High in the Sky.

Now that I’m done with all of my interviews and am guaranteed admission into at least one decent college, I’m free.  I’m so free these days it’s almost unbelievable. I’ve not been so free in years! Yes, I know I’m saying the same things again and again, but it’s really important for me to emphasise on how free I am. It’s a weird feeling to be so free. I’m sure it’s weirder for my dad. It must hurt him to see me just lying around here and there and wasting my time, because now there’s nothing he can tell me to do. And I’m not gonna deny the fact that I love this new feeling. Freegiri FTFW!

P.S. – Extremely long post ahead. Consider yourself warned.

Anyway, last month I embarked on my first ever airplane journey. And it was FUN! I’ve been fascinated by these huge flying machines ever since I was a kid, but until last month, I hadn’t even seen one from up close. The thing with air travel is that even though it’s the safest mode of travel, you just can’t avoid having that nagging feeling that the plane might crash. I don’t know if it happens with others, but it definitely happens with me. Trains and road travel seem safer that way, though with all the idiots on the roads, they’re really not. So yeah, with that nagging feeling in my mind, I left from my home for the airport quite early in the morning. But of course, I wasn’t alone.

I’m sure you’ve laughed countless number of times at those scenes in Bollywood movies where emotional families accompany their kids to the airport as if they’re leaving for the battle of Mahabharata. They all seem so made up, but they’re really not. I realised that when three of my family members decided to accompany me to the airport. Sure there wasn’t any crying, but there were a lot of best of lucks and take cares. And beyond a point, it just starts to look stupid, but then since this was my first time, I was willing to ignore all of it. I had booked tickets with Yatra.com, and I ended up with a Go Air flight which was to stop at Mumbai in between before heading on to Bangalore.  Now, a few days before my flight, I talked to people regarding it, and was given different kinds of advice and feedback. One person told me to be careful during take-off, because the plane “rattles a lot” at that time. This person didn’t have very nice things to say about Go Air and its pilots. And the fact that when I was checking in my baggage, this guy decided to come up and create a ruckus about how he’d lost his baggage the last two times he’d travelled with Go Air, didn’t leave a very warm and fuzzy feeling in my stomach.

I proceeded on towards the security check, and I must confess that I’ve never really been a big fan of all the frisking, but the most irritating part here was the way they handle your baggage. I was asked to put my laptop and phone in a plastic tray, and so I handed it over to this attendant dude, who pretty much just dropped it into the tray. I mean, dude, this is a MacBook Pro you’re dropping here. I clean that thing more often than I clean myself, so, you know, show some respect and everything. But he didn’t look like the guy who’d appreciate that kind of advice, so I just cursed under my breath and moved on. And then there was the long wait before you’re actually asked to board the aircraft, and that was pretty uneventful. When we were finally asked to board, I was as excited as that Ranveer Singh was when he won some award. I didn’t cry like him, of course. So we moved on towards the aircraft, and man, was it beautiful or what! It wasn’t huge or anything, but it was just cool in a flying machine sort of a way. I went in and was greeted with wide smiles from the aircraft crew. Man, are those dudes tall or what? And what’s with the air hostesses wearing SO much of make-up? That said, a few of them weren’t half-bad, so I figured that the flight wasn’t gonna be so boring after all :P. I had also been told that one should get the window seat in an aircraft because the view outside is quite something. I wasn’t so lucky however, and ended up with an aisle seat. There was a newly married Punjabi couple sitting next to me, and the female was funny. Now I’m not the kind of guy who’d chat up random strangers but the husband did enquire where I was headed to and stuff. And it’s just funny how every family has someone who’s done an MBA, and even funnier how everyone thinks all of those entrance exams are bullshit, because, you know, every other person you see on the road these days has an MBA degree, so how difficult can it possibly be? Considering I managed to crack one of the tests too, now I’m thinking it’s really not that difficult after all :P.

The next part was the one I was most excited and most worried about. The take-off. And I must confess, this has become my favorite part of flying now. The feeling when those jet-engines kick in is so bloody exhilarating, it’s awesome! And remember how I mentioned that the newly wed female was funny? Well, it was because she closed her eyes, clutched on to her husband’s hand and almost shrieked when the plane took off. It was funny and creepy at the same time. So with the take-off done, I was slowly becoming more confident about the entire idea of flying, and just right then we got a message from the pilot requesting us to fasten the seat belts as we’d run into turbulent weather. When I heard that announcement, I had pretty much mentally prepared myself that the plane was going to crash. In hindsight, it seems pretty stupid, but hey, I was in an aircraft for the first time, and there’s two things you don’t want when you’re travelling by air the first time. 1. Turbulent weather, and 2. Samuel L. Jackson and motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane. So as it turned out later, the plane didn’t crash and we made it to Mumbai safely, which I must add, looks huge from inside the plane. And the guy sitting next to me was kind enough to point out the slums and inform me that they are the biggest in the world. I, quite frankly, was more interested in the skyscrapers. Mumbai and Delhi look very, very different from up in the air. I really wish I had more time so I could get off here, but oh well. Another thing that I noticed is that despite reminding people to switch off their phones, nobody really does it. Nobody other than me, of course. But then I make it a point to stop at every red light too, unlike most people. Anyway, later the plane took off again, and I had a new dude accompanying me this time around. He was a foreigner, and looked quite like Bruce Willis. I was wondering if he was transporting people inside his baggage. But that was about it, the rest of the flight was quite uneventful, too. We landed at the Bengaluru International Airport in about 50 minutes, and man, that is one huge airport. Later I went on to collect my baggage from the conveyer belt, and to my absolute horror, there were three identical looking bags moving around happily. I picked up the wrong one the first time, and later realised that they have your name written on them on the tag thing. Managed to find mine a bit later and headed on to catch the bus to wherever I was headed. I must put in a few good words for the buses in Bangalore. The Volvos are kick ass. They’re no less than aircrafts themselves!

I’ll skip the part where I’m supposed to talk about whatever happened in Bangalore. I’ll keep that for a later post. We move on to the part where I was to take my flight back to Punjab. Yes, I’m not gonna tell you where I live. Do you think I’m an idiot? Go find it out for yourself! It’s not really difficult anyway :P.

So I’d booked Jetlite for my return flight, and I was very happy when the attendant asked me my seat preference when I was checking in my baggage. I was quite excited about the window seat and everything. Anyway, in all of my excitement, I ended up at the airport a couple of hours before the flight was supposed to take off. Thankfully, I found this Punjabi guy who was travelling on the same flight, and he somehow found one of his friends at the airport who was heading to Goa. And guess what the guy had done for his post graduation? MBA, of course! The number of people pursuing this course is just insane, I’m telling you. Anyway, we chatted about a lot of crazy things, including a detailed discussion about which airlines has the best air hostesses. The answer, as many others have also told me, is Kingfisher. And I’m not surprised at all. I had expected nothing less from Vijay Mallya. He bought Deepika Padukone for his son, surely he can afford a couple of hot air-hostesses for people who are travelling with his airline.

Later we got into the plane, and I was wondering who would sit next to me this time. And in comes this very serious looking South Indian guy. He was so serious it looked like he was some kind of supervisor or quality control guy. I was wondering if showing him a Rajinikanth movie on my laptop would cheer him up. Anyway, I was glad that I had the window seat this time, because I could see what was going on outside, but I also immediately realised the negatives of having the window seat. Since domestic aircrafts have no entertainment system, the people sitting on the aisle seat have very limited entertainment options. They can either stare at the air hostesses or stare out the windows. The Jetlite air hostesses probably weren’t up to the serious guy’s standards, and so he decided that he would stare out the window. The only issue was that I was obstructing his view. He didn’t care and kept staring, and it was extremely weird. Maybe he was trying to see through me or something. And remember how I told you this guy looked like some quality control guy? I have a feeling he really was, because he would keep staring at everything in the plane, and would then take out his little notebook and start scribbling on it. He was particularly observant when the plane was taking off. I’m sure he was noting down as to how many centimetres off track the airplane was when it took off or something. Things went on like that, and soon we were about to land at Delhi for refeulling, and I was very happy, since I thought my companion would get off here. I mean, what business would a South Indian guy have in a flamboyant place like Punjab? But well, that wasn’t to be, and this guy decided to carry on. Here, I should also mention that Delhi looks quite stunning from up in the air. The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium really stands out. The aircraft landed at the much talked about Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, and I really wanted to get down and have a look at it, but we weren’t allowed that. Here I must also put in a word or two about how IndianOil Skytanking refuels the planes. I found it quite interesting. Subsequently the plane took off again and landed where it was supposed to land, and I was just happy to get off and not be stared at. I managed to find my baggage quite easily this time. And the feeling was quite different from the one when I’d taken off from this very airport for the first time. I was all warm and fuzzy inside this time. I was also wondering if I should take up a job as a flight steward. But I realised quite soon that it won’t work out. Why, you ask? Well, mostly because I’m so short that I couldn’t even reach the luggage compartment on top of the seats to close it shut :P.

Yay for air travel!

And phew.