It was an early morning flight where I didn’t have the luxury of a decent sleep the day before. Tiredness engulfed me with no sleeping space in the vicinity. I was looking for some decent stretch of land to surrender myself to it, and yet I had to rush to the final boarding call.
Once on board, I was trying hard to pull back my drooping eyelids. The plane started to move, and it kept moving for a long time as if it was reaching Chennai from Delhi only on Wheels. Enough is enough said my body and pushed me into deep trans making the rest of universe futile.
The sleep got more profound, and I assume I must have rem sleep when I heard some noises. The noises which started low became a lot louder and scarier. My tiredness and depth of sleep was no match to keep my eyes closed anymore to these noises, and yet I was in a coagulated mind, still coming in terms with reality.
The girls sitting next to me and the ones ahead of me were screaming big time. I was trying to comprehend the situation when the plane started to jerk and make noises. The aircraft shook more violently this time, and so did the noises. I realised that the flight was in some serious trouble.
My heart skipped a beat, and I realised I was in deep shit. In that instant, my mind started to realise that there is nothing that I could do, and I may die on that flight. The fear, the pain, the emotions which my mind and the body underwent in those fractions of seconds were something impossible to put down with my fingers. My entire life flashed before me, and I said to myself “Maybe it’s my day”.
What next?
Just nothing. Those girls screaming were on their maiden flight unable to witness the flight's take-off. To add to their agony the take-off was way too rustic. My tired mind was way too tired to see everything else other than these screaming girls and to feel the shaking plane.
But all said and done, the emotions I underwent were real, very real. It was enough for a feeble body to succumb to it. Once the flight got its traction and started to glide, a lot of thoughts began to rush out in my then paralysed brain.
How painful is fear and how fearful is death? There was nothing that could have been done other than praying the almighty despite one’s beliefs. After that incident, the first people whom I remembered were those 20 youngsters who had lost their lives on their adventure trip to Kurangini mountains in TamilNadu. They felt pray to the forest fire and that too way too slowly.
How tragic their death must be, lying on those burning rocks and yet alive awaiting their death for a whole day and a whole night. What could have been done to ease their pain if not their fate? Those souls were not ordinary, but the free ones who chartered an adventurous life’s path and yet destiny played a wrong guide that day. All said and done life has to move on, and so are their souls. All I wish is their souls to rest in peace; they have suffered enough already.
I always believe death is the greatest inspiration to live, and that has been the reason my books delve on that subject a bit more, a bit differently. After all, in life, death is real, but not the fear. Better allow it to inspire us to live more and extract joy from every bit of life.