Fairy Airy Tale
Of one that could not get away
Once upon a time, in a land that unwittingly ended up near a busy airport, there lived a woman who was one part eccentric, two parts reclusive and several parts escapist. It was widely rumored that she was a witch to trespassing children and people dropping by without a call.
It was a cruel joke that the Maker played on her when despite shifting houses often she would always end up with a wall-sized window overlooking the grand Changi airport of Singapore. So, she would wistfully scratch her hairy chin as she sipped her tea, morning and evening, staring out of her window; the flying birds carrying people in out of that airport. She dreamt that someday she would tame those giant metal birds and coax them to take her to faraway lands where household chores and school PTMs did not exist.
As it happens to randomly witchy women, her slave, who she entrusted with sourcing food and sustenance, traveled a lot. He would ride out to meet the metal birds and fly away ever so often to keep the bread, and butter, and cheese, coming. He also would send her messages about and pictures of those unseen beautifully snowy places through the magic tablet that tells tall tales. He also would never venture out of the inns stayed at during his many adventurous journeys and sleep in his room when not slaving away. I cannot say for certain how much this irked the escapist, envious, jealous hairy-chinned witch but I am willing to guess that it must have been substantial.
Then, one fine day as she watched the metal bird lifting off several miles away towards the wispy clouds hung in a cerulean sky, she had an epiphany. She realized how enormously kind and noble she was to the forests, rivers, and wilderness she loved. She traveled less and her ‘carbon footprint’ was smaller than those who constantly flew inside those birds. Accompanied by the soothing symphony of her sleeping slave’s snoring, her morning contemplation seemed like a balm to her frayed spirit. She felt grateful for all things with the exception of chin hair, social niceties, dog-haters, and stubborn fat, deciding to continue to be her noble, unsocial, escapist self.
It was then that she had to find a way to douse her desires without upending the delicate gaseous balance of the stratosphere. She considered conducting a social raid upon unsuspecting peasant women who bragged about exotic holidays in the passing and whose Instagram windows would unabashedly switch between views of southern France and the Angkor Wat. How do they sustain in between their biennial holidays?
So, she sneaked out one evening, eavesdropped on conversations (because who wants to participate with effort when one can overhear?), and learned from a newly returned traveler that by taking a million pictures of different landscapes, completely and stringently abstaining from any sincere sight-seeing with one’s own eyes, one can create an illusion of constant travel through the windows one shows the world a.k.a. Instagram and Facebook. For this, one must learn the dark arts of making ridiculous reels, saving hundreds of drafts, and constantly wielding one’s phone lest a shot gets away before being captured. These also included being seated inside the plush breast of the metal bird and the sleeping-chaired luxury offered to these calculatedly occasional but shrewd travelers.
More and more as she listened in, she heard the horrors of lower exchange values, expenses, scams, and the seats inside the birds where one had to sit for hours and hours without a possibility or permission to stretch their legs. The scary stories of occupied or dirty or out-of-order mile-high lavatories, crying babies, and drunk co-travelers brought her out of her fantasies and shook her up for good measure.
As she walked home, she could hear echoes of her slave telling her, ranting even, how he would rather stay home than fly with the birds. She knew why, now. She came home that evening to sift through the sorcery of Netflix’s great places for vacation watchlist and live vicariously, happily ever after.
