JOY OF FLYING

Journey on an airplane is not new to me, though I have not been a frequent flier. I flew for the first time on a small propeller plane carrying about 15 people in its tubular metallic hold way back in1975 or 1976. The plane lifted off from an obscure corner of Calcutta airport at the crack of dawn and landed at Guwahati an hour or so later just as the first rays of the Sun was touching the tree tops. Never will I forget that thrill of being airborne for the first time. The leap of faith as the wheels left the ground and the tilted surface of the runway started to recede, the involuntary clutching at the seat when the plane sharply banked- the feeling that I may fall off - fully knowing that I was safe inside the hull and the sudden loss of gravity when the tiny plane fell through a hole of an air-pocket - a strange feeling in the stomach as I was under zero gravity for may be two or three seconds but what appeared to be ages before the plane crashed back with hard jarring bump and shuddering noise into normal air, are all still fresh in my memory.  Those days are gone now, except for those few who may be taking a course in flying or gliding. The fear mingled joy of flying, when the wings and the pilot, both could feel and react to every naughty unpredictable activity of the air around the plane and when the propellers had to gasp for breath at every large air-pocket, is something no passenger or pilot of a modern-day gigantic commercial jet will ever feel. I feel very lucky to have had this one little experience and glimpse of an age when flying was a joy and an adventure; when a pilot was a hero in the eyes of adolescents like us.

As the plane neared Guwahati airport, it flew low, very low. Small villages of thatched houses, set amongst the pristine beauty of far extending water soaked green rice fields, flashed passed my window seat.  The villages were clusters of deeper darker green of bamboo groves, mango beetle-nut and coconut trees, banana plants and tiny vegetable plots. They indicated a life style of little wants and greater satisfaction that our rural Assam once was. A woman was sweeping her courtyard in that typical style we all know with a bamboo broom. For a moment she stopped, cupped her eyes and looked at our plane. I thought she was young, comely, as our Assamese village girls are. Men carrying a plough on their shoulder were walking with their bullocks for tilling their rice fields. It was the scene of early morning villages arising from sleep into well rehearsed age old daily activity. But the beauty of a scene that I will never forget- like a song of Biren Dutta or a poem of Nabakanta Barua - is that of a string of spotlessly white cranes flying across the face of the green rice fields. Alas I can write only this little sentence to describe its beauty. I wished the plane would linger for a while for me to watch, but it flew on like an arrow of Time, oblivious of human emotions or sense of beauty.

Arrow of time has continued its flight since eternity all through these last 38 years and shall continue to fly into eternity. But across those freshly grown soft green rice fields, the string of cranes continue to fly-on till today, towards some undisclosed destination. They live on defying time.

(I was thinking of writing about my journey on a high flying modern commercial jet, but my fingers typed away something else. I think I might have written about it sometimes in the past too, though I do notr clearly remember.)