Learning to Fly

The Bombay International Airport (commonly referred to as Sahar Airport and officially known as Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport) has to be the most depressing place in the world. It’s big and monolithic, a bit fortlike in appearance, has very few doors and it’s always night there. That last bit actually doesn’t make much sense, but it pretty much only works at night because almost all the flights in and out are at night. But I digress.

I’ve never been inside the airport, having never left the country, but I’ve been outside it a million times and it’s the same story every time. Some friend or the other is off to another country to make a new life for him/herself. Someone’s going to study, someone to work, some idiot’s been transferred to a high-paying job in New York, someone’s got a scholarship to ol’ blighty or the big apple or wherever, but they’re all always leaving. It happened after the 12th, and after college, and every year in between. It’s happening this year and I rather suspect it’ll keep happening until the day I enter the doors of the airport and do it myself. Except then there’ll be no one left to say goodbye to.

They all do it so bloody casually too. You’re sitting in a bar, same as usual, and hey – next thing you know your beer buddy’s off for Australia. Or Germany. Or the UK. A whole bunch off them off to the States.

The same old story.

Some years it’s worse than others. Just when you think everyone who could possibly have left has left, a new wave starts. Friends from Poona start leaving. Then from Hyderabad, from Delhi and from Calcutta and Chennai.

What do we do then, those few of us who have no ambitions to earn foreign degrees or dollars? Those of us who would like to see the world one day, but can’t just yet. Do we feel sorry for ourselves? Of course not!

We have all these great farewell parties to go to. Surprise! You’re leaving and we’re here to get drunk and talk about what a great guy you were, just like you’re already dead. Sometimes they cry. Sniff sniff into their leather jackets. Sometimes their significant others cry. They cuts cakes and get pally with people they used to hate and sit late into the night trading stories, making promises they know will be broken.

Then there are memories. Oh yeah, that corner at the ghetto and that bench in the park and that table at Janata and that road and that bookshop and that cow and that goddamn coffeeshop you’ve always hated.

Little deaths. Dying friendships, dying relationships, things you know will never be the same, but for – old times’ sake? – everyone humours everyone else and some of them go home and cry into their pillows and some go home and pass out from all the drinking.

What does it all mean? It means you’re sitting around on a Saturday night and feel like a beer and you go through your phone book and there’s no one there.

~ Leo Mirani

Somebody I know posted this in his column on Tehelka.com.
So expresses my state of mind right now.

Sigh.