Leaving on a Jet Plane…

It was a late summer afternoon in the tenth year of my existence when I got onto the tarmac at Jaipur's Sanganer airport to walk towards and board a fateful Indian Airlines flight to Delhi. I was grinning from ear to ear and could not control my excitement at the prospect of actually 'flying' from point A to point B! :) The heavy humming of the jet engines and a strong breeze only added to my adrenaline rush. Though it was a short 60 minute flight, it remains vivid in my memory as one of those instances of pure unadulterated joy. When the Airbus finally turned it's nose up from the ground, I was ecstatic at having become the zillionth human to be airborne!

After many take offs, touchdowns and layovers in life, I now work for a management consulting firm and am frequently on the road, i.e. fly out Monday mornings and fly back Friday afternoons. Yes, that guy you see at the airport with a blue shirt and khakis, toting a black laptop bag strapped onto a black carry on trolley, rushing to catch his connecting flight is me! With such rigorous and regular travel, the experience starts getting that much mundane and mechanical.

Nevertheless, every once in a while, I feel a rush of blood when I look at enormous man made devices of metal defying gravity (Now, I do understand Bernoulli's principle and the concomittant equations of fluid mechanics and dynamics) and rushing headlong into the blue sky, transporting people, ideas, dreams and desires...