Fiction
“Jet Airways
acknowledges the valuable support we received from passengers like you for over
25 years. We regret to inform you that this is our last flight as we are
suspending our services from tomorrow…”
Tony looked at
the passenger next to him to make sure whether he had a sense of humour. The
passenger’s belly that sat heavily on his lap led him to the assumption that he
must have a sense of humour. So he said turning to him, “Hope they won’t
suspend the service mid-air; may God save us.”
“What?” The
passenger woke up from some reverie. “Did they say ‘May God save us’? Means
there’s no hope?” And he laughed.
“Oh, no!” Tony
hoped that the airlines was secular. At least the hemlines of the skirts of the
airhostesses were secular, he had noticed. “They just said that their achhe din are coming to an end.”
“Hahaha,” the
passenger laughed and his belly danced in his lap. “Achhe din came to an end for everybody in India some five years
back, din’t they?” He laughed again. “By
the way, I’m very reverend father Ambrose Mendelus. Basically from Goa, but serving
in Mumbai and now flying to Delhi on duty.”
“I’m Tony
Joseph from Cochin.” Tony extended his open palm for a friendly shake hand but
the passenger took no notice. Tony was glad, however, that the woman passenger next to him had got
down in Mumbai and a male passenger came in her place on the Kochi-Delhi
flight, the last flight of Jet Airways. A historic journey, he thought. But the
woman was a typical Malayali with the feminist version of the Malayali
snobbery. “Just leave me alone,” she ordered the air-hostess at the first opportunity,
“and wake me up as we’re landing in Mumbai.”
Very reverend
father Ambrose Mendelus pushed his belly with his palm as he squeezed himself
into the middle seat which had been warmed by the Malayali feminist snobbery.
“It’s achhe din for cows,” Tony ventured. He
would be dodging the stray cows on the roads in Delhi from tomorrow onwards
while driving to his office and back.
“Oh cows, poor
devils,” Very reverend father Ambrose Mendelus said, “I miss beef steak with garlic.”
“Cows are like
our gods, not devils,” said Tony. “We use them for so many purposes.”
“Hahaha,
devils stand in need of greater versatility, you mean? Isn’t that why God
created us human beings?”
The plane
shuddered paroxysmally. “Is there god in an air pocket too?” asked Tony.
“God must be
there in the veins of the chicken whose neck you slit for your chicken tikka
masala.” He didn’t laugh.
“And in the
cabbage you chop up…”
“And in the
radish you chew down…”
“In the bread
we eat…”
“In the wine
we drink…”
“We are the
devils…”
“Consumers of
gods.”
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