Remember the movie’Pyar to hona hi tha’? Kajol is petrified of flights, yet love makes her take her first ever flight from paris to India and her reactions to the flight are theatrically comical. While watching the movie, I had laughed my head off and wondered whether people like her really existed. After flying with air deccan for the first time, I decided the script writer probably flew the same flight to come up with something like that:O
Well anyways, so I was to take this small two hour flight from pune to bangalore. And I was really excited about it. I had been saving to be able to afford this peak season flight(sometime around diwali) to my parents and pleasantly surprise them. Little did I realise that air deccan, in the spirit of all festivity, had planned its own unpleasant little surprise for me!
The check-in was with little hiccups. I dont remember precise details, because the drama which followed occupied most of my memory space, pertaining to this event. But I do remember heading off in a very irritated mood to proceed towards the security-check. The flight was predictably delayed and I spent the hour fuming on the uncomfortable torn foam chairs of the airport.
When I got the the dingy flight, I realised that the seat I had been alloted was neither window, nor aisle. I must mention I am a tall woman, very proud of being tall, but at that precise moment I wish I could just shower myself with a shrink spray so that I could squeeze into the seat alloted to me. What made the situation worse was that I was given a seat right between two guys. I had never been more uncomfortable and claustrophobic in my entire life. In the three seats adjoining mine, another female was facing a similar predicament. The gentleman in the adjacent aisle seat smiled and exchanged seats with her, so that we could at least be comfortable for the two hour journey which lay ahead of us.
After taking off to a very shaky start, I had hoped that I would sleep till destination beckoned. But instead I found that my knuckles had turned white because of the death grip I had on the handlebars of my seat! To say that the flight was turbulent would have been an understatement. I felt like I was riding a horse in the middle of the freakin heavens and it felt like absolute hell! My stomach was queasy and had I not had an aversion to throwing up, I would be displaying the contents of my early morning breakfast in a brown paperbag.
My neighbour sensing my panic, started urging me to look out of the window at white fluffly clouds. She was making light by asking me to imagine the clouds into various shapes.
"There!" she exclaimed pointing over my shoulder, " does that nto like a white fluffy guinea pig?"
I turned my neck with the dexterity and grace of a spodilitis patient and the white fluffy guinea pig of hers scampered away as the flight did another almost sommersault!
I was never more glad to have touched the ground. I scowled at the stewards with constipated smiles as I headed off, because not once had they made any attempt to ease the disastrous flight!