First Flight Journey (Part 1)

Most of you guys might raise your eye brow when you read this post. True, the same feeling I also will have if I read a bit of penning about ‘my first bus journey, or ya at least ‘my first train journey’. Flight now is not an unusual thing. Today in facebook, I saw people were hashing out MA Yusaf Ali’s resignation from the post of Air India Board in repudiating the step motherly attitude of Air India to its travelers, I felt that most of my buddies from Gulf countries partook that news in their wall, that’s obvious. So this post is not for you, dears, but some others who still can’t deem that a machine called aeroplane carries people and goods through the air. They only have a mind of what they think about an aeroplane. In my childhood, the picture of an  aeroplane  was always fixed with a line of a mappila song my mother always sang. Its UK Abu Sahla’s song, I still only can recollect those two lines,

Vaanil parakkum vimaanamedukkuka

Athu kannakalum thorum cheruthaakum

(oops! Blur memory yaar! I skipped a line!, anyone memorize that line?)

Its translation is almost ‘take the example of an aeroplane which float through the air

It becomes smaller when our eyes are far away!

So my image about the aeroplane in those days was something which grew to be smaller and smaller when it went to the colourful sky. We in our toddler days really envisaged only a rocket could make the white marks, so we were wondering these rockets were coming every day, or three, four in a single day! But later we were aware of that those were not the marks of paths of rockets, but any flying object could make those marks.

I still remember my first train journey, from Calicut to Ernakulam. Train, always resemblances a huge maggot! Yup! In the film MIB (I), the very first scene is placed in a railway station where a small worm suddenly grows up bigger and bigger and takes the railway track to dart smoothly. What an imagination, I appreciate it. Both train and maggot have so many similarities. The railway station was mackerel packed with a huge crowd. The train was approaching. I had taken a general ticket, but I did not really know which compartment I must get in. When I enquired to my co-travellers, they replied but a snigger. Train came and I jumped into any of an 'S' bogie. To my luck, TTR did not catch me, so I escaped from the jail or at least a penalty.

Forgive me! I realize that I have much diverted from the topic. I was telling this all only to say, that when you read this, don’t feel, ‘ ho! This guy did not get any other topic to talk about or prrr! This boring sort of flight experience I heard so many time, and I heard about the Anna Hazare drama less than this!’

When I saw the airport first? It was on 25^th April 2012and when I saw the airport, all my beautiful imaginations about an airport has just broken down, or at least shattered! I felt it was nothing but just a Secunderabad railway station (I must not say it looks like Secunderabad bus station, because it’s quite big!). I had to fly to Germany and my plain was at 9.15, so I must report at airport at least three hours before the departure.

Those days it was very hot! Sweat dropped out from every part of my body, especially from fore-head, if it were in red colour you must believe that  blood was oozing out! I got up very early from my bed only to wake up to an imaginary world where I would have flight, air, cloud and air hostess as my company. My classmate was also with me and she had already flied home by air. So I thought nothing was to be wired.

The previous day, I had called my uncle, Salam Kodiyathur.

‘Hi! Uncle! I am calling you this busy time only to clarify one doubt.’

‘Ok, what is that serious doubt?’

‘What must I do whenever I am given the panji and water by airhostess?’

Panji and water? What do you mean? It sounds like absurd.

I explained what I saw in a Malayalam film, Vettom in which Dilip was foxing the heroine.

Uncle burst into a laugher and after five or seven seconds, he explained that it is just another joke from Dilip, nothing serious in it.

We booked a taxi to fetch us to the airport. Taxi was very luxurious and when the driver turned A/C and a Tolliwood film song, the luxury started to augment. My brother Punnodi was with me, he was actually in an ecstasy. He always talked to the driver in a broken Telugu. When the comfortable cold inside began to diffuse slowly into my mind, I, bit by bit, went to a snooze. Driver was rushing to the spot, but whenever he crossed maximum speed limit the car stopped with a shriek and it got me also up.

The Rajive Gandhi airport in Hyderabad is very spacious. A kind of fright slowly erupted from my toe and it suddenly reached to my brain, that moment I felt to go to toilet. I said my brother to go back only when he got my missed call. We entered inside the airport. I smiled when our frog caged in a well, came to my mind, and I was thinking whether that frog and me had any similarity. Only 20 KG were allowed in our baggage. When my luggage was given, I saw it just crossed 20. If the lady at the counter (Is she also an air-hostess?) had asked me any additional charge for extra weight, I would have preferred to throw away two KG of washing powder, I soliloquized.

I already mentioned that I felt the airport as just an extended railway station, all the announcements resemblanced it. The destinations are same, Delhi, Vishakapatanam, Chnnai, Cochin, Kozhikode, Coimbathur, Ambala... I felt very hungry and it was the time of breakfast. I had time till my flight expected to arrive. I went in search of some food. When I heard the prize of a single kattan chaya, my belly murmured me, ‘daay! I am ready to put hold your hungry till you are provided a vegetarian ‘Hindu meal’ in the Air India. I felt very pleased to my suffering stomach! After a long waiting a sugary voice got nearer through the announcement box:

Flight number 2324 from Hyderabad to Delhi has just arrived and passengers are requested to board on. I queued to feel my first plain journey.