Today morning, as the whole of Kerala, celebrated ‘Vishu’ auspiciously, I went through the motions of reaching the airport. Tiredness, a complicated feeling of hopefulness with fear made me feel weird. The formalities were completed in a breeze excepting the fact that the lady at the counter had a bad news to break to me. ‘Sir, we’ve run out of seats for you in the plane.’ The drowsiness must have subdued my reaction. How else can you explain me asking politely ‘So then, how can I travel home?’ instead of screaming and jumping up and down?
The lady at the counter, who had definitely put on a alien accent along with her make up, asked me to wait for 2 minutes. I did that. After 7 minutes and 34 seconds (if you wondered how I calculated that, I was into my third song on my Zen Micro) she called me. She plainly said ‘I’m sorry for the inconvenience sir. Since we don’t have seats for you in the Economy Class, we’ll offer you a seat in the ‘Business Class’. I was left wondering what the catch was. I tried to make her repeat what she had said lucidly moments back. Yes. I was getting a Business Class seat. No frills. No strings. Nothing attached.
Whoa baby! Talk about lady luck! I think this has got to even better. How about Hot-Sexy-Dad luck!
I loitered around in the waiting area until I figured out that everyone was looking at me. Then I sat down and listened to some music. I am not sure that I hadn’t dozed off but after some time, I realized that there was no one near me who looked like a Mallu waiting impatiently to get on board of the plane. The proverbial chill down the spine didn’t occur. Instead, the calm and composed persona inside me rose its handsome head, and I with the regular head that I’ve been sporting for around 26 years, walked to the counter and got the information needed.
The plane was about 20 minutes late. I got into the flight hoping that I would fall asleep as soon as I sat. I didn’t. That was partly attributed to the fact that there was this foreigner sitting beside me on the window seat. He eventually turned out to be a business tycoon having exploits in hotels and other buildings. He was going for his 3 day long vacation. It was nice chatting with him. In between, I tried in vain to put some sexual angle to our conversation. But he was very clever to brush it aside.
When I touched down at my home town, I got the message from Chuck saying that he was waiting out the airport to pick me up. Great!
We didn’t chat up too much on our way to my place. He dropped me there and I started immediately to my uncle’s place where the maternal side of my family had assembled on the occasion of Vishu.
It struck me (during the bus ride) that my town is very miniscule as compared to the beastly proportions of a metro such a Mumbai. I reached the place in 15 minutes without breaking sweat in the sweltering humidity and heat of the afternoon.
What greeted me was awful expected monotonous bull-shit. All sorts of boring, orthodox remarks that would be addressed to someone who had returned home from work. ‘Oh, you have lost a lot of weight.’ ‘You have gone down! (yeah, I wish!)’, ‘Is it too heavy there? Do you get enough time to rest?’ Needless to say that I was uncomfortable, I hurried through my lunch. I was suffocating in that environment of cold shallowness and I needed to breathe free.
I said that I wanted to meet my friend immediately and set out. On my way out, I took my mobile phone out from my jeans pocket and figured out whom to call. I tried Ray. Line was busy. Out of nowhere, I felt like calling Mr. Lion. I dialled his number and a lady, most probably his wife, answered. I introduced myself as a colleague of his and I heard the woman shout his name. After a minute or so, he came. When I started talking, I was panting. He started fumbling when he realized that it was me. It took about half a minute for him to regain his composure and talk.
He said there was some repair work of the roof going on in his home and his place was a mess. But I finally made him agree for a meeting, the place yet undecided next week.
Immediately after that, I went to Chuck’s place. I hung out with him till late evening. He was talking about his problems. We talked over coffee at a famous restaurant in this place. Then we went for shopping. Then he left me at a bus stop from where I caught a bus and came home.
On my way back, I had decided to go to Cochin tomorrow. I exactly couldn’t say why but I wanted to meet Dr. R as well as Ray who was visiting his home then.
No comments:
Post a Comment