One of my rituals is doing a 16- to 20-hour flight each way once a year. Every time, I have a firm list of what I would do to spend those hours productively:
• Read the books queuing up in my kindle one by one
• Listen to audio books patiently waiting their turn
• Sleep between reading
• Plan my life
• Reflect on what my life has become
However, the saying that life rarely goes according to plan never rings more true than in my air journey. Each year, the books in my kindle are left unread and the audio books left unlistened to. At the other end of the journey, I always stagger out of the airport like a zombie because I haven’t slept a wink for the last 20 hours or so.
This year was no different. As soon as I had settled in my seat, I spent the first hour of the flight gleefully celebrating the fact that there was no one sitting next to me. Then I took off my shoes and I spent the next hour making myself comfortable being sure to take advantage of the extra space. Picking up the extra cushion from the next seat, I put it behind my back along with the one I found on my own seat. Two cushions are better than one, I thought. I also made good use of the extra blanket. I threw it over my ears while keeping my own blanket on my seat over my legs. Once I was satisfied with the arrangement, I put the seatbelt on and put all my possessions on my lap: my handbag, my fleece, travel pillow and extra bag of food.
I took out my phone and started to read. But after a moment or two, I thought the extra cushion might be better used if I put it under my thighs instead as I sat cross-legged. Then my head was starting to overheat, so I pulled the blanket down to just under my chin. At that point, the weightless cushion under my thighs decided to do a nosedive and landed under my seat. So, I had to unwrap myself from the blanket, my handbag, my travel pillow, the bag of food and the seatbelt to pick up the little cushion. As I did so, my travel pillow decided to jump off from my lap to under the seat of a fellow passenger two seats away. So I had to untangle myself from my own cushion, two blankets, my fleece, my phone, my handbag and the bag of food from over my lap and crawl silently to under the seat of the fellow passenger who was pretending to be fast asleep. After retrieving my travel pillow, I went through the process of making myself comfortable all over again. First the extra cushion, my own cushion, the blankets and so on and so forth.
Just as I was starting to fall asleep exhausted from the act of making myself comfortable, I was woken up by the clinking of the crockery and the dragging of the trolley. I opened my eyes to see beaming cabin attendants passing trays of what I suspected to be food to unwilling passengers.
I just about managed to unwrap myself from numerous fluffy and non-fluffy items surrounding me when a cabin attendant with extremely white teeth arrived at my elbow and passed me a small tray crowded with numerous pots and boxes which were hot to the touch.
The stuff on the small tray had a slight resemblance to food and smelt like it too. So, I assumed it was food and ate it. I must say it also tasted slightly similar to food.
After eating and drinking the hot dark liquid they passed to me under the guise of green tea, I restarted the tangling process to get back to reading and possibly falling asleep.
After a few minutes of reading, I started to feel sleepy. But to my annoyance, I found that I needed to go to the bathroom. So, I started the process of untangling myself. The travel pillow and the little cushion again took the opportunity to experience a new dimension in a difficult-to-reach area near somebody else’s feet. After sorting out the tangle and scolding the travel pillow and the little cushion for gross misconduct, I stood in the queue for the toilet, scanning the backs of numerous heads in different positions: some lolling about, some bent at the neck, some leaning dangerously towards the aisle like a trainee zombie. Looking back, that was the most interesting part of the journey.
After getting back from the bathroom, I swathed myself with everything again and tried to read and sleep. After a short sleep, I was again woken up by the crockery and the sound of the ‘food’ trolley.
Time to untangle again, I thought, as the books in my phone were left ignored and my life passed me by without even a hint of reflection.