Art in the Flights of Fantasy

Travelling has always been a passion for me.

As a child, I used to love clutching on to the handle bar of my Dad’s scooter looking around at the everyday life of Trivandrum, a verdant city in the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. As I grew up, the distances of my travels increased and Great Indian Railway trains became the mode of travel.  

Train journeys every vacation from Delhi to Kerala and back became an integral part of my life. These journeys which often lasted more than 54 hours were a test of patience, if not for my friends travelling on the same route or other fellow travellers who always made these journeys interesting and worth remembering.

As I metamorphosed into a professional from a college student, I almost stopped travelling by train, mainly owing to the fact that half of the holidays get spent in the train and I end up spending lesser time at my destination. That’s when Aeroplanes came to my rescue. The number of flights that I’ve been taking in the recent years can easily qualify me to all the frequent flyer memberships, but what use can collection of virtual numbers ‘reward’.

During our childhood days, whenever we used to take a flight, my brother and I would fight for the window seat. Eventually our parents found the magic solution for avoiding this combat- always ask for 2 window seats. Peace of mind while in the air was important to them too. Even now, I find myself rushing to the check in counters early with the hope that the attendant will ask me sheepishly “Would you like a window seat or an aisle, sir?” The answer to which goes unsaid.....

But many a times I find myself a victim of the ‘oh-so-tech-savvy-crowd’ who’d web check in or self check in into all the available window seats even before I could reach the counters at the crowded Delhi Airport. It is during those flights that I tend to get lost in thoughts, splashing through a kaleidoscope of memories. Sometimes I tend to document these intangible thoughts into sketches.

There is no better medium than a tissue napkin or a paper cup to doodle around aimlessly. The only tough part is parting it when the cabin attendents come over for cabin clearance. I guess it is the ephemeral nature of their existence that makes them so beautiful for me. So many of those impromptu sketches have disappeared, but of late I’ve started clicking them before I drop them into the waste bag.

Flying amongst the clouds gives me a rush of adrenalin. It fills my heart with a sense of joy and peace. No cellphones to ring. No calls to take. Completely detached from the worldly entanglements....it’s just me and my thoughts. Truly, taking a flight is therapeutic for me. It gives me time to think, to search for the loop holes in my life, ponder over dreams, visualise the moments I want to-the way I want to....Flights for me are times of Fantasy.