En Route to Paris with Jai

I simply cannot forget my Paris trip especially the flight journey with 17 other classmates of mine. We were supposed to do a two week project in France as part of our MBA curriculum. All of us assembled at the airport along with our parents/guardians who had come to see us off. There was this guy with us by name Jai, a typical innocent villager who was traveling in the flight for the first time. He was accompanied by his dad, mom, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, cousin, 2nd cousin, dad’s 2nd cousin and 22 others. In short, his whole village had come to see him off and the airport was so crowded that the authorities planned to put a House Full board outside which thoroughly confused the other flights set to land.

Jai was scared to death to travel in flight and at that time one of his relatives said “Yesterday I read in the newspaper that a flight was hijacked and all the passengers were held hostages!!” and Jai’s fear quadrupled. All 18 of us went inside to check in and the counters were so far off that I thought we need a chartered flight inside to reach our respective counters. Jai weighed over 250 pounds and his baggage weighed exactly double. He was asked to remove all unwanted stuff and he had no other option but to let go off the pressure cooker, food processor, 10 pounds of rice, and mini refrigerator filled with toffees.

After all the formalities, we were inside the flight and unfortunately my seat was next to Jai’s. He was so big that even Bill Gates would become poor paying for his liposuction. He found it very difficult to wear his seat belt in spite of being a green belt in Six Sigma. The flight attendant had to rope in 3 more meters of belt to fir Jai inside. Jai was praying sincerely that his journey should be safe and sound. He was not sure if it would be safe but it was definitely sound. A 3 year old baby boy cried at his full pitch which synchronized with the ignition sound. After a couple of minutes that boy was pacified by his mom and stopped crying yet I kept hearing crying sound. That was our big man crying sitting next to me and praying at the same time. Just then, we heard an announcement from the captain “WELCOME ON BOARD LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!! THANK YOU FOR FLYING XYZ AIRLINES AND IT IS A GREAT PLEASURE TO HAVE YOU HERE. OH MY GOD”. Silence followed for about 5 minutes and all the passenger’s hearts were in their mouths. The announcement continued “I AM SORRY, WHEN I WAS TALKING TO ALL OF YOU THE ATTENDANT SPILLED SOME COFFEE ON MY TROUSERS. HA HA HA. NOW YOU SHOULD LOOK AT THE FRONT OF MY TROUSERS”. I was telling myself, “Now you should look at the back of Jai’s trousers!!”

Jai suddenly got excited and called me to tell that his great grand father once told him that people will look like ants when you are in flight and how true it was. I blamed my destiny for sitting next to him and told him that they are actual ants and we haven’t taken off and still in runway. Finally, the flight took off and within few minutes we were 35000 feet above the sea level. By that time Jai was also out of the fear and was enjoying his journey. He wanted to start off with his obsession, passion, fascination, ambition – EATING. He kept calling the flight attendant so many times and the ring of the bell that calls the attendant was so frequent that it reminded of a telephone ring. He had breakfast, lunch, dinner and evening snacks together at the same time as an appetizer. Then Jai started off with his second obsession, passion, fascination, ambition – SLEEPING. I thought I would be relieved of all his troubles while he sleeps. But the kind of person he is, he didn’t let me be in peace by his Electric Motor Simulated SNORING. He snored so much that the pilot thought there was some problem with the engine and double checked before continuing. All the passengers in the flight except Jai forgot the meaning of sleeping. Finally we reached Paris and all of us were ready to get out of the flight and Jai was still sleeping. All of us including the pilot were trying to wake Jai up and he wouldn’t budge. Then we almost emptied the Pacific Ocean by throwing liters and liters of water on him and he woke up and asked “IS IT RAINING? I FELT FEW DROPS FALLING ON ME”. I simply pitied the condition of the French people who were going to undergo the after effects of a massive virus entry into their Homeland. I got to find out after reaching Paris that the entire crew of our flight resigned after landing.