The
Time Travel
“It’s the last call for
passengers of Flight no. 9W10 to Singapore. Kindly report at the boarding desk”,
announced the Mumbai Airport authorities.
I rushed to the boarding desk,
completed the essentials and finally boarded my flight to Singapore.
While I had been travelling alone
in India, this was going to be my first foreign experience. This trip promised
me a much needed break from my monotonous routine. I chose Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand tour
package over others as the brochure promised taking me to exotic locations that
we Indians usually see in our typical Bollywood movies and are tempted to be there at least once, all this at a
little-over-affordable price.
I located my seat, placed the
handbag on my lap and took a deep breath to mark a fresh beginning to the much
awaited holiday.
Once I settled down, I peeped to
look around for people who were travelling with the same touring services as I
was, and as expected, they were all old couples on their second honeymoon. Lack
of companionship wasn’t a blow; I had been living a lonely life since years. I
never had friends to hang out with; I chose this life for myself. The competition
that my parents expected me to face and
get through never allowed me to make friends, saved a lot of time and energy
though and promised me a stable career.
The flight took off a little
late, perhaps waiting for a passenger. I took up a magazine from my bag and
made myself busy and cut-off from the chitter-chatter of the oldies. The seat
next to me was fortunately unoccupied.
“Hey, hello”, said the stranger,
“I guess, this is my seat”. I turned to look whether I was the one being
addressed. And yes, the girl in yellow was indeed talking to me. “Mam, may I
have a look at your ticket?” , I literally snatched her ticket to view the
details. “The ticket clearly mentions seat no. 22A, which must obviously
adjacent to 21A and 23A. Using a bit of common sense, one can clearly make out
that the count for seats begins from left, so if this compartment mentions
21-23A, yours has to be the middle one”.
The girl gave me a perplexed
look, took a minute to interpret what I said, and slowly settled on her seat,
adjacent to me.
“You haven’t changed a bit
nerdy-birdy , have you??”. I turned to her with a baffled face, to make sure if
she was talking to me. Oh yes she was. Before I could say anything, she
continued, “You don’t seem to have moved on to better things nerdy, you are
still the same, engrossed in the boring magazine, never giving a damn to what’s
happening around.”
I tried to make out who was she,
was she a neighbour and old friend, no, I never had friends, an acquaintance,
ugh.. And why was she talking to me like that??
People don’t talk to me like that; people shouldn’t talk to me like
that.
“Mr. Aman Sinha, nice to see you
again”. Still puzzled, I looked at her, anticipating an introduction. And before I could ask for it, there she was
striking again, “I realize nerdy, however hard you press your nerves, you won’t
be able to trace where we met. So I’ll help you relax your nerves”.
“Get to the point”, I kept saying
in my mind.
“Tishani Joshi, was with you at
high school”.
I tried to recollect, but again
she interrupted, “I asked you not to put in efforts, your nerdy little brain
won’t be able to recognise me”.
I didn’t get a reason as to what
trouble I caused her, which made her talk to me like that, and I thought it was
better to avoid wasting my time in things I haven’t paid for and what wasn’t in
the travel agency brochure. So, I reverted back to the magazine and decided to
ignore all her subsequent interventions.
As I struggled to engross myself
with the magazine at hand, she fired again, “Singapore ha?? 7 day tour
package?? Alone??”.
“Yep-Yep-Yep”, I tried to keep it
as short as possible.
In the next 5 hour journey, there
were a couple of such attacks, my answering pattern being the same. For
sensible questions, I did spare some kindness.
We landed at Changi International
Airport, Singapore and headed to our hotels.
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