Traveling often throws opportunities at us by delivering chance encounters with some memorable tryst with human foibles. I am reminded of this funny incident at a stop over Airport few years ago. A Virgin Airline flight was about to board and names of passengers not boarded yet were called as it was getting closer to the departure time. An Air hostess swung by, shouting at top of her voice - "ANY VIRGIN HERE", obviously looking for some missing Virgin Airline passengers. Couple of girls raised their hands. Everyone close by started looking at them, some with chuckles and half baked smiles. The shy girls retreated to their privacy by dropping their heads over their smartphones to hide their embarrassment, still peeing through the corner of their eyes to look at the others reactions. Non of them got up to board the flight. We humans are slaves of our inadvertent reflex actions.
I was all excited and bit apprehensive upon my arrival at the Atlanta's Hartsfield - Jackson International Airport, hoping there is no flight delay due to rains like yesterday. Thankfully the clouds bended their spine like gentlemen, opening the door for sun to peek through them spreading its golden wings as sky cleared out. My flight to Doha, Qatar was on time on a relatively cool spring day. I thought both the Airport and flight would be sparsely populated considering schools are open post spring break. But I was wrong. We were on a packed flight to Doha. With the ever growing Indian population in the United States, my observation shouldn't come as surprise.
It is interesting to watch flights taking off and landing in quick succession at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport, the busiest in the world. This being the peak hour, every couple of minutes an airliner lands or takes off. Flights line up one after another in the semi gray sky, forming a string of hazy pearls extending into the horizon, as they wait for their turns to land. The Air Traffic controllers must be doing an amazing job. They are in a profession where error is not an option.
Remembered travelling in our DM School bus in Bhubaneswar when it stopped at Railway level crossings (those days the roads, the arteries of Bhubaneswar were not clogged yet, no bypass in the form of flyover was necessary over the Railway tracks). As a goods train would pass by, we waited inside our school bus counting the number of bogies. Now I don't have patience to watch flights landing and taking off every other minute, forget counting them.
The flight to Doha was filled with a good number families with infants & toddlers - some of them cranky and cacophonous. The plane entered into calmer sky and as it entered Nova Scotia of Canada, the setting sun dropped behind the crimson horizon looking like a gargantuan red vermillion on a Hindu woman's forehead. Due to the diurnal rotation of mother earth, while flying West to East you lose time, see reduced amount of day and night passes by too fast, too soon. Again you gain time flying the other way round, as earth is round, vindicating the fact that what goes around comes around. A few hours of dozing off was all the sleep I got. The short night evaporated as I could see glowing sunlight trying to dazzle through the airplane window of my window seat. I slid off and kept doing off through intermittent "ding dong" of bell from passengers solicitating air crew and pilots making announcements to put on seat belts due to occasional turbulence.
Inside the flight I was boosted by couple of shots of Bloody Mary Cocktails, the best Cattle Class could offer and watching one of my favorite actors Kevin Koster taking shots in "HORIZON SAGA". Being a long flight in order to pass time between sporadic naps I looked down at the fleece of pretty bluish white clouds which would have made another Mary of Little Lamb fame proud. The top view of the spotless white cloud splintering away looked from an unadulterated virgin sky like scores of white furred lambs on move on a bluish-greener pasture. It seemed I was looking at a gigantic milk shakes with cream churned on top.
It was afternoon when the flight got closer to Doha Airport piercing through a hazy, desert sky. As the slowly descending gigantic bird lowered itself flying in a low altitude, I could see several light blue Oasis amidst giant sand dunes looking like giant sand boa taking sunbath under bright, sparkling sunlight. It was late afternoon, local time as the flight descended piercing through a hazy sky. The gulf next to the Airport looking like faded sky blue ink on a dusty sandpaper as the ground looked gray and listless. As the aircraft descended further, the sea looked much brighter like bubbling blue sapphire with ships looking static from top, a la white rubies garnishing the blue sapphire. As the flight was barely few hundred feet above ground the palm trees on drab sand looked like gray black dots pores on a brown face. After a long flight of 14 hours from Atlanta I reached Doha, Qatar.
I decided to stretch my legs before I catch my connecting flight from Doha to Delhi. I took time to walk around the glittering Duty Free Shops doing window shopping. Apart from Europeans and Asians, I could see a good number of Africans wearing long gowns. Arabians in white cotton helmets, with their female folks tagging along in black attire from top to bottom peeping through tiny slits cut below their foreheads - looking like Knights from Medieval era in black. Covid virus won't dare penetrate their impregnable visors of these ladies in Burkha attire from tip to toe were looking like Penguins let loose inside the airport. Almost four hours flew fast as four more hours of flight remained as I sat near the boarding gate of my flight from Doha to India. No more Virgins were solicitated as an Air stewardess started calling names of the last minute passengers. More later...
