Kishor Krishnamoorthi’s WebsiteKishor a.k.a Mjuboy’s Blog

Yesterday, I paid the princely sum of five hundred British Pounds to wait. No, not to get on a plane to India but just to wait. The journey to India was just a bonus for waiting patiently. If you add together all the time I spent waiting, it must be equal to the time spent on the actual plane here.

Even though I used their new fancy website to check-in online and print out my boarding pass, I still had to stand in line to drop off my luggage. One would have expected that I would just literally drop off my luggage and be on my way to the plane with my printed boarding pass. But no, wouldnt that just make things simple? I had to stand there for 10 minutes while the woman at the check-in was deciding whether to fine me for that extra 100 grams of weight or not. Finally, I suppose she felt sorry for me and let me go. Not on the plane but to the next waiting list, security.

I had been reading on the news about a year ago how they had invented a system wherein you just walked through a device and it did all the necessary scanning. You’d think that they would have implemented this ingenious system in the airports but they refuse to. I still need to take off my shoes and jacket and walk with my arms outstretched as though I’m about to hug the security guard who grimly nods that I may pass by.

Then the plane? No, that would be way too easy. After navigating my way to the correct gate, I spent another 10 minutes trying to convince the women at the counter that the kid in my passport was indeed me. She asked me to take off my glasses first, as if that would help, then stared at my face and the passport alternatively for abut 20 seconds each and shook her head unconvincingly. I thought she was going to ask me to go get a shave but fortunately, she didnt and said that I may go through but not before I smiled at her and told her she had the most beautiful eyes that I had ever seen. I guess she did not consider the fact that I wasnt wearing my glasses and would have probably called Quasimodo the hottest person on the planet but nevertheless, the simple trick worked and I was going to get on the plane.

And there I sat on the plane, waiting for it taxi down the runway when our wonderful pilot’s voice comes on the PA. Apparently, he missed the slot allocated for our plane for the runway and now we had to wait an additional 20 minutes for the next free slot. How could he even miss it? I mean, he’s paid to sit there and wait for our slot and then start the plane. It sounds like the perfect plan, nothing could go wrong, in theory. But welcome to the world of reality where he was probably trying to chat up the air hostess and ended up missing the slot, and possibly the air hostess too. And thats women for you.

After all the hullabaloo, we were up in the air waiting for the food to be served and I felt bored. There was no more excitement in flying. Sitting in a big metal box for 8 hours while it makes whirring noises is not the most pleasant experience I’ve had. And this is coming for me, a person who flown about 10 times in the past 5 years.  For someone like my dad, who has spent half of his life at 35,000 feet, I imagine a plane journey is about as exciting as a walk in the park. And even with a walk in the park, you can see expect to see something unusual while on the plane, its the same boring thing. Again and again and again.

And to add to this joyous experience, I had Mr.Flu to accompany me. I dont where he came from and how he got there but he was there with me through the entire journey. I have walked in -2 Celsius on frost at 3 in the morning, walked through snow so hard I couldnt see 10 metres in front of me and absolutely nothing happened to me. But I get on this ruddy plane and I’m hit with a cold. I dont know how it happens and dont even want to know.

After some sleeping, reading, eating and more reading, the majority of the trip had passed and we reached the last half hour. The last 30 minutes are always the worst, even after you spent 7 hours trying to count the number of stitches on your armrest. You stare blankly at the GPS showing the current position of the plane and by looks of it, you’d think we were in Hyderabad already. Then they slowly dim the lights and I feel like I’m a restaurant and start expecting food to turn up any moment. Even though we were served dinner about an hour ago, but then again, I’m always expecting food to magically appear in front of me. Following this, they announce that they will be taking away the headphones and that you must switch off all electronic equipment so that you are left in complete and utter boredom staring at the blank window.

And just when I thought we were about to land, we here the pilot on the PA again saying that there is too much air traffic so we have to hover around for about 10 more minutes. It was precisely at this point of time that I made my mind to travel by a supersonic jet the next time. Unfortunately, even if I am willing to pay any amount of money, it cant be done since they retired the only passenger supersonic jet, the Concorde about 5 years ago. It was a beautiful piece of machinery, and since it doesnt fly anymore, my only choice to travel supersonic would be to follow in the footsteps of Joseph Kittinger who jumped off a hot air balloon from a height of 100,000 feet and reached a speed of Mach 0.9 and to this day, holds the record for the fastest speed achieved by a human being without a vehicle.

However, not all of us have the balls of steels that Kittinger had so I had to stick on the plane till we landed and chose not to jump off. After landing, I literally ran to the immigration counter and was the 3rd person off. But then came the next nightmare – Baggage Collection. I spent another 30 minutes waiting for my bag and a majority of the time, I was given false hope by half a dozen similar looking bags which were probably made in China and was sold for 1/10th the price I paid for mine. After some observation, I realized almost nobody had got their baggage and the belt carrying the bags was quite full. Which made me wonder – whose bags are these? But before I could finish wondering, I saw my black bag hunkering down the belt so grabbed it and made my way to the exit.

As I saw my parents’ smiling faces, I grinned like a kid and realized how great it was to be back home and forgot about all the delays and troubles that I had gone through to get here.

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