The world tilted 45 degrees as we climbed higher in an upward swoop. Below me a polka dotted glory of lights shrunk rapidly and disappeared. I looked around at my fellow travelers, some with a book in hand, some with earphones plugged into their ears. Our iPods generated our very own personal worlds, silent on the outside, musical on the inside. Spotlit heads all around me, laptop screens lit up frowns of intense concentration. Smells arose of coffee, wine and bread. I drank my unwise but deliberate coffee, for I chose MS Subbulakshmi and Dostoevsky over sleep. Delicious bitter coffee, unknown companions, a caffeine-induced unreal alertness, memories of Fight Club! And MS crooning just for me, Kurai Onrum Illai Kanna...
My seat overlooked the plane's wing. I had borrowed those wings, they were mine for the length of the flight. I scrutinized the paneled wing, those metal sheets flapping mechanically under human control. I wished I had my own wings to flap and flaunt, to fly about as I pleased. But for now, even metal wings will do. Will this fascination with flying (or is it freedom?) ever fade? We entered a wispy cloud, opaque white below me, clear blue skies above. I searched for a crack in the clouds, hoping for a glimpse of the lovely land I left behind. I caught myself hoping and I smiled, so did my ghost in the windowpane. I hoped the roar of the airplane would magically turn into the roar of the wind in my ears. I thought about forty years hence and wondered what I should hope for. Bright kids? A private jet maybe? My own wings? I caught myself hoping again. It's amazing how dependent the human mind is on hope. Success raises hopes of more success in a neverending recursion. We resort to hope to soften the blows dealt by failure. Hope baffles me, cornerstone of ambition at one time, haven for the escapist at another, elusive, chimerical and indefinable, to say the least.
My neighbor serenely knitted. It was something in a lovely pale green melting into rich dark olive. I hoped it was being made for someone with shining hazel eyes. I squinted at my neighbor's beverage. Calories-0. Fat-0. Carb-0. Sugars-0. Protein-0. I smirked at the pointlessness. But then how often should I smirk at my life? I felt the outside of my bag, I traced a fully charged iPod and my books. I never travel without enough books to last me at least a week. I momentarily acknowledged my intense fear of boredom, paranoia if you will. But then it could also be a fundamental distrust of my own mind and of chance acquaintances, even of nature to stimulate my interest for long enough. Life, of course, has proved me wrong too many times. But we elect to just go through our entire lives lugging some of our fears and inhibitions with us. There is not enough incentive to make an effort to lose particularly this one when I can resort to wonderful books and music. Vathapi Ganapathim... MS keeps me special company.
Strapped into safe confinement in submission to tiny illuminated signs, I wrote a story. Can I call words separated by hyphens a story? I wrote it in blue on tissue that blotted. My absent reveries when I paused for thought took the form of live growing inkspots. Inkspots on blotting tissue, begging and teasing for interpretation. The story was really just incomplete thoughts jotted down in a hurry, lest I forget them as quickly as they came. Random thoughts to be fleshed out later in the comfort of my bed. I tried to capture her voice on paper, her brilliant rendition of Bhavayami Gopalabalam and the echoing violin sounding like it was moved to cry by her pious voice. A perfectly bronzed woman, in push-up bra and tiny thong smiled at me from the glossy magazine peeking out of the seat pocket. Sorry, no room for her in my story. We were inside a cloud again. And I felt suspended, motionless thirty-seven thousand feet above land. No frame of reference to gauge the motion. Much like life, I'm tempted to say. I never finish stories, I don't know if I ever can or want to. I didn't promise myself that I will, but I did carefully save those precious tissues. Bhavayami Gopalabalam... I retired to MS at her mellifluous best.
