a little time back i was traveling from ranchi to delhi. i was in the ranchi airport waiting for my air deccan flight. suddenly there was a commotion, the source of which turned out to be a group of politicians. there was laloo prasad yadav, pratibha patil and jayanti natarajan. the able railway minister does look a bit amusing and everybody was craning their necks to catch a glimpse of 'lalooji'. it was my chance to see the possible next president (now simply the president). pratibha patil and jayanti natarajan caught a special flight to god knows where and laloo got onto our flight!!
imagine the union railway minister flying and that too not on the state carrier! the first two rows on either side of the aircraft were reserved for laloo and his group. whether or not it was the effect of the railway minister the pilot was in an expansive mood, constantly pointing out places on the ground and at one point of time asking us all to look at the silver lining of a cloud just before sunset.
there were some beautiful vistas, the sunlight filtering through the clouds and giving them a fiery glow. it would have been better had i got the window seat (i was able to manage an aisle seat only, damn deccan's free seating)
the beautiful sights visible form one side of the coin. the other and somewhat ugly side is the turbulence part. on a previous trip i was coming back from delhi to kolkata. it was raining heavily in kolkata that day with very strong gusts of wind. the plane was coming in for a landing when it suddenly took off again, it must have been only a couple of metres above the runway. it tried landing one more time before going for a pretty wide circle touching jamshedpur at one point and the sea on another (the kingfisher flight had a map of the plane's path). i was sitting in the middle seat. the guy on my right could not take the wild motion and promptly puked. the guy on my left held his seat tightly, closed his eyes shut (and was most probably praying). it was a relieved group that got off the plane, one hour past the scheduled arrival time.
moving on, recently i got hold of a harry potter and the deathly hallows ebook on the net. it was only 281 pages long but i read it anyway. it had sidney sheldonesque portion which was kind of shocking in a children's book. the story stopped abruptly at the end of the 281st page. i got hold of another version with 659 pages. i spent 3 days reading it and then found out it was not the original. my reaction? groan, groan, groan!! i felt like strangling whoever had written this. a lot of effort must have gone in, still.... it was similar to the synopsis i read in some respects but was not the original. there has been a newspaper report of children reading the book beginning from the back, being unable to suppress their anxiety about harry's fate. god save this world!!
imagine the union railway minister flying and that too not on the state carrier! the first two rows on either side of the aircraft were reserved for laloo and his group. whether or not it was the effect of the railway minister the pilot was in an expansive mood, constantly pointing out places on the ground and at one point of time asking us all to look at the silver lining of a cloud just before sunset.
there were some beautiful vistas, the sunlight filtering through the clouds and giving them a fiery glow. it would have been better had i got the window seat (i was able to manage an aisle seat only, damn deccan's free seating)
the beautiful sights visible form one side of the coin. the other and somewhat ugly side is the turbulence part. on a previous trip i was coming back from delhi to kolkata. it was raining heavily in kolkata that day with very strong gusts of wind. the plane was coming in for a landing when it suddenly took off again, it must have been only a couple of metres above the runway. it tried landing one more time before going for a pretty wide circle touching jamshedpur at one point and the sea on another (the kingfisher flight had a map of the plane's path). i was sitting in the middle seat. the guy on my right could not take the wild motion and promptly puked. the guy on my left held his seat tightly, closed his eyes shut (and was most probably praying). it was a relieved group that got off the plane, one hour past the scheduled arrival time.
moving on, recently i got hold of a harry potter and the deathly hallows ebook on the net. it was only 281 pages long but i read it anyway. it had sidney sheldonesque portion which was kind of shocking in a children's book. the story stopped abruptly at the end of the 281st page. i got hold of another version with 659 pages. i spent 3 days reading it and then found out it was not the original. my reaction? groan, groan, groan!! i felt like strangling whoever had written this. a lot of effort must have gone in, still.... it was similar to the synopsis i read in some respects but was not the original. there has been a newspaper report of children reading the book beginning from the back, being unable to suppress their anxiety about harry's fate. god save this world!!
