When flying lost its wings

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

There was a time when the very mention of a flight filled me with a quiet thrill. As a young man, the idea of being lifted into the sky felt like a small miracle granted to ordinary mortals. I would reach the airport hours in advance, not out of anxiety but out of sheer eagerness, wanting to soak in every moment of the adventure. The smell of the terminal, the announcements over the speakers, the sight of aircraft taxiing slowly on the runway, all of it seemed to belong to a world far grander than the one I had left behind that morning.

In those days I packed light and travelled lighter in spirit. A window seat was a prize worth fighting for and I would press my face against the glass like a child, marvelling at the cotton wool clouds and the toy towns far below. The little tray of food, however modest, felt like a feast served in the heavens. I remember telling friends with great seriousness that flying was the closest a man could come to flying like a bird and I meant every word of it.

Somewhere along the journey of the years, that romance began to fade. The same airport that once felt like a gateway to wonder slowly turned into a parade ground of queues and instructions. The waiting lines grew longer and my patience grew shorter and the two seemed to move in opposite directions with the precision of a law of physics. I now arrive early not in excitement but in dread, calculating how much of my life I will surrender to security checks, boarding gates and the mysterious art of standing in a line that refuses to move.

The baggage, which once travelled as lightly as my heart, has become a source of constant worry. I weigh it at home, weigh it again at the counter and still feel a flutter of fear that some hidden gram will betray me at the last moment. I watch my suitcase disappear down the conveyor belt with the anxiety of a parent sending a child off to a distant land, wondering whether we will be reunited at all and if so, in what condition and on which continent.

Then there is the matter of delays, which have become as certain as the rising sun. The cheerful voice that announces a slight postponement no longer fools me. I have learnt that a slight delay is merely the opening line of a long story whose ending nobody can predict. I sit at the gate watching the board change its mind every few minutes, while my carefully made plans at the other end quietly collapse like a house of cards in a draught.

And, of course, there is the weather, that great and unpredictable author of all our travel fortunes. In my younger days a cloud was a thing of beauty to be admired from above. Now every grey sky fills me with foreboding and I find myself studying weather reports with the seriousness of an old sailor reading the horizon. Fog, rain, wind and a dozen unnamed causes hover in my imagination, each one fully capable of holding my journey hostage. The wonder of floating above the clouds has somehow been replaced by the worry of what those very clouds might be plotting.

When I sit back and reflect on all this, I realise that the aircraft itself has not changed very much. The sky is as vast and the clouds are as soft as they ever were. What has changed is the eye that beholds them and the heart that receives them. Age has a quiet way of trading our innocence for caution and our wonder for calculation. We gather so much knowledge of what can go wrong that we slowly forget to notice all that  still goes beautifully right.

Perhaps the lesson lies not in the flight but in the flyer. The same situation can be a joy or a burden depending entirely on the spirit we choose to carry into it. The queues, the delays and the uncertain skies are not new villains who arrived to torment our generation. They have merely revealed how much of our peace we have quietly handed over to things that were never in our control to begin with.

So, the next time I find myself stranded at a crowded gate, I intend to look once more for the boy who used to press his face against the window. I will let the suitcase be a suitcase and the delay be a delay and I will remind myself that the privilege of flight remains a small miracle even now. The joy never really left the journey. It only waited patiently for me to make a little room for it again. And that, I suspect, is a lesson that travels far beyond the airport and settles gently into the ordinary business of living.

[Dr. R. Balasubramaniam is the Founder of Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM). ‘The Lighter Side’ is a series of satirical articles meant to bring a smile by highlighting the funny side of everyday life.]