Love is in the air

“Hi, I’m not a practicing doctor but I am a Medical Research Scientist. Maybe I can help.”

Sonia just stood there. Stunned.

He’d won. And she had no idea how. Not to mention, with this defeat, her last chance to find out who he was had also vanished. She’d never felt what she felt in that moment. An odd mix of defeat, despair, anger and something that vaguely resembled longing.

One thing she was sure of though, was that she wasn’t going to walk into his den again. Every time she went there looking for answers, all she came back with were more questions. This time too, she was sure, he’d be waiting with some other trick, some new ploy. And if as nothing but one final jab, she wanted to deny him that pleasure.

“Asha, can you escort the good doctor to 20C. The passenger there seems to be having a migraine attack. I’ll make landing arrangements.”

Let him too, in some small way, know how it feels when things don’t go as per plan. Because if I’m not getting closure, well then neither is he.

“What’s gotten into you these days”, Asha asked Sonia accusingly , as they sat buckled in, waiting to land. “You know what 20C said when the doctor asked him if he could help?”

“No. I’m good.”

“That. That’s all he said, and he turned back to his laptop! The doctor was flabbergasted. He would’ve given me an earful had it not been for the fellow sitting across the aisle at 20D. He jumped in and claimed to have a sudden, shooting pain above his right eye. That got the doctor busy, thankfully. Wrote him a list of medicines. But can you imagine how embarrassing it was!”

Sonia could barely suppress her smile as she apologized for the confusion.

Take that Gameboy, she thought jubilantly. A taste of your own medicine. At a loss for words were you? Boy, what wouldn’t have I given for a look at your face when you realized it was Asha, not me.

But even this feeling of triumph was short lived. As the plane descended, Sonia’s heart sank again. She realized that she wasn’t really interested in winning this game. She just didn’t want it to end. Not like this.

As the wheels made contact with tarmac, the plane suddenly came alive with beeping cell phones. For a moment, Sonia’s mind wandered to something a very senior air-hostess had once told her. About how they’d gone from Nokia to Blackberry to now Apple message-alert sounds. A mirror to our times, she used to call it.

But she couldn’t muse about it much further. The aircraft was about to come to a halt, and she could already hear an impatient rumbling emanating from the cabin. Like a battalion stomping the ground, getting ready to fight. Soon the beasts would be set loose, and she’d find them crowding the alley, breathing down each others neck. Hitting fellow passengers with luggage, calling parents to say they’d landed, shouting at taxi drivers to coordinate pick up, reading the last chapters of their books — all while standing at odd angles to somehow fit into the queue and get off first. For what joy, she’d never understand.

As the plane came to a halt, she quickly got up to look at Gameboy. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but she expected something. Anything. All she managed though was a glimpse, before the war broke out. Gameboy stuffing his Mac into the bag was the last she saw before losing him to the crowd. A crowd, she realized, which was only going to move away from her.

“All passengers are requested to de-plane from the front as we are using the aero-bridge facility.”

The front door opened and a hundred humans squeezed into the aisle and started creeping out of the plane like an old snake that had forgotten how to slither. Leaving a paralyzed Sonia in its wake.

She wanted to rush through the crowd and grab him. She wanted to slap him and tell him to not leave. She wanted to shout at him and ask him who he was. She wanted to whisper and inquire how he knew all that he did. She wanted to hold him and check if he’d be back.

But she just stood and watched as all the 124 passengers de-planed and were replaced by airline staff. The engineering team headed into the cockpit. Security started making their rounds. Cleaning staff began sanitizing the cabin for the next flight. Row after row, they went about removing empty paper cups, wrappers, sandwich cartons and tissues. And Sonia just stood there. Watching everything. But seeing nothing.

Soon they got to row 20 and one of them picked up a piece of paper and threw it into the garbage bag.

The next few seconds were a blur. She couldn’t recall who she shouted at, or why her legs broke into a run, or when her hand went into the garbage bag and retrieved the paper. All she knew was that she now held it in her hand.

His letter.

Hey! Why didn’t you come back!

Anyway. Let’s say the score is settled. We both got one. So we both get a wish.

Since you never came, I’m taking the liberty to assume that you’d wish to know who I am. And it’s only fair I tell you. So here goes:

Dear Sonia

I’m Roy. I write. I’m a writer. We are what we do.

By the same logic, until very recently, I was an employee. MBA, marketing, MNC. The usual. The kind of guy you’d figure out in an instant. But I didn’t want to die an employee, so I quit and became a writer. Just that once I did, I couldn’t get myself to write!

You see back in the day, I only wrote on flights. No phone, no boss, no ugly HP laptop, no scary deadlines. Just me, my Mac and my thoughts. Once I quit though, I could write anywhere. Mountains, beaches, cafes, bars. And I did. But nothing came close to the solitude I experienced on flights. Boxed-in with a sea of unknown faces. A 100 characters with a million possible stories. Sitting right next to me. Fighting for elbow space.

I know. The mind works in strange ways. Some people say God does too. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.

But I digress.

Once I figured that flights are what did it for me, the path was quite clear. Expensive. But clear. So that’s what I do now. I book the longest flights, at the oddest of times, months in advance. And then I write. Been at it for six months now. Wonder how it took me so long to bump into you.

But we should do this more often.

Ok my question now:

Did you notice the guy sitting across the aisle at 20D?