26th Feb, 2010

We got up around 3 am in the morning and had tea. N finished his toilet thing but my metabolism failed me as it often does on various occasions. It’s a girl thing you know. I can’t be as comfortable with the idea of you know…it is slightly embarrassing. Now I am embarrassing the reader, especially if the reader is female. However, the male readers enjoy such things! Anyways, the enormous luggage was brought down and I expressed a non-verbal gratitude to the thirty-year old elevator! The task of getting an auto-rickshaw at 4: 45 am in the morning had to be done by N and he dutifully did so.

Mumbai, at 4: 45 a.m. looked beautiful. People were already up and working; the dudhwallahs, the newspaperwallahs, the wada-pav wallah, the taxi drivers, the auto-rickshaw drivers and the bus-drivers. The dudhwallah on his cycle, the newspaperwallah counting the no. of newspapers, the taxi-driver doing his puja, the bus-driver smoking; all looked happy and content and at peace with their lives. The whole scenario had a rustic beauty. And the congenital anxiety to catch up with the fast pace of the world that prevails in mumbaikars was probably asleep at this hour. I gently peeped out of the auto-rickshaw, closed my eyes and took in the Mumbai air.

We reached the airport and realized we were too early. The usual baggage screening, the check-in happened after which we filled the immigration form. We got our passports stamped and went in, had the security- check done and sat down wondering what to do with two and half hours on our hands. We ate something, went around the display of expensive stuff one by one. N was utterly disappointed with the airport since it did not have any newspaper.

Finally they announced the departure of our flight. Yes, it was on time!

The airplane was huge, bigger than the domestic one, with toilets downstairs. In a 12 hr long flight, unless it has been hijacked, nothing different from the regular breakfast, lunch, drinks, a bad movie, in-between naps can possibly happen. The sky and clouds looked great and the view of the city just before landing was marvelous.