Plane Truth

{Sometimes, on wind soaked nights and days that feel like evenings, I meet a shadow by the name of B21. I chronicle my encounters with him dutifully. That's my job.}

The other day, on a flight that I didn’t take from an airport yet to be built — I had an epiphany. I know epiphanies are deep things and all that but I felt it at 35,000 feet. Or somewhere like that. Here is a shortish account of it. Airports, aeroplanes and pretty things in blue and deep blue are very good for our momentum. Even for our moments, at times. They teach, you learn and the whole merry go round spins so beautifully it brings tears to the eyes of people who can only afford trains.
As the steel bird with its bowel full of strolleys and stale food took off, I turned slightly to my left to notice this mascara painting. Beautifully framed on four sides by size zero Var Sachchi, bejewelled cell phone, a solitaire the size of a bull’s testicle and a middle India accent that reminded me distinctly of crows mating. She cast no shadows and I immediately knew she had to be the famous Yucky Sawant. She was a celebrity, a darling of the manure journalists and featured regularly on the covers of highly fingered magazines like ‘The Cowdung’ and 'The Udders'. She also featured fairly regularly inside the fists of schoolboys in the throes of their wet dreams but that was not on her CV. Apart from pubescent schoolboys, her wide audience also included Lux rubbing maid servants (who simply adored her), auto rickshaw drivers, building watchmen and construction workers. In others words, the cream of the discerning reading public today. Whenever she came (appeared) on TV, the maids bought more Lux, Fair & Lovely and Kunwar Ajay sarees. As for the watchmen and construction workers, at the end of a hard day’s labour they curl up with her pictures and let’s just say, lose all their hard feelings at the end of it all.

As you must have made out (interpreted) by now, Yucky Sawant was a big deal. Right now, she was getting all deep, reading philosophy quotes with emojis on her WhatsApp. The light from the green screen lit up her cheekbones in such a halo of wisdom that it reminded me of the Buddha’s emaciated face, similarly glowing after his long walk out of starvation. I think at that point she burped but it could also have been the angels singing.
Ms Yucky Sawant (called YuSa from now on for the sake of bray-vity) however looked up self consciously, noticed me noticing her and quickly offered to autograph something. When I politely shook the in-flight magazine at her to communicate in the negative, she turned off the WhatsApp and started to get chatty.
YuSa: Distance is dead. Long live distance.
I didn’t quite know who Distance was by far and thought keeping my silence was appropriate. She misunderstood.
YuSa: I will have some roasted organic peanuts and a blended juice. I am grass fed, you see. Would you care for some?
I was not really the caring type and felt silence will be the better option. She got really encouraged now.
YuSa: There are people all around me that look busy and in a hurry. Laptops, pads, pods, peas, bees and all. Where are they all going? Why are people so poor?
B21 (that’s me, motherfuckers): Yes, their destinations will be printed on their boarding passes.
I chose to answer the easier question.
YuSa: Haw. Yes. Yes, of course. Have I not met you before somewhere? Some? Where?
B21: No.
YuSa: You look familiar. Excuse me.
I didn’t quite know what she wanted me to excuse but I thought I must attempt to put her out of her misery.
B21: I used to be familiar. At one point in time. But that time has now melted into a lump of Move’n pick.
YuSa: Yes of course. Of course. You see …
By then I couldn’t see much. It was too late. The beast was out.
B21: I see dead people, living stock photo lives. Slow, heavy and phlegmatic. Simian of bearing; full of sloth and cunning. Their hearts and stomachs nothing more than warehouses full of tomorrow’s misery. Buying shit they don’t need. With money they haven’t earned. To show off to people they don’t know. And they look busy. Very busy and very important. They look at their Apple watches all the time. Their pathetic 16 hours a compendium of compromises. And at their Fitbits. To see how much bitbit they have died.

YuSa was about to say something but got distracted. At this particular point in time, the air hostess who wasn’t there came within earshot and sight and hawked loudly — CHARITY. CUPCAKE. COLA.
YuSa: I will have one of each please. And some extra demerara on the charity.
AH (that’s the air hostess, lechers): Right away, ma’am. And if you buy the latest makeup kit you will get the free eyelashes from the Makeawish Foundation as well.
YuSa: Wow. Get me that too, girlie.
At this point I must have exhaled heavily because both YuSa and AH looked at me like I was a small jar of small pox. YuSa however broke the jar, ever the charmer.
YuSa: Would you like something to eat? They have some lovely cholesterol with triglycerides on the side. And some very, very rare lipids. It’s a full meal. You can eat your heart out.
AH: smiles That would be a small bypass. Please tender exact change smiles
Before I could answer, I saw some movement from the corner of my third eye. A large passenger with a grand belly gets up to relieve himself. He is gently admonished by no one for staring leeringly at AH.
YuSa: I saw some people at the other flight I was not taking. They were crammed up in their seats. Sort of like mice in a laboratory jar, waiting for a grand scientific death. Their kneecaps enmeshed in the netted pocket at the back of the front seat. Rubbing against grubby magazines and barf bags. I am depressed. I want a Coke.
AH beat me to the draw.
AH: smiles Here is a can of the finest. Minus Zero calories. That would be a few inches around the navel and a rotten molar around Christmas. Please tender exact change smiles
I was waiting patiently for my turn. But just as I was about to say something, the pilot came alive. Sounding like a moody donkey speaking through a mouthful of metal, he belted out some vintage mumble.

Pilot: Ladies and gentlemen, buoys and seagulls, homos and momos and the Indian voter. Not to forget the transgenders, transformers, transmitters and the trance generation. This is your pie lout speaking from the flight dick. On behalf of the bankrupt Kink Fissure airlines, I wank you for flying with us. I grope you are having a lovely flight and my lovely cabin crew led by Miss Lovely is taking good care of you. If you like our service and my speech, please tap the app and give me a sex star rating. My family will wank you and I can eat better.
My eardrums were warming up by then and I strained to hear the rest of the best.
Pilot: We are currently croozing at an all tea chewed of tut tee fie hundred feet a bow sea label and the temperature outside is my anus sixty nine degrees below butt freezing limits.
My eardrums were positively starting to goof off now and I strained even more to hear. Pilot however was just settling in. After biting into some delightfully crackling deep fried static, he began again.
Pilot: We will soon begin our this end. Please fold your tray tables, hold your intentions and scold your bladders. In the event of a what-a-landing! septic jackets kept below your assholes can be used for flirtation. Please don’t be an asshole and use them when there’s no real emergency or else you will go to jail and there will be no safety for your asshole then. You will be happy to hear that your airline has won the Best Hairline Fracture award five times in a row and has consistently ranked No. 2 in the Zero Loose Motion After Eating Airline Food survey conducted by The Stool Society of India. Cabin crew to prepare for landing.
At this last bit, AH got electrified. Very quickly, in much the same way that snails don’t, she crawled to the pee yay system and informed everyone about tray tables, overhead luggage, underhand deliveries, lavatories, life, loyalty, fire engines, her pink childhood and how on time is a wonder fool thing.
Lights were then dimmed as promised, my eardrums started bonking like rabbits on amphetamines and I couldn’t hear YuSa any more at all.