The flight back home…

I started documenting my trip here and inspite of nobody  reading it, I’ve come to the final post of my 2013 Eurotrip. And there is only one way to describe it, like warm sunshine spilling over my being, shrouding everything in a warm hazy glow. Like Gene Kelley says, ‘There’s a smile on my face for the whole human race, why it’s almost like being in love.’ That perfectly sums up my three months roaming with the siblings in Geneva, France and Germany.. You know how a book can take you to faraway places… that’s what I’ve been doing since I fell in love with the written word. Now to finally discover the world beyond books and pictures is nothing short of incredible.  

In a way the special school was like this too, those years are always shrouded in warm hues of sunshine. It was great being with those kids, every day in school was an adventure… I used to wake up thinking what is going to happen today, it was that exciting. I should visit the school and hang out with all those angels, when I go home for the holidays.  

Anyway, getting back to the last day of my trip, I didn’t want to leave my brother’s place… but that’s not the way life works. So you console yourself, get on that flight and then your only worry is reaching your destination in one piece. On the flight from Geneva to Abu Dhabi, I had a headache which was threatening to explode so I asked one of the flight attendants for panadol, and after that I was asleep most of the journey. Then in Abu Dhabi after buying the customary duty free alcohol and chocolates, I boarded the cramped flight to Madras. I was in the middle seat, a guy from Bern was beside me and he turned out to be very entertaining. Just after take off, I started scrolling through the movie list and came across Superman and decided to watch that cause Anju was telling us about Henry Cavill and how hot he is. And after seeing him, all I could think was wow! he really scorched through his scenes. So anyway, there I am almost ready to fall in love with Henry, when the Swiss guy decides to start talking. And I’m not one to talk with strangers, I mean since we can remember, that has been one of the basic rules stuffed down our ears… don’t talk to strangers. So I just listen, smile and nod to what he says… but then the conversations become interesting, and I let down my guard. After that it was quite fun, conversing with a total stranger for four hours nonstop, I didn’t even know that we had landed, it was that engaging. This was in November 2013 and it was his first trip to Madras, he was here to watch the chess tournament. He is quite passionate about the game and he predicted that Carlsen would win, though he had a lot of respect for Aaa -nah-ndh (took me a few seconds to figure out that he was talking about Vishwanath Anand). So after establishing the basic stuff about why he was travelling and what I was doing, the food arrived and as usual I put a sign of the cross, said a prayer before meals in my head, and that’s when I heard him laughing and saw him shaking his head. So I was like, what’s so funny… and he’s like, you praying, and that started us off on another conversation about religion, God and our beliefs. It was so random… it was nice, we spoke about books, literature and how the German spoken in Bern sounds harsh and explosive compared to the soft flowing rhythmic French of  Geneva.

So as it turns out, the journey back was quite nice… even the air hostesses were fun. I traveled by Etihad airlines and before the flight took off, they played the Etihad airline ad about beautiful people. The air hostesses were so chilled out, they were pointing at each other and singing the chorus, laughing and having a great time. All in all, it was a fun trip back… I seem to be meeting angels everywhere I go. 

In case you would like to read the different posts in this Eurotrip series :