Thou shalt never take a seat near the chronologically challenged (flying part 3)

… otherwise called children.

While the extremely small ones will continually cry in a never changing tone t-h-r-o-u-g-h-o-u-t t-h-e j-o-u-r-n-e-y. Little older ones will keep on asking question. “Mommy what does this button do?” “Papa why you are looking at the aunty in short skirts?” “aunty can I walk on your seat?” and of course the age old question that has entertained every kid (and tormented their parents) through every journey. “ARE WE THERE YET?”

The smiling ones will smile at you first and then take a sudden grab for your hair/specs (whichever you think are more precious, they have a detecting power and then of course grabbing/snatching starts). The whining ones will constantly whine. The spoilt ones will keep on asking for everything owned by everyone around them.
And of course there is the killer duo of “very small baby and mommy”, where the mommies think its too much of a pain to leave the window seat (which she probably took from you, with the fundamental right of being a mother of a baby) and decides to change the nappies seating right next to you. And when this happens, all I can say is “tch tch, I told you to seat away from children infested area”.

I remember there was this time, when a sweet child sat behind me on the flight. The moment after he boarded he asked “mom when do we take off?” and after every 35 sec he took a shot at quenching his hunger for knowledge …. “mom when do we take off?” Finally the boarding was over and flight was poised to take off, he decided this is the time to start counting down “20 .. 19 .. 18 .. “. As luck would have it, that day the flight didn’t get clearance for flying for 49 mins and the child with same enthusiasm, vigor and voice decided to repeat his countdown till the plane took off. Now I have read/heard of lot of art of living gurus, I know to live happy one must be positive. You HAVE to look at life through rose colored glasses. I tried that day. First I told myself the delay was only for my own safety, we know what happens when cars bump into each other; imagine what will happen when airplanes start doing the same. About the end of 18^th minute, I started considering may be … just may be dome pilot will get struck by this instant myopia, could not see our aircraft and may be he can drive through his plane through mine … around the same plane I am sitting. I mean I know its not probable. But the art of living gurus tell me to be hopeful …….

Thou shalt never take an early morning flight! (flying part 2)

Ok now that I have bored you with ever-modest description of myself. Let me share my pearls of wisdom with you.

And I say avoid the morning flights. You ask me why? You tell me that you have office to attend. Take kids to school. Clean your house. And attend other chores. I say if it’s so urgent that the late night flights, till 4am is good. But after that never take a flight before 9am.

You ask me why. Well simple enough dear Watson. Imagine a enclosed limited place packed by at least 50-60 odd people with incomplete bowl movement …. Well you get the drift. And one must take account of the fact that flights are often delayed by one or more hours. Ok, if its getting too horrible to imagine you can stop now. And if you are in an unavoidable situation that you HAVE to take an early morning flight (the situation should be at least amounting to something like “only you have a document which can stop a nuclear war and you must fly economy flight in early morning to delivar it” ) follow these life saving tactics.

As soon as you board, dump your luggage and run for the toilet, if the airhostess tells you must wait till the flight is on air, make a puppy face, briber her … do whatever you have to do, but get your share of toilet then and …. Well generally get done with it, cause for the rest of the flight you are not coming back this way

Always take your seat around the middle to front end of the plane. And if you didn’t get those seats, take out your perfumed hanky and get something like a talibani face gear and meditate. I am not saying that would work …. But they nothing does anyway.

It is a small world (flying part one)

Last 4-5 years has seen some major changes in lifestyle of general population. Sudden advent of “mall” culture (I still am not sure what it means though) ... suddenly every kid in the block has there hands on this magical device called mobile ( something I didn’t even know existed some time ago, and today my life would be completely paralyzed if each member of my family doesn’t own one).
But “the thing” that has changed my life most is the invention of economy airlines! They have definitely made this world very small. I am one of the unfortunates who have to work away from home. Thanks to this new business mantra of low budget airlines I can still visit my family frequently enough to feel … well somewhat at home.

Anyway, the point I am getting at is, gone are the days when I used to be very wide-eyed about the whole “flying” affair. You know, when taking a flight meant, choosing that extra-special casual wear, a hint of more makeup …. Instead now I can just run out of my office, with my raffled hair, and slightly smelly from my ping pong games and stride into the aircraft without so much of a thought.

Of course I still get confused every time the flight is about to take off. How the hell did we come up with a plan of lifting such a huge mass in air!!! And no, I am not talking about my ever increasing weight; it’s the aircrafts heft that I ponder upon. Yah, that and the amazing sight of seeing cities blinking lights going away from you, or the range of Himalayan flying across you like a sidewalk. Other than these I have got the art of flying good chalked out to the minutest details. Its an easy to follow handout book really. I can actually write something like a “flying for dummies” sort of book.