Hello All…
Gloomy skies darkened up the mood last Sunday morning…I got up from bed and went to have a dekko at the visible world from my balcony… I felt listless…I am usually perked up on Sunday mornings, because after breakfast, I go out to buy my weekly quota of magazines and especially, The Sunday Express… The Hindu, The Times of India, and Deccan Chronicle are home-delivered by my regular newspaper-person on Sundays…I buy Outlook, India Today and The Week from the newsstand every week…
My keenness to go out was thwarted by a steady drizzle…I had to wait till the drizzling stopped…it was already nearing 11 AM…the drizzle god/goddess showed some mercy and decided to withdraw from the scene slightly after 11…I set out on my Sunday exercise also armed with a list of general things to be bought for the home…the only one shop in the area that stocks The Indian Express was closed… first disappointment…India Today hadn’t come to this corner of Hyderabad yet…I had devoured the other three newspapers already…Outlook, I went through it on Saturday itself…only The Week remained to be read…the black mood intensified…Sundays without The Sunday Express is like curd rice without pickles (!!!)…I compensated temporarily by indulging in some retail therapy to uplift my mood…bought all the items on the list and trudged flatwards…and to add to my increasingly blackening mood, the rains came back…irritating drizzles and then in heavier doses…I didn’t feel like stopping anywhere to let the rains cease and reached my flat upper-part-ially drenched…it was around 12 noon and something was missing…I sat down for lunch around 1.30 and then I heard this loud whirring outside…I looked at Shruti…she said, ‘It’s a helicopter not an aeroplane’… the penny dropped … yes, it was the sound of a helicopter…and what I was missing all along was the sounds of the aeroplanes over our apartment block…it was real…the airport had shifted…the previous midnight…
Shruti was to leave for England to present a paper at a conference of the British Dyslexia Association and she was to leave on the 26th… we were apprehensive…the new airport would be operational by then… there was rumours of postponement of operations…we believed desperately in the rumours…Shruti and I, both wanted her to take the flight from Begumpet airport… the new airport was inaugurated a few days back and when we read in papers that it would take some more time for the new airport to be ready…we were silently elated…then, a couple of days later it was announced that the new airport would indeed start operations from the 22nd midnight…our apprehensions returned…it would no longer be Begumpet airport…
I am not a frequent flyer (flier?), in fact, I dread travelling by aeroplanes…I have travelled three or four times and I discovered each time that I loved ‘terra firma’ better…the firmer it is, the lesser the terror (I read this pun somewhere) … my balcony in our new flat is placed in a straight line to Begumpet airport (quite a distance away though) and I have whiled away many minutes just watching aeroplanes take off and land…and in the nights, after dinner…there would be this constant procession of aeroplanes landing and taking off and some of the flight paths were just above our apartment building and the flying machines would roar overhead on their way… sometimes there would be three aeroplanes flying in the sky at the same time…one coming down to land…one that had taken off a couple of minutes ago…and another that had taken off quite some time ago, but still in the airspace in the distance winging its way to its destination…it was a fascinating sight…I miss the sights and sounds of these flying machines…I realised this suddenly last Sunday…and the sound of the helicopter brought home this reality that Begumpet will no longer play host to these aeroplanes anymore…the reality hit home slightly more powerfully when I saw a photo in the newspaper of the deserted façade of Begumpet airport and the entrance area being used to play cricket by the now jobless unskilled labour force…
Begumpet airport…we love you… Shamsabad is a long way off…
Jayasrinivasa Rao
1 comment:
This was so lyrical Jaya. Just you and the big birds - Congrats to Shruti on her England trip!
Hey hey, I too am on the flight path where I live at Sheikh Sarai II, New Delhi. These birds come in low and if I see the red underbelly at 8-ish in the morning I assume it is the 6.30 GoAir flight from Goa. I've taken it on a couple of occasions so it is ok to feel homesick.
I remember when I came into my 'barsati' on the terrace almost a decade back I promised I would leave by the end of the week. The sound of the planes coming in to land at IGI drove me nuts! Ah well . . .
Sometimes on lonely nights I actually wait for them, the sound and fury, to signify someone else awake besides me.
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