The agony of air travel

Jet lag is a wonderful thing. It gives you the perfect excuse to sleep at work.

“You slept through the meeting today”

“Sorry, jet lag”

“You said the same thing yesterday and the day before. When will you get over it ?”

“When will you stop having these meetings ?”


But to be honest, eighteen hours of flight travel is indeed taxing. Especially, when you travel on an airline that does not have a personal entertainment system instead they just have one monitor hung up in the aisle and play two crappy movies when everyone’s asleep. I am telling you, this airline is a glorified video coach bus. Not to mention the air hostesses, who I believe are retired hostel wardens, they have a perpetual scowl on their faces as if to say “You people in the economy class should be happy that you even have a seat”. Because, the economy class is the ghetto of the flying world where we are cooped up into tiny spaces and occasionally, an airhostess comes by to feed us with things that look like rejects from a construction site.

If you are wondering which airline this is, well, all I can say is “Ich kann nicht offen legen den Namen”

Having experienced this airline before, I was hoping that at least I will have interesting company which would make the travel seem less burdensome. And guess what !!, I was seated right in the middle row with two men to my right and one to my left. Who says God does not have a sense of humour ?

The second leg of my flight was marginally better, this plane did have individual monitors but the movie choices were just as bad as before. Not to mention, the row of seats across mine were occupied by grandparents with their twin grandchildren. The kids seemed to have gotten the idea that the louder they scream, the faster the plane would go. It was a marathon screaming affair, each one starting off when the other shut up. Try enduring that for eight hours and you will start wishing that you could listen to Himesh Reshammiya’s music instead....well almost.

Finally made it to Boston and have been battling bad food (and work) ever since. A couple more weeks and I will be back home. Hopefully, my return journey will be a lot more fun, hopefully the food will be a lot better and as long as I am hoping, may the seat next to mine be occupied by Sameera Reddy.