25 March 2014

How to become a celebrity on-board.

No wailing babies.
No love-drunk honeymooners.
No hippies.
No loud sardarji families.
No first-timers jostling for the window seat, taking selfies faster than you could say ‘seatbelt’.
Moreover, I was occupying the spacious aisle seat, meaning I had one less Armrest Nazi to deal with.

Yes, for the first time in what seemed like years, I had a decent flight co-habitat.
My immediate co-passengers were all sane uncles and aunties, minding their own business.
I popped in my earphones and time flew past.

                                                           ***

I never knew when I fell asleep.
It must be the lab manual that I was trying to study that acted as the lullaby. (Not a nerd, I had a lab test the next day!)

The next thing I hear is high-pitched screaming.
And my scalp is scalding, as if on fire.

Now someone is screaming “FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!”

Is this a dream?

Oh wait. The screaming is coming from my own throat.

Hot boiling coffee has been poured over the posterior side of my head, trickling to my shoulders and to my back. 

The air hostess is gesticulating madly, shoving tissues in my face, with an insufficiently apologetic look on her pancaked and now panicked face.

I snap back to reality.
“Ice! Ice!” I scream.
All eyes in the flight trail me. I’m taken right to the front, to the washrooms, and now water is poured all over my head.

My 600/- haircut and styling has gone all down the drain. Curls which perked into curvy smiles are now a droopy floppy mess.

The pancaked stewardess and assailant to my peace starts to apply ice and is now blaming the passengers for moving around too much. Then she shows me her finger and says, “Mera bhi jal gaya” That comment gets me hot-headed, and I wanted to show her the finger.  

Then an air host with perfectly threaded eyebrows, like a Geisha's almost, reaches out for cream and the hostess starts to apply it on my shoulders.
                                           I swear to God I think I saw a trace of lipstick on him too.

"Oh! See!" Pancake Lady points out to Geisha Eyebrow Man and says, 
“You must have played Holi na, it’s all red.”

Me: “No, I just got burned. I do NOT play Holi.”

Pancake Lady:“No, no. It’s coming off.”

A moment of silence.
For Common Sense, who just died, buried himself six feet under and then started rolling madly in his grave.

Then the Eyebrow Man asks me if I was traveling alone.
I whimper a yes.
“Traveling alone!?!” they say in unison and horror, making me feel like an abandoned child.
“How old are you?” he says.
“Twenty”, I say, already aware of the response.
If their jaws dropped more, we would have already landed and alighted from this doomed flight.


After resolving their mock concern, my back and head feeling like a volcano, I start walking back. All sympathetic eyes bore into me.
I sit down awkwardly with the ice on my head. The uncle on my right smiles at me and
says, “Beta, abhi toh aap akele ho. Agar koi bada hota toh itna hata-pai hoti ki jahaaz yahi utaarna padta”, pointing downwards. 
As any good girl would do, I nod in agreement. 
“Par, beta. E-mail complaint zaroor karna. Air hostess ka naam dekh lo aur complain karo”, gesturing typing movements with his fingers.

Then he asks me what I do in Goa. I tell him I study there.
He says, “School?”
Two heads of another Uncle and Aunty peer out from his side to look at me.
“No, College. BITS Goa.”
“College!?” All three say in chorus. 

(Seriously. Do people have these dialogues practiced? It’s like a well-rehearsed musical I’m sick of hearing.)

“Third Year”, I add with a flourish, for dramatic effect.

The agitation among aunties and uncles spreads like wildfire. 
Soon they’re coming from far and beyond, unleashing their dormant welled up mamta, for this abandoned kid who is clearly lying about her age and is traveling alone to the Sin State of India. And who also says ‘Fuck' out loud.
Excellent impression.

Soon an announcement is made, “We’re looking for a doctor on board, an emergency at hand.”
The first one to turn up is a dentist, who is dismissed before I could ask for free cleaning.
The second lady, says I’ll be fine and it’s a first degree burn which should go soon. (Boo you Lady. My scalp still has speed-breaker blisters)

Then, the Aunty sitting next to the Uncle to my left across the aisle switches seats with her husband. Just to pacify me. She tells me how I’m like her daughter and helps me in putting ice on my head. 
That’s one thing about India, the Aunties. Why I capitalize Aunties is because it's a different species altogether. 
So loving and kind, affection oozing out at the slightest triggers, their emotional vents are always turbulent in nature.
Then she tells me how it could have been worse. Had the coffee fell on my face.
(I've never understood this logic, reasoning yourself with ‘Could have been worse’ logic. Why reach stage ‘bad’ in the first place?)

Then it turned out she lived in the same area as I did back in Delhi. In no time, she’s holding my hand and we’re talking like old friends.
As the plane touches the tarmac, I instantly reach for my phone to rant to my mother about the eventful twist that my life had taken, the Uncle says, “Mummy ko mat call karo. Kaho ki plane mein hi ek Ma milgayi.”
I smile politely and dial anyway.

Now Geisha Eyebrow Man comes and takes away my hand-baggage to the front. I stand there awkwardly, waving each passenger goodbye accompanied with a pursed “I’m fine.”

Now I follow this official looking man with a walkie-talkie in his hand and a porter who is carrying my luggage.
As I pass by the conveyor belt, an enthusiastic kid tugs at his father’s pants and points at me and goes, “Papa! Papa! Yeh to wohi Didi hai na!”




I halfway reach for a pen to sign an autograph but sadly he doesn't ask for one.

I also take the Spicejet Complaint E-mail ID and have now sent a gazillion mails with only one telephonic response, wherein they just said sorry and the customary “We’ll look into the matter”
To which I boldly threatened to file a complaint in the consumer court for their negligence and utter disrespect for not even offering freebies.
I mean they could have done a post-Holi Balam Pichkari number to cheer me up! Considering how the whole Spicejet crew loves dancing mid-air!
Objectively speaking they should just reimburse the flight money.

Instead all I have are free concave blisters scattered like constellations on my scalp. I’m just wondering if they could act as external memory storage devices, if they last that is, before the upcoming test.

Here's me signing off, to future paranoid and sleepless-unblinking plane journeys with me stuck against the window seat holding onto dear life. 

Never an aisle again! And never Spicejet either!


I am labeling this post as 'hot coffee poured by Spicejet air hostess' just so I get my due justice. Join me in my struggle for my Right To Safety encroachment and share this post. 
*wipes tears Aamir Khan-Satyamev Jayate style*



Seriously. If someone gave me 1 Crore per post, I'd  definitely cry better.












6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. This is a rreally nice one :) *claps* I hope ur blisters have cooled down aswell.plus I expected spicejet to come up with spending atleast after the whole holi drama.:p

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    2. Thank you so much!
      Well, they aren't getting my holy blessings now. :D

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  2. Hey, its really good. Though sorry about your curls. It really is very sad. :(
    But anyhoo, I loved it. All the melodramatic comments. Best ever♡

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    1. Sweetheart, thanks a ton!
      You care about hair more than my scalp, you sound just like Prashansa. :P

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  3. Haha, it was so funny. Pancake face, exact words I mouth when I see them on flight. But then, Geisha Eyebrow Man, the finger, the bedazzled kid, Change.org-esque ending lines, that funny bone is tingling. :D No QQ for the character though, one who can go from ouch-that-hurts to atleast-gimme-a-Bollywood-number needs none. :P

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