Today, I finally bid adieu to Bombay for at least 2 years. The carrier chosen for this ‘august’ (well, june didn’t really fit!) occasion when Bombay could finally rise from the sea by a couple of inches was the newly christened Air India, because our bags totally weighed 76 kgs and that was the only airline offering 30 kg per head allowance for check-in baggage. Their mascot may be the Maharaja, but the plane as well as the service within was anything but fit for one! Looks like most of the population realised it long before I did! When we sat in our seats, the arm rests quite literally sprang off! No problem…the service engineer simply taped it back. That done, the crew readied the plane for take-off. Rattling and groaning, the plane started taxiing down the runway. Suddenly, there was sharp metallic crack. Further visual inspection showed that the meal tray for the seat in front of mine had suddenly decided to open on its own! Thankfully, the plane was nearly empty and none of the 15 or so passengers was occupying that particular seat. Now, I don’t know whether the pilot decided to actually relieve his tension and swig a drink or too, but it certainly felt like he did so. On the bone-dry runway, the plane veered from left to right in a manner that made Bombay taxi drivers look like school kids in comparison! Believe me, veering from edge to edge on a runway at take-off speeds is NOT a very pleasant experience. If one thought that this would end once the plane was airborne, one was sadly mistaken. Throughout the climb, the plane banked from left to the right like there was no tomorrow!
Matters weren’t much better later on, as the monsoon ensured that the flight passed through extremely turbulent weather. The halt at Raipur, after bouncing twice off the runway during landing, was just about the most comfortable part of the journey. During the climb to cruising altitude on the Raipur-Bhubaneswar leg, one of the overhead lockers decided that it needed some fresh air and flipped open its lid! Thankfully, due to the abysmally low number of passengers on the flight, there was no luggage in that locker and no one was hurt. However, this time, the crew did not detect the anomaly and the locker was successful in its quest for fresh air for a good 20 minutes, before the snacks were served by the crew!
Thankfully, there were no more scary incidents apart from the slight skidding of the plane on the wet runway in Bhubaneswar. I am pretty tired after this whole ordeal, so I shall probably sleep for the rest of the day now. More later!
