Fasten Your SeatBelt

Holiday season is here. Monaco beckons. Dubai dazzles. But with rising ticket prices my dream of flying just made a crash landing. So, I sit back in my heated cockpit in Gurgaon, brood over my boring life, and wonder about Modi’s foreign trip, RaGa’s Bangkok sojourn and Sonam’s Cannes rendezvous.

It all began when Captain NaMo landed in South Korea without the tail wind of the mainstream media. His Modiluft was cruising comfortably until he strayed off the trajectory and went on a bragging trip. The adulation of emotional NRIs chanting NaMo, Namo, created such turbulence that the love for his own voice awakened the patriotic Indian among Modi’s detractors. Suddenly, everyone writing SAT and GMAT became a proud Indian on Twitter. Well, in Modi we have an able pilot. I only hope Captain NaMo knows that the fuel in the tank is limited. And gravity is universal.

So while NaMo was flying high, RaGa gained groundspeed on the Amethi runway. The smartest thing RaGa’s flight handlers did was to cloud his 56 day mysterious disappearance from the radar. Only a Black box can tell us what he did, where he stayed and what he wore (a suit, boot? shorts?) while in Bangkok. I can’t deny that there was some relief in watching RaGa sweat it out in dusty hinterland with a dozen farmers clapping even before he spoke. After the recent mid air crash of the Food Park flight one gets a feeling that the frequent pilot errors are likely to ground the Congress airline unless they stick to politically profitable routes.

Summer is also that time of the year when Bollywood beauties line up the international runway at Cannes. Being human, it seems is not as important as being Anil Kapoor’s daughter when you become relevant for five days every year. At the 68th Cannes film festival, fashionista Sonam Kapoor’s sortie suffered a bird hit when she appeared in an Elie Saab feathery gown resembling an ostrich draped in Maggie noodles. In contrast, the alleged repeat offender, someone who according to Sonam was “an aunty from another generation”, Aishwarya Rai stunned the fashion runway two decades after winning the Miss World crown in 1994. 

While I died a little watching all the high fliers, I enjoyed Meri Jung being played in Delhi. Trust pilot Kejriwal to entertain us with his anarchic sorties on the Delhi runway. Belted on his seat, Captain Kejriwal fought with the co-pilot, locked the cabin crew and landed at the President’s doorstep. With passing time, Kejriwal resembles a disgruntled flier who creates fuss each time the airhostess takes time to respond. Plus the penchant of flying his low cost airline into the crash is a sign for Delhi-ites to trust the captain, but keep the seat belt fastened. Wonder why the politically savvy Delhi-ite didn’t anticipate turbulence with Kejriwal as the pilot and the BJP as the air traffic controller?

Anyway, since I can’t visit foreign shores, I derive comfort from the fact that it is always better to be on the ground wishing you were up in the air, than being up in the air wishing you were on the ground. Right? 

Image Coutesy: Here