Fleeting Moments from the Belly of an Aircraft

Image: http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/birds%20in%20flight_90238

It was the 3^rd of October, deep in the steel belly of the Sri Lankan Airlines flight from Colombo to Delhi; still on the tarmac and was getting to be quite tedious. What was worse was thinking of the usually uneventful three and half hour flight that had not even commenced yet. The whole aircraft was full of seemingly middle class Indian tourists exchanging views about the highlights of their recent holiday in Lanka at the top of their voices in the best of Hinglish. So I understood at last 30 percent of what was shrieked in English and a bit more through the recognizable bits of Sanskrit still embedded in Hindi. The holidays of everyone I could here seem to have been ‘good,’ whatever that meant. 

Suddenly, all this collective, animated and loud pow wow ended and a aloud mummer went through the aircraft and a chant-like clapping began with the mantra, “well played boys.”  I looked up and could not immediately see the reasons for the excitement. There were no politicians around; no singers or actors that I could recognize. Just a bunch of youngsters wading through the excitable crowd into the belly of the economy section of the aircraft. They looked like the rest of the youngsters among the returning tourists. “Who are those young people,” I asked the elderly passenger sitting next to me, violating a long-term rule against conversing with ‘neighbors’ in air travel consequent to an experience with a Russian drunkard ten years ago whose personality metamorphosed into a Stalinist thug thanks to the free booze from Sri Lankan cabin crew. “That is the Indian cricket team” the bewildered man said. And his wife stared at me. “Stupid me”, I thought to myself. It’s about time I learn to keep in mind the names of at least few famous people and do some work on the skills of face recognition. Or else, this kind of thing could become marginally embarrassing in times to come. 

The man remained bewildered: my kurtha and silver bracelet would not have helped; he would have assumed: “here is an anti-national element who does not even recognize the country’s cricket team.” “Are you from Delhi” he asked followed by something in Hindi. “Yes and no” I murmured not interested in getting into a conversation. He looked more blank than before and his unsmiling wife seemed unimpressed with my reply. There goes all my ‘sociological’ humor. “I am originally from Colombo, but live in Delhi these days,” I tried to explain my ignorance of Indian national icons. He would not have believed if I said my knowledge of the cricketing personalities from Lanka would be as bad except for those old cricketers who were in school with me way back in the Ice Age. But then, some of them are unpleasant politicians now. 

I was impressed with one thing though: the cricketers were going home after losing some match and getting out of contention from the recently concluded T20 matches in Lanka. But they were flying economy class. Very good, sensible and frugal thinking by the Indian Cricket Board. After all, the three and half hour flight would not have given any cramps to these physically fit youngsters and would have saved Indian tax payers quite a few bucks. Very different I thought from the senseless pampering of Lankan cricketers, entertainers, politicians, politicians’ wives, sons, daughters, aunties  and pet dogs and fish that we have got accustomed to. 

Impressive,  I thought. Some of them sat right behind me and they were flying back home among their fans. It is a different matter that the fans were a damn nuisance taking a zillion photos from their I-phones, demanding autographs on everything from notebooks to airline napkins. Some of them were violating my own limited airspace in trying to reach out over my head towards stardom in the very brief moment of glory. And some of them had used terrible perfume. And there was a veritable traffic jam in the isle. Some were quite obnoxious too. There was some delay in taking off and the food was late too due to all this excitement. But all in all, most were well contended with this surprising flirtation with the bold, the beautiful, the heroic and the famous. And they flew economy class all the way to Delhi though I still don't know their names.