Summer vacation

I began brushing up my physics textbook as I was wearing clothes and eating my ubiquitously favorite breakfast ‘Maggie’. Finishing up every noodle that was left on my plate, I put all my books in my bag and rushed to the school on my cycle, cycling and repeating the Bernoulli’s principle, then while parking my bike thinking of gas laws and then ran into Ankit to discuss about the waves and oscillations’.

Keeping my books in my bag I began discussing yesterday’s Man ‘U’ match against Chelsea to see that it was just fifteen minutes to nine and was ready to face “his royal majesty the mighty physics class eleven final examination” huh that’s some title, but then I revised my thought and made a decision of going to pee in case you never know how the questions might turn up and show its immediate side effects.

I rushed to the nearest loo to the end of the south wing and hurried to the class. The paper was here to scare but still I was a very strong minded person (being sarcastic) and then the first question was:

Explain why a man who falls from a height on a cemented floor receives more injury than when he falls from the same height on a heap of sand?

Oh! I thought I know! I know and wrote the answer.

This kept going on till I reached a question to find the dimensions and it kept coming I kept facing. Some got me hit and some I hit and then the siren to end the war began and I handed the paper to the teacher and ran off.

Today was one of the best days of my lives I was going to meet my friends’ Rohan and Ayan in Bombay, my flight was next morning at 5:30 and had a lot to pack and shop.

I came out to see everyone was happy and celebrating their day of liberation just for a while but still this joy cannot be forgiven. Laughing and biding byes, we clicked pictures and went back home.

Coming home I changed into my Nike t-shirt and Benetton jeans and waited for my mom, for us to go shop. That evening then we went to park lane to buy all the regular boys stuff – shirts, jeans, jackets and footwear and reaching home my mom packed up my bags and served food – puri, poori and more puri (all that oil but I still love it), we ate talking and pondering over the news that was walking on its own little pace caring for none, but still, hooked up my sister to the screen with the very gorgeous Irfan Pathan highlighted in the cricket news.

It was almost one by then and I was asleep while my mom was still packing my bags for my fortnight’s trip, making it 2 ‘O’ clock at night. Then she woke me up and I got ready for the early morning flight.

My parents dropped me to the airport bus station, I bid them bye and the left for home to sleep for the little left hours for the morning.

It was an amazing ride as the bus rammed the roads up and down slope, the side concave turn at a time when the sun was yet to arrive and no sign of its his arrival was visible in the sky, also I was thinking about the temperature so low, that could shun oneself outside and not a bit low inside.

On reaching the airport I took out my luggage and taking the trolley out I hit the feet of a girl - actually a girl, a girl in twenties’ a girl so different, a girl so not like others, a girl in an orange chiffon halter and a skirt, a girl of my taste, a girl meant only for me, it was ‘love’ and I knew it , love at first sight, though for the seventeen hundredth time and then I kept walking behind this fantasy to realize that it was the first gate when I was asked for the ticket and then lost her in the crowd.

I went straight to the jet airways counter. I checked in and went through all the security checking after which I spent some time at the airport book store till the boarding was announced and went in to seat after getting into the Boeing.

I moved through the narrow isle of the aircraft and tripped by the feet of another passenger to my left and was caught by a fellow passenger behind to notice the same girl sitting to the end of the ‘E’ row beside the window seat, and I knew there’s no magic that might happen as in typical Hindi movies and hence my seat was in the ‘G’ row.

I sat at my seat and beside me sat a lady who was towards her late middle ages, she sat, took a book out of her purse and kept reading it as the plane took off, taking me and few more people and this elegant lady with a Khushwant Singh in her hand, in a purplish blue chiffon sari and almost principle looking.

Very gracefully after fifteen minutes in air she closed the book, took off her fine platinum spectacles and put it in her hide purse in tan and asked me in a voice so low – ‘beta! How much more time would the flight take to reach Bombay’

I said ‘about an hour’ she then asked me my name and what did I do?

to which I replied ‘I am Nakul and had just done writing my class eleventh final exams’ replying she said that she was a PGT teacher at St. Xavier’s Bombay with chemistry as her subject.

‘Oh! My Gosh’ I thought

another set of questions! What if this graceful lady may put in her already continuing elegance of speach, as if the words were made just so that she was to phrase it in the sentences and talk to me at this point, with her lightly wrinkled lips dressed liberally with dark burgundy lipstick asking ‘which song are u listening’.

As the ear plugs were out and the sound was pouring or precisely speaking oscillating its way in all the directions. I replied then saying it was a Spanish song which she acknowledged by saying she liked its tune.

Just after a few minutes while the air hostess was serving us food a man spilled up his food making it messier with two more people incurring the result of the slip. They cleaned up with the help of the airhostesses, in a moment then there was a big noise at the left engine and we felt a thud and everyone’s eyes hooked up to their left windows from which we could see the left engine almost blown up and blazing with fire.

There was havoc almost immediately and so the captain announced everyone to keep their cool and be seated at their seats and put on their seat belts and he would immediately think of a way out calling for help.

All the passengers sat and the airhostesses retreated to their seats. The pilot then announced it was a bird scare which got the left engine to blow up and continued saying he would have to take steps for an emergency landing of the flight, as soon as possible and at the safest place.

My heart was in my mouth now as was everyone else’s in this aircraft. People then started to take their own respective gods names; every noun of worship was now present in people’s heart now.  And a few minutes later now the plane started to turn left and almost immediately started to take left concentric circular turns at an interval of every minute.

Everyone inside the plane was scared to their heart biting their nails and every life inside was at the verge of their existence. The pilot then announced that we were above seven thousand meters above the sea level and he had planned to execute an emergency landing in a small district that has a wide national highway and both side of which housed green paddy fields.

He then added that he would try his best making it successfully onto the ground with complete assistance from the air force ground control and fire brigade which would be waiting for us.

This announcement again scared the people inside with me almost most thinking about the things undone in my life, my dreams, aspirations, my parents’ dreams everything might get shattered and to think about such an unfortunate thing took me to ride through hell, but then the graceful lady to my side was also frightened, but still she composed me.

Then said the man announcing over the landing procedure was his son, another sought of current ran through my spine of just imagining the thought of a mother being scared and an individual being scared.

There was another announcement to wear our life jackets now as the place was nearing the ground by the flight captain Arjun Arora and co-pilot Varun Mehra and tried to calm us by saying that the two pilots had been trained by the air force and had faced similar situation and would try their best handle this condition.

But this still could not console a life in the Boeing with everyone praying, holding hands.

Five thousand feet now from the ground I could almost see the ground from my window the roads, canals, trees and my reflection then. The plane still kept taking those unusual concentric circles the foremost reason for a silence, giving Goosebumps. Sun’s rays circling its way around the inside from the oval shaped windows, reflecting its way through the circular eyes and minds of the fellow passengers.

Two thousand feet now I could see the ground perfectly, the poised lady still composed, but then a drop of water fell on this lady’s lightly wrinkled hand from the almost perfectly chiseled face from an earlier time in universe damping her refined dark eye lashes.

Seven hundred feet now and every detail of the road was clearly visible. Vehicles still passing and the left wing was almost taken up by fire as though a wick of a candle.

Soon the pilot took the lead straightened the plane so it was parallel to the ground and pushed the plane down, making everyone breath for their last few times, but just then that moment the captain slammed the aircraft as hard as he could, making in on the road now.

All the passengers got a hit and were thrown up to a feet and again into their seats, everyone was hurt but still we were on the ground now with the plane still moving at speeds that only sound is permissive of using. 

Beside the plane there were two helicopters monitoring the complete landing and fire engine running with us.

The plane was still shuddering while running, but our hopes inside were very bright now. Another minute and then the plane started to slow down and finally when it was near the speed of the fire engines they started to pour jet of water, but no affect did it have on the fire.

The plane now after two more minutes finally came to halt and everyone was rushed out almost immediately. Getting out we saw this fierce flying machine badly ruptured and fire blazing its way onto its body now and the tyres were almost burnt, thanking god for this moment everyone wished each one, and then I bid the graceful lady and that girl (ending my attraction there).

We were given all the required medical attention and the people hurt most were immediately taken to hospital and we were escorted to a bus which would take us to Bombay.