And how? It finally took another flight! Flights that I have been fearing to undertake since the last four months. I had my prepared defence mechanisms well, and without the SOS medicine in either of my hand bags. Last night I forgot to mention, my first ambition, ever, was to become a pilot. I still have that scrappy piece of paper in which I kept adding my ambitions. I moved to lawyer when I was detected with myopia, when I was in the sixth standard. I used to think many things about taking a flight when I had begun this journey among the clouds -- how do ALL the pilots maintain a clear vision throughout their professional life? How do they navigate in the sky? How did they know which way to take to Calcutta, and not to Delhi? Were there invisible bridges and highways up there? How could a compass determine a destination? No, it did not make any sense, any which logical way. How on earth did auto-pilot work? I mean, how on sky?
I fell in love with flights, on one particular Jet Airways to Delhi, from Calcutta. I was travelling alone and it was a morning flight. I would be spending a week with my aunt before leaving for Turkey. After the served breakfast of I-still-remember-the-gooey-omlette, I was in a trance of the taste, when a sudden announcement from the cockpit broke my delicacy. The baritone voice informed us of our route, and a special message towards all those on the right side to look out to the Himalayas. I did. I had never encountered such a spectacle before. Terrains of rustic brown heights, untamed, tall. The clarity took me by surprise. It was a terrible, terrible beauty -- the danger of it -- to think that I am the most malleable in that sure, unending structure. It was love. After that, it was such a pleasure to be in the fluffy cottons. I used to write (with my air pressured fountain pen), and write my heart out, befriending them. They were of so many friendly shapes. I even remember once, somebody had taken a doodle I did on one of the flights. Also, seeing me doodle, most of the times, people initiated interesting conversations with me. But, it was all in the was. In the now, I have only shivering, watery palms and racing heartbeats. Till today.
With my defence mechanisms working well, I was suddenly interrupted in the middle of Autograph. Another baritone voice announced our route, across the 'international sky of Bangladesh' into the national sky of Guwahati and Jorhat and then Dibrugarh. By then, I was asking my cousin if what I looked at, daring a view outside the curved dirty window, were clouds, or hills. They seemed too pointy to be clouds. And just at that moment, the Captain declared for the ones sitting on the left side, to look out and enjoy the view of The Great Himalayan Range. All my defence mechanisms watered out. We were spellbound. Vanilla scoops after vanilla scoops of a range of greatness, above Arunachal Pradesh. Silence. That was all I could respond with. I tried taking a photograph, and gave up. They felt like protective parents, overlooking the entire insides. It was mesmerizing, smooth, insufferable beauty once more. Too much to contain. With silence for company, nothing else mattered -- not the boring air-hostesses of Air India, nor its faded curtains, or its scratched windows.
It was a different Himalayan enticement -- polished, refined, silky -- one on which one could keep drooling over. Even as we left it behind, and went on to view the unbearable gorgeousness of the plains, and something, which we could not figure. Was it the river? Was it plains? We stopped caring. The tea-gardens came into view as decline was announced. Settlements were visible. But what remained, frozen, were the mountain tops. It is love. It never dies. It fades and reinforces itself at a sudden moment, like a flash of lightning.
Like a vector, love never changes direction. Only shifts in magnitude. It doesn't always need a face. Personality is enough. It speaks in towering silence.
Thundering and showering. Love. All over again.
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