I remember a few fleeting moments from memories of the first flight I have ever taken. I was barely four years old when I flew from my home town of Kolkata to Guwahati in north east India with my parents. As a matter of fact, when I asked my mom about those early memories, it was she who told me years later that yes that was the experience of my first flight.
I was flying with my parents on Indian Airlines (now Air India) from Kolkata (also known as Calcutta) to Guwahati where my father often had business. (Kolkata is our home town and the capital of West Bengal in India, and Guwahati is the largest city in the northeastern part of the country.)
So I’d love to tell you about my first flight, at least as much of it as I can recall for, despite having had my mother’s help, it’s still a lot like trying to piece together a dream now. Telling you about it though is a wonderful way of reliving it. (Funny how such an important moment in my life has been hidden from me all of these years, papered over by the many flights and wonderful trips that that first one has since led to.)
I’ll do my best to tell you about that trip as seen through the wide eyes of the tiny, amazed child that I was when I took it. For this is how I remember it best, and how, I think, we can best experience my recollection of it together.
My very first memory of my first flight is of Kolkata Airport and of watching all the planes there while we awaited our own. I was looking at them in awe, my face stuck to one of the few windows available at the airport. (Back in the 1970’s, you see, Kolkata Airport differed from the modern one that we have here today; it was less of glass and steel and more of brick and mortar, architecturally closing you off from flying instead of opening you up to it.)
Some planes were flying in; others, flying out; and, still more were taxiing about on the runway. It was all one great show for me!
As if by magic, planes would suddenly appear low in the sky, coming towards me, growing larger and larger the closer they came and then, one by one, they would land with a roar and a whine. Still, others would take off, getting smaller and smaller the further out they went until they disappeared into the clouds. I watched the planes that took off for as long as the window’s angle of view would let me, straining to follow each as far as I could. Where they came in from; where they were off to, I didn’t know, couldn’t know. All I knew was that I would soon be on one of those planes with my mom and dad! Soon I would be up in the air for the first time!
“Air-O-Planes” are what I called them back then, always with the emphasis on the “O” as if to express my excitement. Even before my first flight, you see, they were special to me since my dad used to travel frequently on them for business trips.
Just a toddler, I would stare hard at each one that passed above our home in Kolkata in a fancifully wishful but ultimately vain attempt to catch a glimpse of my dad sitting in one so far over head. But now it was my turn to ride in one of them – and, best of all, with my dad too!
You could say then that my first flight was a family affair as well as a new adventure in travel for me.
What I remember next is sitting inside the craft with the window on one side of me, my mom on the other, in the middle seat, and my dad in the aisle seat of our row. I was happy to have the window seat and because I was given it I can clearly remember the moment the plane took off and how it sharply nosed up into the sky, the ground falling away faster and faster, and my mom saying that we were airborne, gently reassuring me that all was going well just like a pilot does.
As the plane flew, I desperately looked out of my small window for any birds, afraid that we might run into some of them. But none were around. So I shifted to watching how the ground below kept shrinking, how the houses and trees there gradually became toy-like, similar to those that I painted in my drawing book at the time. I was excited; I kept looking from the ground to the sky, from the sky to the ground. Turning back to the sky, I noticed how the clouds were now right next to us. Huge patches of them floated around my head like when I played with pillows back home and the cotton came out from them, suspended in the air. And then I looked back to the ground and watched how long narrow lines in the earth kept crisscrossing each other below. They too were like those I drew in my drawing book. My mom explained that they were probably farms that we were flying over.
My last memory of my first flight is of the big tray of lunch with a huge glass of Fanta soda that was served to me by a very pretty lady. (Incidentally, I’ve been in love with stewardesses ever since!) I remember that glass of Fanta was awesome!
It was chilled, BIGG (!), and just for me. For years I wondered why that glass was so big. I guess it might have had something to do with the overall experience of dramatically changing proportions that I had as a four-year-old on my first flight.
Don’t ask me about the landing part; I don’t remember it. Probably that’s because I might have fallen asleep after that sumptuous lunch on the plane, or because the landing was quite smooth and uneventful. In a way perhaps the journey has never quite ended for me … over decades since that tender age, the love for travel has engulfed me .. taking me to many fascinating places in this amazing wide world, again and again, eager to catch the sun on the wings of my Air-O-Plane.
[Feature photo: Four-Year-Old Anindo Holding His Baby Brother].