Lady Oracle - 30 May 2008

Written On the Air Canada Flight from Montreal to Vancouver...
... Between snacking up on the sandwiches made of pate, salsa and green coriander chutney; I peep out of my window and find myself in flight... nestled in my window seat 20K on AC 195, I am, next to the right wing of the airplane; looking out at the vast uneven blanket of white below wherein lies the world that breathes...
My newfound fascination for tomato juice may be as short-lived as this five-and-a-half hour flight; but I relished each sip I took, holding the thick liquid in my mouth, wetting my dry lips and finally taking it in.. in one single gulp!
Looking out...at times the white parts reveal the terrain below which reminds me of the relief maps we used in school.
This urge for picking a pen has never been so sudden and desperate as it is right now when I am on my way to one of the most beautiful places in the world...
Long nails, longer than they've ever been, and a careless self indulgent languor I carry with me...
What impression did I leave on the Chinese-Canadian air hostess doesn't bother me at all, as long as I am supplied with my next glass of tomato juice...If I tell people who "supposedly" know me, however rare that may be, they wouldn't believe that it was plain tomato, not spiked that I was tripping on... just as well for the lot!
Oh! How I wish this plane journey never ends for me. My second flight; after the Delhi-Heathrow-Montreal one... I don't call it London since it was only Heathrow I saw; and I am already loving the heavens above...
It is the sense of space...the uninterrupted vast sheet of pure white with little kids playing hide and seek in it so wherever there is a child hiding below the sheet, it swells up into the shape of a cloud... the silence, the liquid gold sunlight kissing the white leaving it with an ethereal glow that may be also a sight on a snow covered land mass.. but not so cosy, not so beyond reach..not so surreal...I can feel the plane descending; the slow drop off into another altitude as if the base below shifts and makes way for another hand to hold us with, a cushion to rest upon...
This is the farthest I've been from home; the west coast of Canada...alone again... Montreal was becoming a familiar place, usual...I started enjoying!... Here, I am going with rose-petaled eyes...
May be I will see the Canadian Rockies soon...this time my trip has no list, there was a plan which I dropped...only instinct and desire...a wishlist... Is a wishlist part of a plan??? and what about the hope that the golden sunlight brings in its wake? I am hopelessly hopeful...will always be!...that is what kills, turns deeper into me like a knife..hurts...causes pain...
Human nature is the same the world over...Be it something that Rachel and I shared over gtalk/ salad or Kathleen and I muddled about over the pint of beer made like the ones in the British raj days...the true essentialism is the emotion.. whatever that means...The girl at the Montreal airport lounge A3, who kept crying since she was afraid that her mother suffering from some terminal illness may not even last the duration of this flight, doesn't even know that this stranger from another time and place empathised exactly how much when she gave her a tissue to wipe her tears...As an afterthought, I wish I had hugged her instead, may be for my sake...and said exactly what I once wanted to hear about bidding goodbyes.. but it may not have made sense at that moment for her...for me... She had to live it on her own to find out what she needed to know...human emotions may be the same, but our ways of expression are different, exclusive in display, excruciatingly detailed at times...oh, heck! the plane is turbulent...we are in an air pocket... (Montreal time : 21:10)
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Flying into the sun...it feels, chasing one sunset after another... East to West...my journey has been towards hope again :)

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(Montreal time: 22:30) - Flying over the Rockies...nostalgic about the Himalayas... clouds hanging over the mountains like tasteless, lifeless white candy-floss...like a six point snow flake...a meandering river making way...plane turbulence again....