Weaving Tapestries, Painting Pictures, Dreaming Dreams

The sun is beginning to set as we taxi on the runway. The fields besides the runway, some brown, some with signs of green are covered in frost, which belies the warm cosiness of the aircraft. The few bare branched trees lining the fields have surrendered to the elements, perhaps there is a lesson in there somewhere for man, who resists everything. We take off and are within seconds flying over a Prague hidden like a secret, in fog, and are soon above the clouds, which look warm in the dying rays of the sun. The sun throws light on our path from behind as we head off east to warmer climes. I wonder what kind of weather these clouds will bring to Prague, to the child I left behind. I hope she stays warm and safe. How hard each good bye is. I almost missed the flight, I could not stop hugging her, could not tear myself away and after I did we continued waving even after I crossed immigration, waving from behind the alternating transparent glass, perhaps thoughtfully placed for those who have to leave and those who have to stay behind. As I was halfway to the gate, I heard the announcement first in Czech and then in English, last call for Ms. ____, one more hug or a stop to buy some much needed hand cream would have resulted in being off boarded from the flight. The boarding took my mind off the parting as practical issues always do. The Qatar Airways person at the entrance took one look at my three bags and objected, I told him my huge Zara paper bag was only to carry my warm clothes as I would not need them later and the rest was a laptop bag and a small travel bag filled with crystal. He asked me if I could not remove the crystal from my travel bag and carry it in the Zara bag and put the travel bag in the luggage. Was he even for real, I was at the gate about to board and within minutes of take off, my luggage had long been stowed in the cargo section. For a minute I imagined the scenario, the plane and its passengers waiting till I emptied the offending bag with its crystal and send it to be stowed into the cargo hold, A further thought of the Zara paper bag tearing with the weight of the crystal on Doha airport and all the crystal breaking and getting further crushed under the feet of fellow passengers floated into my mind. This gentleman has clearly never transported crystal, or any kind of fragile item, for even after all the precautions I was concerned about its safety. What is this anyways Qatar Airways or Ryan Air?

In the aircraft things changed, Junaid, a very sweet flight attendant from Mumbai, carried my bags, a service I have only experienced earlier in Business class, they found me a seat by the window when I requested one and he settled my luggage carefully in the overhead bin. Seat belts, menu cards, head phones so much to take one’s mind off ones emotions but the sadness was there inside me, I could feel the heaviness in my heart. Its always been hard and gets harder each time, I looked out of the window to distract myself, we had passed the clouds and were flying over a snow covered Czechia. This was the first time I stayed for only 15 days, the first time I did not take a train or bus out of Prague. I am glad we finally went for the amazing Vietnamese coffee which my daughter loves, she was so happy and chirpy but I was so dull. I am glad I bought her the Persian cook book. I am glad we spent the last two days together. I am happy though, also guilty that she stayed home from Uni today and came to the airport to drop me. Each minute together is precious, sharing a hurried sandwich of the chicken I cooked last night or a glass of juice at the Ugo at the airport.  Perhaps we could have done something better than going to a mall on our last evening. I was groggy and dull from lack of sleep the night before, thoughts of the coming parting had begun to hurt and I tossed and turned all night. We will meet again soon. My beautiful, intellectual,  lovely child. How she enriches my existence. Please stay safe. Fervently I whisper prayers.

Just then I smell something burning, the smell is so strong that I call the attendant and tell her. the fear of a fire distracts me from my sad thoughts. Self preservation becomes the priority. After a while the attendant returns and says the pilots have checked everything, there is nothing amiss. She tells me that they can check the temperature in every part of the aircraft.
I relax and turn towards my neighbour, a youngish Czech man in the aisle seat. I love to talk to people everywhere, not just while travelling but also in taxis or queues or at bus stops. We are both comfortable with a seat between us. We start talking. He is going to Thailand and onwards to Cambodia. I tell him I always wanted to see Angkor Vat. He says he has been there three times. I remember it had been mined by the Khmer rouge. It has been cleared now. He tells me he has a business in Cambodia, my interest is piqued and I ask him about his business. He says he arranges trips to Cambodia. He tells me that he has travelled much and he has found  Cambodians to be the friendliest people. He does more  than that he buys produce from Cambodian farmers and imports it to Czechia, packages and sells it. He shows me a tube like bottle of pepper corns. He shares the profits with them and his company gives towards education and health care. What a great idea,. Soon food is served. We retire into silence, he to watch his movie and eat and I to only eat. Food is not bad as airline food goes. The chicken biryani is almost good and the black currant cheese cake is yummy but messy. It is stuck to the cover and I get it all over my hands. I wonder at the unknown hands that prepared it and where they are. I wonder at the ways this food has connected so many unknown people together. From the farmers to the traders, the purchasers, the flight kitchen staff the loading staff, this air hostess from India who served it so gracefully to so many more. If only we felt the connections, I hope we could always see the humanity behind everything, the effort, the sweat the trouble taken to give the best by unknown men and women in today’s time of import and export, where much of what is produced is for people living countries, continents or oceans away. Perhaps then there would be less hatred and killing. Imagine if you could pick up an apple or any fruit or vegetable and see in it the face of the farmer who grew it, his wife his family, his little children, his dreams. Imagine if you could see in that fruit or vegetable that travelled thousands of miles and changed many hands, the life story of every person whose hands had touched it, every farmer, labourer, vendor, customer. If each time we touched something we could see the life stories. The family, friends, joys, sorrows, hopes and dreams of all those whose hands had touched it before us how much empathy this world could have. Perhaps as we cannot we could try to imagine it and develop empathy
I also wish there was a way they could serve without so much packaging. Travel is wonderful but we travellers do tend to leave massive carbon footprints. One should try to minimise the wastage and consumption as much as possible or soon there will be no world to travel to, just garbage dumps. I look out while ruminating and there is the full moon in all its glory a little above the clouds. I have travelled with the full moon a couple of times before but never on a flight. Once we travelled to Saudi for Umra (Minor pilgrimage) on a bus. At one point in the night we drove through what seemed like 500 km of desert with just a solitary light appearing in the distance every now and then. The moon was full, bright and shining and appeared blue through the tinted windows. The journey was magical, the kind which one can experience only once in a blue moon. In the silence, as the passengers on the bus sIept oblivious to the outside, I wondered at the people who had chosen to live in such deep isolation. Lonely and solitary are very different things. Often one can be extremely lonely in the middle of a busy city surrounded by people but perhaps living alone away from civilisation, one could connect to a more meaningful presence or perhaps just touch base with oneself in the raw without all the conditioning. I don’t know, it sounds romantic but I would not like to do it. I need my human connections. The other time we had travelled during a full moon was from Pune to Nashik by car. The moon was bright and glorious and each time we went over one of the many bridges its reflection shone with equal intensity in the rivers below.
  Today I had asked for the window seat hoping for this sight. I just felt a little bad that I had missed it rising while I was busy eating but well here it was now. I thought the sea was gleaming below it then realised it was a sea of clouds gleaming much like a normal sea, how ethereal and beautiful. I immediately drew David, my fellow passenger’s attention to it. He asked me if it was a full moon. The moon looked full but it was full yesterday or the day before. It was talked about and photographed much, especially the lunar eclipse. It was called a blood wolf moon.  Yesterday my daughter and I watched it rising behind the Church of St. Ludmila at Námĕsti Miru. Later when we returned home we saw it high in the sky at JZP. We stood their for awhile in the bitter cold, admiring it. Time, how swiftly it passes and so much changes while so much remains the same. The stewardess comes to take away the dishes. I tell her the black current cheese cake was delicious. She tells me it is her favourite too and asks me if I would like some more. I am tempted but decline. I ask her where she is from and she says Tunisia. I ask her if she likes Qatar and she says yes she thinks it is the best country in the Gulf. She asks me where I am heading and I say Kuwait. She asks me how Kuwait is and if I like it and I say it is very nice and yes I like it very much. I ask her if she goes home often and she says when she has holidays. I tell her I had watched a documentary on Tunisia and it looked very interesting. She says Tunisia is a nice country. It has everything, desert, mountains, beaches. For those few minutes we connect, two strangers who will probably never meet again. In an exchange of a few words we have exchanged tiny bits of each other, I know a tiny bit about her and she a tiny bit about me and we will carry these bits with us in some corner of our memories till we walk on earth, though we may forget each others faces. Its been awhile since I began writing, the moon has been climbing higher and will soon disappear. I look down, there are few scattered clouds and below I can see mountains, some dark, some covered with snow and a few scattered tiny clumps of lights, where villages nestle on the hillsides. It is not really late and people are probably bustling around with their last chores before bed time but here in the darkened aircraft as all around me are shut away in their own fantasy world with their headphones on, concentrating on the tiny screens in front of them, it seems to be late in the night. I am wrapped in my own fantasy, a fantasy which connects my imagination to the scenes outside my window. The picture below of small villages in the darkened snow covered hillsides, gives me a feeling of deep peace. Perhaps it was a night like this that inspired the carol ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’. There is something about snow that gives one a feeling of peace, not only does it absorb sound but its white cloak gives a feeling of serenity. Now we are flying over what appears to be a big city. The lights so bright a glow is emanating and spreading upwards from them. I remember when street lights only lit the streets sufficiently for us to see the streets and we could look up and see a dark canopy filled with millions of stars. It is perhaps the rise of beastliness in human beings, as man preys on man that there is now a need for bright street lights, lights that shine so bright that they swallow up the beauty of a starry night. The Captain announces that we are beginning our descent to Doha. It has been a good flight. The moon has been a constant companion and the aircraft is extremely comfortable. The service and the staff were beyond excellent, serving us something or the other every few minutes and we are reaching 30 mins early.