A Kingdom, Far Far Away.

It was Far. 10,000 miles to be precise. For someone who is used to stepping into buses and trains after they start, I was at the airport 5 hours before my flight’s departure to India. After dilly dallying, checking out the shops with expensive goods, I was in for a shock. My flight was delayed because of mechanical problems and the airline staff didn’t know when it would begin. So, I waited. I emptied the charge on my laptop, talked to all the friends I could remember, and even at the end of it, the flight was still not ready for takeoff. So I looked around, went to all the terminals at IAH and after 7 long hours, I finally boarded the plane. The seats were fine, but I had two babies in my row. As soon as the flight took off, they entered into a crying competition. One kid had a deep, growling cry tone, and the other had a screeching, sine wave kind of a cry tone. I got some earplugs for myself and was able to  out of the competition.

When the flight finally landed in Dubai, my connection flight to Hyderabad was long gone. A gentleman from Emirates directed us to follow him into a room. As soon as he said that, he took off and everybody entered into a running race to be as close as possible to him. He went into a big room, took a microphone, and told us to stay calm as most of us were rebooked on different flights. People with different destinations were instructed to move to different parts of the room. I went to the Hyderabad section and stood in a line for my turn. I reached the lady who was distributing new boarding passes. When I gave her my name, she looked through her bunch, put on a sympathetic expression and told me that she didn’t have one for me. She then directed me to go and stand in a line in a different hall, where a ticketing agent would be able to help me out. At the new line, there were lots of passengers whose flights weren’t rebooked yet. I took comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one left back. Here, I saw people come up with a variety of stories when they weren’t happy with the connecting flights given to them. One couple said their kid was in urgent need of medication, and that if they couldn’t get to India in time, their kid’s health was in grave danger. A gentleman wanted a ticket back to Houston and vouched that he would never fly Emirates again. Another lady with a kid said she wasn’t going to stay overnight in Dubai because Dubai had mafia and it was dangerous for her and her kid!

A while later, I moved closer to the desk in my line and bored of the wait, I made small talk with an elderly person who was going to the western part of India. After sometime, an Emirates lady made an announcement that only people from the Houston flight were to stay where I was, and the rest need to move to a different room. After her announcement, she tried to catch the attention of a passenger who was in a queue beside me. He seemed lost and wasn’t looking at her, so I told him using a signal that the lady was trying to talk to him. After talking to the guy, the lady suspected me to be coming from a different flight, asked me if I was on the Houston flight, and when I said ‘yes’, she even rechecked the flight number with me. As soon as I was done with this conversation, the elderly gentleman gave me a piece of advice. He said, if I see someone in trouble, I shouldn’t poke into it immediately. I f I do such a thing, I would be getting myself into deeper trouble. So, the best thing would be to sit back and enjoy the ‘tamasha’. This shook me a little and I wanted to ask him if he had learnt nothing in the few years that he spent in America. But then, I was too tired to give him a lecture. I nodded my head and moved ahead.

I finally got a boarding pass for a flight to Hyderabad which was about to leave in 15 min! So, I ran down the hall, hurried through security, ran up the stairs and through the long straight hallway until I reached my gate. There, I checked with an Arab girl, if I could still board the flight and if my luggage was on the same flight. When she said ‘yes’ to both, I put my hand up and said ‘high five’! She looked at me confusingly, and with some restraint, gave me a low five instead. I tried to curb my sudden rush of enthusiasm, and moved slowly through the gate and into a bus that was waiting for passengers. I sat down, and another passenger got into the bus and sat beside me. We struck a conversation and I asked him what he did in Dubai. He told me he was a welder who worked in the construction industry. We talked for a while about welding. I told him about my spot welding experience at TATA Motors and he told me about the arc welding that he does. Once the bus was full, it inched forward. After a 15 min ride, we reached our flight. I commented that it was a long ride, and my welder friend told me that Dubai airport was the largest in the world and the Hyderabad airport was the second largest! I didn’t know how I would convince him that there was no way Hyderabad would figure in the top 25 airports of the world. So, I nodded once again and moved into the flight.

Surprise! Surprise! A Business class seat greeted me and I marveled at the reclining seats that were a million times better than the ones in the economy class. I sat back, pardoning Emirates for all the delay they put me through. The couple beside me also seemed to be first timers in the Business class and even they were in awe of the seats. Hyderabad was just three hours away and I couldn’t wait to get down. An air hostess arrived and I ordered a vegetarian meal. The passenger beside me ordered the same and I sat down to finish ‘The Social Network’ movie that I left midway in my flight to Dubai. After a while, the hostess arrived with our food. I took mine, and when she was about to place the food on my co-passenger’s tray, he said ‘I want the non-vegetarian meal’. The hostess, with a hint of complain in her voice said that he ordered for a vegetarian meal and the man responded bluntly that he wanted a non-vegetarian meal. I was surprised at the lack of courtesy the man had for the hostess and didn’t know what to make of it. After a while, I moved on from the topic and enjoyed a nice sleep in my comfy seats. When we were woken up for the landing, I sat back and enjoyed the view from the window with the song ‘Yeh jo des hain tera’ from Swades playing at the back of my head. I smiled at myself for the patriotism the song built up in my heart and I thought if I’d ever do something similar to what Shahrukh Khan did in the movie, or atleast, find a girl as beautiful as Gayatri Joshi. A short while later, the flight landed and I was on Indian soil after two and a half years. I met my Family and a Home that was Far Far Away, was all around me once again.