

“Kites” is better left to fly into oblivion.

Friends

It is very common to laud friends and their roles in one’s life. What’s more, you have numerous chain mails doing the rounds relentlessly in the virtual world accentuating the importance of friends. My post is not very far from being one of those chain mails describing the worth of a friend. Nonetheless, it is a post to honor my friends - in my own way.

Friends are not angels; they haven’t descended directly from the heavens; they have those similar limbs as we do, a similar heart as we do, lead lives similar to ours. But what makes them different from the rest of the people around us? The Mind! The enigmatic and abstract possession of every human being. It helps us identify “the friend” in a person. It is unique for each one of us and that is what sets apart a true friend from the crowd.

Friends teach you not to undermine you worth by comparing yourself to others. It is because we are different that each one of us are special.

They teach you not to let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past, but by living one day at a time and live all the days of your life. And how do they teach you? By standing like a pillar on which you can lean with all your weight.

When times are hard and the going gets tough, you go on mindless of the difficulties you experience and encounter, for the only reason that you know that there are a select few individuals who will stand behind you to hold you, when you make that occasional slip.

There are times when we completely lose track of friends. We sometimes wonder what they are doing and why we drifted apart. Time throws us into our own cesspool of routine that sometimes snatches away from us the regular contacts that we used to maintain with friends. But the day we re-establish those ties, it never is done from the scratch. Those back-slapping terms are but resumed and continued for times to come.

The term friend, as defined by the oxford dictionary is a “person usually not relation or lover; a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations; sympathizer, helper; person who is not an enemy”.

In my dictionary, if you were to look up the meaning of “friend,” you would in fact be looking up the meanings of teacher, mother, father, brother, sister, counselor, helper, disciplinarian, agony aunt, philosopher, confidante, guide.

My friends are all these and more, rolled into one physical entity. I love them and I’ll cherish them as long as I breathe.

I dedicate this post to 3 very special friends of mine: Aparna, Dheeraj and Ajay.

Hello...

I was walking on the passageway leading to my office when my mobile phone rang. I fumbled for my phone inside my handbag and found it screeching, outsounding the din all around me in the morning rush hour.

I was exasperated at seeing an unknown number. I was running late to office this morning, thanks to my late night reading habit. Now I was in no mood for any “Ma’m are you interested in a personal loan” or a “Ma’m we are calling from ABC resorts and this is regarding the free trip you’ve won in our lucky draw”. I was mentally prepared to give them a piece of my mind, rather nastily, to keep such callers at bay, at least for today.

I had to work on a presentation which I had to give the following day for a few foreign delegates. I was supposed to have completed the presentation slides last night, but my curiosity of what the finale would be of the Erle Stanley Gardner book I was reading, took the better of my mental faculties. And I ended up reading the book rather than working on my powerpoint slides.

I reprimanded myself for having been slack on the work front last night. Had I completed it, I would have had sufficient time on hand to prepare for tomorrow’s presentation. Now I had to rush through everything. Time was certainly at a premium today.

With all these thoughts racing across my mind, I answered the call. The other person’s voice was drowned in the din. I could see the passage teeming with hundreds of people, all chattering away on their mobile phones. This triggered my annoyance (today there was no need for any spark offs to get my volatile temper to the forefront; I woke up with it). I hollered in to the phone, “Hello… Who is this? I’m not able to hear you…”

I could hear a feeble voice from the other end, but loud enough for me to recognise it as a man’s voice. “Hi honey, my phone battery drained and is out of charge, so am calling you from my landline”.

Immediately I realised that it was my flirtatious friend Rishi. I wasn’t too pleased at having him call me at this hour, given that my mind was already guaging way ahead into the time span required for my daily schedule of work to be completed. And Rishi had this uncanny knack of calling me at the wrong time always.

I sighed and mentally made a note not to be harsh with him. It was unfair on my part to vent out my irritation on him, especially at that early in the morning. So I said to him in a whimpering tone, “Yeah, tell me…How come you called in so early?”

Rishi said, “Actually I tried calling you last night, but your cell was not reachable. Were you working late or something?”

“No, I was reading a book and didn’t want to be disturbed. So I put my phone in the silent mode and dropped it into my table drawer.”

“But…Weren’t we supposed to spend time last night, deciding on where to go?”

“Where are we going? I wasn’t aware of going any place with my hands full with work. We are having foreign delegates tomorrow and I need to give a business presentation. That will consume half a day. And I had to spend half a week preparing for that.”

“But sweets…”

Now Rishi was really getting on my nerves. Bad enough that I had already told him that we wouldn’t be able to meet for another ten days thanks to my hectic schedule at office, here he’s making plans for some kind of a weekend getaway. What’s worse, he was flirting with me, which was all the more infuriating.

My voice sounded provoked, when I told him, “Rishi, for God’s sake, I told you a few days ago that I’m bogged down with work. I have no free time to make plans for any retreat”.

“Er…”

Without an interlude, and without giving him a chance to break into my monologue, I continued, “Can’t you ever understand the pressures of work? We work in similar corporate environments and you still refuse to be aware of the constant time constraints we work under.”

I paused. I was actually livid.

“But darling, we were supposed to choose our honeymoon destination. Besides, you never did mention anything about a business presentation to me.”

That was it. Rishi just inflamed my temper to the highest order. I literally yelled into my phone and at Rishi, “For heaven’s sake dude, can’t you just stop flirting with me? I’m cheesed off as it is, now you don’t have to add fuel to the fire. Can’t you ever think beyond enjoyment? Do you live life between holidays and vacations? And now you talk about honeymoon. What the hell is wrong with that damn pea brain of yours?”

“Er… What do you mean?”

I went on relentlessly, my nasty alter ego, taking over the better part of me. “And by the way, I never thought you did have any brains, let alone having a brain pea sized. Were you dozing off when God was giving away all the senses to people who were born on the same day as yours? Or were you too busy vacationing… correction, honeymooning? You seem to have a fetish for vacations and ‘honeymoons’. What’s with you man?

“Excuse me…?!?!?!”

“And you have no empathy for your friends. You say that I’m not just your neighbor, but I’m your good friend too. Is this how you behave? Can’t you understand that I’m busy dammit? You are just worried about enjoying in life and frolicking around. You have no sense. You have no seriousness You are not at all understanding. What kind of a friend are you? You just think about…”

“Er….Is this Dhriti? I mean, is this 9845440335?”

I stopped dead in my tracks. I was shocked for having blasted the life out of the stranger at the other end who was under the impression that he was deciding about the honeymoon destination with his fiancé. And I was enraged that I wasted ten minutes of my precious time talking about honeymoon destinations with a moron, who couldn’t realize earlier that he called the wrong number.

I replied curtly, “Wrong number” and hung up.

I felt like a moron myself. At the same time, I could envision fumes coming out of my ears. So much so, for trying to save time!