You know, stuff.

It’s a recorded message in Telugu that breaks my nonchalant routine. It’s something the (wildly obvious) Punjabi aunty beside me barely registers, as does her bespectacled son, who’s still ravenously running through his KFC munch-box. The rest of the process, though, from the now almost always messed up safety instructions, to the pilot’s oft-practised “We’re fourth on the departure list and should be off the runway in ten minutes”, is in order and I put my newspaper down, put my head back and ready for another take-off, homeward bound.

The coffee on the plane isn’t as bad as the last time I decided to shell out twenty rupees for that favourite beverage being served like it is in those American movies by skirted waitresses. Most importantly, it keeps me up for that depressing fictionalised account of a family going through the ’71 Bangladesh war that was a gift from the British Library, Chandigarh, part of the eye-opening trip to the green-and-gold fields of Punjab that Mal and His Majesty had taken me to. Soon after the landing at Hyderabad, the pilot’s throaty rasp was upon us again, informing us that the remnants of the winter up north were inexistent back home- the mere mention of 36 degrees had my hands sweating their veins out. The landing at (an incredibly further Anglicised) Vizag was rougher, the temperature six degrees lesser but I swear I might have passed out on the walk from the plane to the arrivals terminal because of the humidity. Ah, that’s the city I know as home, alright. The car’s angel lights and air-conditioning were veritably heavenly, as were Ma’s healing hand and Big B’s choice of boom-blasting music.

All along though, I kept wondering: where the bloody hell do pilots get their ruddy accents from?

***

Sometime last year, my brother tried to teach me how to drive a car. My incompetence beat my impatience in an uneven encounter: he gave up in two days. With my father expressing his surprise that with a little over a year for college to end and me being impotent with anything that’s motorised and has gears (yes, I added gears for that very reason, dear nefarious imbeciles), Big B brought himself to teach me to get two wheels moving, instead.
But, as he remarked himself, I must be the first person ever to be learning how to ride a bike when the cat to be belled has a 220cc engine.

For those who haven’t learnt riding a motorcycle yet, here’s a heads-up: it’s quite an emasculating experience. Particularly ironic for a vehicle that prides itself on being definitely male. Every single time I screw up the “press clutch – don’t accelerate – now shift up a gear” routine, the malevolent male bike gives its master’s male parts a proper crushing. Even Big B runs out of sarcasm when I manage to continuously achieve the holy grail of the neutral gear when trying to shift from the second to third. Yep - neutral gear at 30kmph, the fastest I got today.

As I deliver my well-rehearsed “belief in the public transport system” bullshit, even my most optimistic believer avers “You’re so never having a girlfriend. And your wife will hate you.”

I gobble another oatmeal cookie and snuggle in Ma’s arms watching F.I.R. on SAB TV. And stuff.