A MOMENT OF TRUTH

You look deep into her eyes

She is saying something

But you aren’t listening

Looking, just looking

She stops talking

Lifts her eyebrows as if to ask

‘What is it?’

What is it indeed in those eyes

You say something unspoken

At least, you hope you said it

But she must have heard it

For she looks back

Into your eyes

Deeply, so deeply

You move closer to her

Without moving

Without realizing

She comes closer

Without coming closer

In that frozen moment

There is poetic motion

And your mind

Is perfectly blank

Knowing nothing

Feeling nothing

As she comes closer still

Until your lips touch hers

Without touching

You can feel her breath

Caress your mouth

You can feel her lips

Or at least, you think you can

And just a moment later

As you are about to move

One last time, closer

Close enough

You blink

And in that blink

You see someone

Someone else

Hear another voice

Call your name

You stop

And look away

Away from her

She moves backwards

Or at least, appears to

Without moving

The distances appear again

And broken words are spoken

Coarse humour is made

But inside

Inside you hurt

Knowing that a moment

Of purity, love and truth

Is lost

Forever

SHEEPISH

I smile as I catch myself looking after her, as she walks by oblivious to my attention.

Look deeply into her eyes, as she comes closer to me. As she passes by I can’t help but soak in her long lashes, and after that how her hair curls behind her ears. She crosses me completely, and I find myself lost in the bouncing curls that follow her bobbing head in rhythm with her crisp steps.

She stops at a table two tables away from me, asks the couple seated what they’d like to have this evening, notes it down with a small flourish on a small notepad, and starts walking back to the café, passing right by me again, and my eyes subtly doing the same thing all over again. I briefly try imagining what her handwriting would be like.

And I smile at myself, and I sigh. I had never thought that I’d come and sit at a small table outside an unknown café on the pavement of a street in a remote village of a Greek island day after day after day only to see a waitress pass me by, yet here I was. I had never thought that I’d want to talk to a woman who could only converse in one language, on that I didn’t speak, and yet here I was.

And I smile at myself and I sigh. I finish my coffee, and think of ordering another. But that would be silly – one simply does not have three cups before dinner. But as I notice her pass me by again, I have this burning urge to attract her attention, even if it meant doing something incredibly silly and childish. But I stop myself, and just in time. I suppose the best course of action was to call for the bill, and do just that. As she bends forward to place a sandwich and salad for the couple two tables away from me, I raise my arm to catch her eye.

She looks at me, and smiles as if to say ‘I’ll just be over’, and in that moment, caught between a sudden instinct to flash a James Bond smile and an equally strong impulse to avoid smiling a sheepish smile, I give her a smile laced with the most potent sheepishness.

It makes her giggle though. She smiles back at me once more, and this time, when I return in kind, it is a better kind. I pay the bill and left, which was less dramatic a process than I had imagined. Even so, I leave knowing I’ll be back tomorrow. And who knows, the sheepish one might just trump the James Bond.

ALONE

There are those times, when my thoughts wander off on a journey of their own. Times like when I sit alone over a cup of coffee in the sunset, or when I am working on routine tasks that don’t need my focus. My thoughts travel on this winding circuitous route, through memories and facts and musings and secrets, eventually, to you.

And I can’t help but think about you all over again. Sometimes I go over memories I shared with you, the time we sat alone late into the night outside your door and talked, the time we planned to travel together to another town but it never worked out, the time I called you from in the middle of a play to tell you that you should have come. And then, where the memory ends, I just make up a story as I go along – from sitting talking outside your house, we make a crazy plan to go watch the sunrise over a lake a hundred miles away, and the plan to travel together to another city does work out and we have the time of our lives, and when I call you from in the middle of the play, you ask me to turn around and you are sitting in the row behind me.

And then I wander deeper about you. I remember images, of your smile, of your hair, of your tears, and your frown. And I’ll remember how I felt about you, but never quite told you. My mind tries to create its own story where I do tell you everything, and I play it again and again in my head imagining different reactions from you every time.

I’ll go on to remember the awkward silence in the car, as I drove you to the airport. And I’ll remember that moment when you walked in, and I stayed out, and I didn’t call out to you, and you didn’t look back. Another story sparks off on its own, sometimes I imagine you running back into my arms, and other times I imagine that you look back shake your head and carry on nonetheless.

I look down at the coffee in my hand the sunset in my eyes, or at my computer screen at what I was supposed to be doing, and shake myself back into the present. I dare to remember what you looked like one last time, before I finish my coffee, or start with the next round of operations on my computer.

And the last thing I think on the subject is my own lonliness.

CATCHING UP

For a long time I thought the most daunting sight I would ever face was a blank sheet of paper, and an inked pen hovering an inch above it, but no words to connect the two.

That was until the time I found myself staring at the screen of my cell phone, her contact number displayed, and my thumb hovering an inch above the little green button that would place the call.

My head was a storm of thoughts, my gut the hapless occupant of a rollercoaster, and my heart an oil drill. Should I call her? Should I not? What would I say? Would I be able to say anything at all? No, it’s safer not to call. I decided to put the phone back in my pocket, but realized after an eternal moment that I was still clasping it in my hand, my thumb hovering as before.

I’m not sure what it was really – a sudden rush of energy, or a sudden setting in of fatigue – but my thumb fell on the button, and the sounds of a phone ringing could be heard through the ear piece. Gingerly, I brought the phone to my ear, too afraid of what was to follow to breathe easily.

It rang. It rang some more. It rang until the answering machine kicked in, and there was that pleasant voice of hers that I had never quite forgotten.

“Hi, you've reached Christie’s phone. I’m not in right now, so you know what to do after the beep.” Beep. Was it my turn to talk already?

“Christie? Um, hi, Dave here – from college, if you remember that is. Um, call me back? My number’s 88767801, looking forward to hearing-” There was a click on the other end, as I realized that someone had picked up the phone.

“Dave?”

“Uh yeah, hi. I didn’t know you were around, how-”

“David Johnson?”

“Yes, the same.” I said after a hesitant pause. “Christie Roberts?” There was a chuckle at the other end.

“Yes, Christie Roberts. How are you Dave? Where were you?”

Catching up was slightly awkward at first, giving each other explanations about where we had been, and then justifying why neither of us had called. Then it got better, when we started filling each other in on what had happened with us, and how she hated her boss, and how I had quit my job, and how her father had passed away a year ago, and how I was doing the rounds looking for someone to publish my manuscript. It got comfortable from that point, when she insisted on choosing a pseudonym for me and I offered to have a little ‘chat’ with her boss, when she said she’d better go to the kitchen and make herself some coffee, when I said catching a slight across the country to come see her seemed to be a pretty good idea.

“You can’t be serious Dave! It’s almost sun rise – can’t you see the sky turning blue?”

“All the better, the pilots will have better visibility!”

“Shut up, I’ve got to get to work in a couple of hours.”

“Call in sick, do whatever, don’t go today. I’m packing a bag – how many sets should I carry?”

“Dave! Get back into bed!”

“Three shirts should be fine don’t you think? Oh and my toothbrush!”

“While you’re at it, pack you shaving kit – I hate you with stubble.”

“Alright then – keep the phone down, I’ll catch the first flight out, and see you at the airport okay?”

“I cannot believe it Dave. This is not good, not good at all.”

“Keep the phone down Christie, I need my other hand to tie my shoelaces!”

“You cut the call Dave.”

“No, you first.” And that went on. And on. And on. Until I found myself a headset, and plugged it to my phone.

I finally cut the call when my flight was about to take off. I sat on that flight thinking about her, what it would be like to see her again. And I caught myself thinking that a call waiting to be connected would never quite be as daunting as a blank sheet of paper again.

RIGMAROLE VI

Mikros faltered, as if struck by lightning. He could not believe it! The Wizard’s son? His mind started whirling, spinning as he considered the implications of this. The end of his quest, a quest that had lasted a score and four years, the end of all this misery as he would be as tall again, the end of all the teasing and jeering and bullying by the others in his town.

“It seems fitting. You need my father to save your village, I need yours to reclaim my life,” Boomed Mikros’s voice with amusement, his chuckle sounding like a volcano, “this adventure is getting interesting. We’ll meet your father first, get me to my height. Then my father will be indebted to you, and will gladly give you the rainbows you need to save your village.” In the distance on the cliff Half Pint had a large smile on his face as well, as he saw the coincidental irony in the situation. In their moment however, neither of them noticed Twerp edging further away from them, a small tear flowing down his face.

Mikros walked back up to the cliff, picked up the two creatures, and they set off again.

“Which direction to your father’s lair, Halfling?” Half Pint pointed in the direction of the setting sun, and the three of them set off. Mikros had put the both of them in his pocket, and they peered over the edge as the landscape approached and faded away just as quick under the giant’s feet.

Just then Twerp looked at Half Pint and said, “You’ve always lived in the village. How come you never lived with your father?”

“It’s a long story. Never mind.” Half Pint replied.

“Speak Halfling, we have a long way to go I’m sure, and there is plenty of time.”

“Well, the name I am known by is not my real name. I acquired it after I spent six months in a bar, drowning my sorrows in mead, until there was only half a pint of mead left in the town. Why I was drinking is of little consequence to this story, but I was extremely upset indeed, and the source of all my sorrow could be traced to a certain fair maiden in the town, a leaking pipe in the town castle, a badly implement recipe for stew, and a set of spells my father cast. I decided at the end of those six months to leave my town and never return. I travelled across the land to a place where the people would have heard of neither my father nor me, and eventually I settled in your village, Twerp.”

“So you hate your father?” asked Twerp, wide eyed.

“I’m not sure, I doubt you can call it hatred after all these years. It’s more like a cold condescension now.”

“And you Mikros? You don’t hate your father too, do you?” But Mikros didn’t reply, not for quite some time. And then finally, Twerp and Half Pint heard him say something, in a voice soft and gentle, almost like one of theirs and not a giant’s.

“No, I do not hate my father. It is the other way round, he hated me. He is the king of our town, the regent of all the giants, the regulator of the rainbows. His father before him was an equally great man, strong, tall, and wise. I was to succeed my father as king, but when I was born, short, weak and incapable of doing all those things giants are supposed to, the elders in the village said that our dynasty was doomed to end with my father death. He tolerated me until I was old enough, and then banished me saying that I was not to return until I was a worthy contender for his throne. And I have been out of my town ever since, hunting for the Wizard of Ounce, hoping that he will give me the secret to growth and wisdom, so I may claim what is mine. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to please my father, nothing in this world, if only he would look at me.”

A tear rolled down Mikros’s cheek, it fell near where Twerp and Half Pint were hanging on, nearly drowning them. But they swam back up and hung on once more to the edge of Mikros’s pocket.

“That leaves only you, Twerp.” Said Half Pint. “Tell us about your father.”

“My father? I never knew him. He is not spoken of in our family. We have tried to erase his name and his memories from our minds.” Twerp said, in a mild, almost lost way, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying, and was saying out more out of habit that conviction.


To Be Continued...

HOLDING THE SILENCE

As the orchestra struck up the chords of Mendelsohn, the doors at the back of the church opened, and he saw her. Resplendent in her white dress, a veil of net before her eyes, her arm entwined with her father’s, walking slowly, gingerly almost, down the aisle. He was sure he had never seen her look as beautiful ever before. She looked like Venus descended from heaven to him, nothing less, something poetic in its inspiration.

She looked at no one, nothing, but stared at the red carpet and the rose petals strewn in her path, few paces in front of where she was walking. He hoped she would look in front - at him - but she didn’t. She walked all the way up the aisle, let go of her father with a soft kiss on the cheek, climbed up three steps and took her place in front of the alter. The people who had gathered there took their seats.

As the priest started reciting, blessing the occasion, he looked deeply at her, and thought to himself. Did she know how much he loved her? Would she ever know? Would he ever be able to tell her? Would he ever be able to capture in words what he heart wanted to say to her? She still looked down, at the floor, and he caught himself smiling. Shy, that was typically her. The priest went on with his recitations, the audience watched in awestruck wonder at the couple before them, she kept looking down, and he kept looking at her.

Finally, the priest looked to the gathered people, and said “If anyone has any objection with this union, rise and speak now, or forever hold your silence.”

He was about to stand, when he saw her look up, at the man she was marrying. She smiled, a smile of joy, of contentment, of sublime happiness which made her face glow, of love gushing forth from every iota of her being. And the man before her smiled back at her, a smile that spoke of strength and caring, of a warm love that emanated from a heart already melted.

And he found himself back on his seat, not because he had sat down, but because his knees no longer held. He faintly heard a voice say ‘… pronounce you man and wife’, he barely registered the applause and cheers around him, and did not feel the people stepping on his feet as they filed out around him when the ceremonies ended.

It was a long time before he blinked, when an old man with a broom sweeping the floor around him nudged, and with a heavy Southern accent, said “Weddins ovah. Why you still stickin round?”

He looked at him for a moment, and then smiled from behind teary eyes. “I think I lost my way there for a moment.” And with that he put on his hat, and walked out into the streaming sunlight.

THE ROMANCE OF PAIN

“You know something you little prick,” he spat on me, though I barely registered it, “I’d love you see you recognize yourself in the mirror tomorrow morning!” His henchmen laughed out at that, one of them taunted me some more. Then I felt him come closer to me, pull my hair and hold my face up to look straight into my eyes.

“You really chose the wrong guy to mess with, the worst in fact.” He let go of my head, and took a step back, and I knew what was coming next – I just didn’t know where. I almost heard his arm whip across the air as it came and slammed into my eye. Everything went blank and dark, and all I could see was stars-

-stars, tiny shining by the million in the dark night sky. And her eyes, two diamonds with intensity to blot them all out, and for a long time, they were all I could see. She smiled, and raised her eyebrows, as if to say ‘What are you looking at?’, and I smiled back, shook my head, and finally managed to look away.

‘You see that?’ I said, pointing to a bright star in the distance, ‘I’m going to get it named after you. You can register these things these days.’

‘Oh, that? Why a star? Why not something I can actually reach out and touch?’ she said, resting her hand on my shoulder.

‘You know, if your hand went down lower, I’m sure we can find a suitable replacement.’ I smiled a mischievous smile, as she realized the implications. And she laughed in shock and surprise; she chided me, and shook me-

-shook me awake, back on to the dark alley, where his henchmen were holding my arms up, waiting for him to launch at me again.

“Tut tut, don’t you dare faint on me lover boy, not yet at least - there isn’t enough of your blood on the floor yet!”  One henchman snorted, I heard cracks as another flexed his muscles. There was no other sound from the alley.

“I hope you realize why I’m pulping you. It would be such a shame if you didn’t know. Truth be told, you’re lousy. Really lousy, and I don’t like lousy people, I really feel like hurting them. But you know what, all this showbiz tonight is not for your lousiness, it’s because I’ve decided I no longer like your face, and I think I’m going to set it right. Here’s how!”

This time it came round, his fist right at my temple, and my ears rang-

-my ears rang with her laughter, she could barely hold her glass, and I was too entranced by her face to notice much beyond. Why weren’t there more people like her, I caught myself thinking, why were the perfect ones always taken?

“Wait wait wait!” She somehow managed to say, gasping for breath. “There’s a flaw in your theory – New York Taxis couldn’t have been designed after giraffes, if anything, giraffes should inspire cranes. I think taxis were inspired by zebras.”

“In that case, the zebra would have to have jaundice or something like that, you can’t explain the yellow otherwise.” That was just too bad, I thought to myself a moment too late, after it had been said. And she just stared at me, for a good long moment, before she laughed out again. What the hell, I thought, thank god for the alcohol. She laughed, repeating ‘Jaundice’ to herself over and over, slapping the table top, and spilling her drink in the process. Seeing her glass about to fall, I stretched forward-

- stretched forward, the boot in my gut jolting me, making me cough.

“Now look here prick, this will not do. You ditching me like that, it doesn’t work, it only makes me angrier. Listen to me, and don’t faint. I hate it when I’m talking and people want to doze off. You hear me? Just focus, and let me talk. Now, where was I?” He turned to one of his men, this one was swinging a chain menacingly, but he’d been at it the entire time, and it wasn’t that threatening anymore, it was almost monotonous.

“You were saying something about stealing.” The henchman reminded him.

“Ah yes, like I was saying. Stealing is bad. Everyone said it, right from Moses to Sarbanes and Oxley. So when you stole from me, you should have thought a little bit about it. If you had, you would have guessed that I wouldn’t be too happy about it. Especially stealing a person, my person.” His emphasis on ‘My’ was spine chilling.

“So here’s your punishment. For stealing, and for coveting your neighbour’s wife.” He took the chain from his henchman’s hand, and swung it right at me.

My skin split in many places, my mouth filled with blood, and my tongue tasted-

-tasted like an exquisite wine, mysteriously warm yet playfully cool. I opened my eyes to see her smiling, looking at me for a response of some sort.

“Well, how was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What’s that supposed to mean? Was it good, not good, bad, or different? What was it?"

“What lipstick are you wearing?”

She cocked her eyebrow up. “You’re thinking about my lipstick? Really? You know what, you can get lost. I’m leaving.”

She turned, and all I did was catch her and kiss her again, the same way. And she kissed me back, and I smiled.

It was like a sense of warmth filling me up-

­

-filling me up, my lungs burning, my head spinning. I heard someone shout “There’s blood in his lungs, he’s drowning-

-drowning in your love. I mean it, it’s so much more than just falling-

-falling on to the road, as my legs gave way, and the henchmen released me, my arms thrashing-

-arms thrashing all about, trying to find her from behind the blindfold. She would tease me, come touch my arm and move away silently, and I’d turn and search and feel nothing-

- feel nothing, sense nothing but a deep numbness. The pain in my lungs was receding, as was my breath.

There was a cough.

There was a smile.

And there was silence.

FIVE SECONDS OF DUTY

The First Lieutenant couldn’t believe it!

There it was, right before them, than gigantic portion of food, dropped by the gods, enough to feed the community for days! All they had to do was rush forth, claim it, and make it theirs.

But the General insisted they wait.

“Why? Why? Why?” Screamed the First Lieutenant. “Why must we wait while our women and children starve? Let us capture the food before it returns!”

The General looked at him impassively, and said “It is the will of the Gods, and our tradition, that we wait before we eat. It is what separates us from other beasts.”

“And it is what will kill us!” screamed the Lieutenant. “This is madness! It always was.”

The General looked towards the High Priest, who was closely watching the time, and who would decree how long it was that they must wait. The Priest blew on a small horn once, indicating that a fifth of the required time had elapsed.

“I cannot waste more time with this foolery!” Said the Lieutenant, donning his helmet.

“Don’t you move!” roared the General. “If you so much as take one step forth, I will have you court martialled and whipped for insubordination!” the Lieutenant stepped back. Another blast on the horn indicated that two fifths of the stipulated time had passed.

It’s right there, all that food, waiting to be conquered, thought the Lieutenant. The entire colony can feast for at least a week. Only three fifths more, and they could move forward, lay claim, and begin the feast.

Once more the blast of the horn, only two fifths left. The Lieutenant lifted his axe, and readied himself for a charge. The General looked forward with tantalizing eyes, the other soldiers shuffled in anticipation.

But just then, the lights in the sky dimmed, and something seemed to block the sun out. The soldiers began to step back in fear, and the Lieutenant’s eyes widened – his worst fears had come true. The horn blasted again, indicating that four fifths of the time had elapsed, but it was too late and all was lost.

Two mighty pillars descended from the sky, caught the food between them, and hoisted it back to the sky from where it had come. The Gods had reclaimed what the races of the land had rejected. The Lieutenant fell on his knees, his mind spinning, thinking of what had just happened – this opportunity lost, no food once more, only the hunger, the starvation, the desperation once more. With accusing eyes he looked at his General.

“I know what you are thinking,” said the General, “that we could have had claimed that, made it ours, and eaten our fill. But our traditions do not allow for it, and as long as I am on watch, I will not let our traditions be insulted. It is the only thing we have that separates us from uncivilized beasts, and if hunger is that small price to pay in order to ensure our superiority, then I will pay it, and I will ensure the colony pays it too.” And with that, he turned and left, leaving the Lieutenant on his knees in the dust, grim tears beginning to flow down his face.

*

Modern Culture insists that germs follow the five second rule. Really now.

AB KE BARAS (THIS YEAR)

It is customary in Indian culture that a girl returns to her parents’ home in the first season of the Monsoons after she is married. Integral to the institution of marriage, at least in the northern Hindi speaking belt, is the arrival of the girl’s brother to the home her in-laws and he takes her back with him, with the in-laws’ blessings and token gifts, and with the promise that he will return her to them once the rains have passed.

What follow are the lyrics of perhaps one of the most touching, soulful songs from vintage Indian films. ‘Ab Ke Baras’, literally translating as ‘This Year’, is the heartrending plea of a girl calling out to her father, begging him to call her back for the season. A part of an old film ‘Bandini’ (Prisoner), the song is sung in a women’s prison, the reference being that the Hindi word ‘Sasural’ – though it meant home of the in-laws – was used as a colloquial slang for prison.

Slow, rich with emotion and plight, the words tug at the heartstrings as the song is enough to move one to tears.

Send my brother to collect me this year, Oh father

Send him for the rains have come.

My friends from my childhood have returned home and they call me,

And the letters they send are wet from the rains.

So send him, oh father, to collect me this year.

Let me play on the swings beneath the cloudy sky again,

As the showers pour around me.

And with me will return to your gardens, oh father,

The soothing, cool showers of the rain.

Tears splash from my eyes and I hurt

As I recount memories of my childhood

So send him, oh father, to collect me this year.

This life this youth stole the playthings of my childhood,

And I have lost my dolls.

Tell me, oh father, after growing up on your pride,

When was it that I stopped belonging to you?

Ages pass, and I receive no letters from you,

And I see no boats on the horizon coming for me.

Send my brother to collect me this year, Oh father

Send him for the rains have come.

So send him, oh father, to collect me this year.

NOT ME.

“I need your pants.”

It’s strange waking up to a line like that.

“Dave, I need your pants. Now. Please.”

What’s stranger is realizing that in order to comply with the request (read order), I was going to have to take off the ones I was wearing and hand them over, and then either get to washing the others or hang around in my boxers until Matt returned.

“Dave! I’m not getting younger dammit! Christie is leaving, I need those pants!”

Her name jolts me awake finally.

“What?”

“I messed up man, and Christie is leaving. She’s on some flight taking off in a couple of hours and I need to stop her.” I’m finally on my feet dropping the pants, and handing them over. He puts them on.

“What happened, Matt?” I try and ask as calmly as I can.

“I said something when I was drunk. She got upset. She said she would leave, but who really goes through with it? I thought she was kidding and just needed some time!”

He rushes out; I stare out the door after him. My ass of a flatmate. I catch myself thinking about how he should try learning treating his girlfriend better. That’s when I hear his footsteps on the staircase again, and he reappears.

“Dave, what should I tell her?” An ass indeed.

“That you’re sorry? How hard is it to figure that out?”

“No not just that, I need something more, something fancier. You’re the one with the words, tell me something!”

“Say something like ‘All the stars would lose their lustre, if I am unable to muster, the courage to ask you to stay.’”

“That’s lame man. Poetry and all that. We’re a century past that, and I can’t screw this up. Seriously, something practical.”

“Matt, practical is exactly what she doesn’t need. Trust me, it’ll work.”

“Lustre and mustard?”

“Muster.”

“Right. Okay. Bye.” He runs off again, repeating lustre and muster to himself. Ass.

I find myself thinking about his girlfriend. Christie. Matt’s girlfriend, not mine. I wonder what will pass when he meets her at the airport. She will know that the words are mine, as are the pants, courtesy the fact that there’s a line of verse written above the knee which she notices when I'm wearing them.

I know she will stay back. I know she is dying to stay back. I know that Matt will think he’s the king of the world when he brings her back home tonight. I know that she and I will exchange perhaps even less than a look, and share a small truth. For I know she looks for something more than Matt in this house.

The painful part is, that something is not me.

SMILE

A memory so clear, it burns.

You are looking away, your long silken hair covering your face. But I know how you smile behind that veil. A smile of freedom, of sublime happiness expressed with not a care in all the world. The sunlight dances as you turn to look at me, your hair flowing aside like drapes parting, and you smile at me.

The smile, the memory, so clear, it burns.

The smile becomes a laugh. You tell me to stop looking at you so, but how can I? You shake your head, your hair shimmering, dancing in the light once more. And you look away once more until your face is hidden behind your veil. But I know how you smile still.

Knowing that you smile is a memory so clear.

Like a view lost behind a fog set in too quickly on a cold night, you have faded. Like the ideas of a dream lost from waking up too suddenly, the things you did are difficult to remember.

But your smile, and the way the sunlight danced in your shining hair. They stay on, blurring my vision, burning me.


Smile for me, once more. Please just once, so the man that you see before you can pick himself up again.

OUTLIER, OUTFLYER

It was shortly after World War II that the British Overseas Airways Commission gave the go ahead for the prototype testing of the de Havilland Comet, believed to be among the first models designed for commercial travel. The Comet, designed a committee headed by Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, was put into scheduled service in 1952, and was regularly used by various airline service providers across the world until 1997. It was indeed a glorious model, and a visionary start to the art of aircraft design.

There was however, one small issue, which went unnoticed for a long time: Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, for all his grand visions, was himself a small man of 5’6”, and so, the planes he designed were designed bearing in mind humans of his dimensions. His company carried forward his legacy of building planes that were based on his earlier designs, and when the de Havilland Company was no longer at the forefront of aircraft design, its successors simply took its plans and tinkered around thereafter.

The result: modern day aircraft cabin are designed only to accommodate humans touching 5’6”, whether it be the default distance between two aligned seats, or the default distance between the floor and the overhead baggage storage units. A 5’8” being can squeeze about and manage, but anything taller than that is a marginalized outlier that the airline community really couldn’t care much about.

So whenever it so happens that I have to travel by air, a sense of cold engulfs me. At 6’3”, I get looks of disapproval from the lady at the check in counter as she labels me ‘Oversized’, and secretly wishes she could charge me extra. There is a genuine restriction in the seats I can occupy, for if I’m in the one by the window, I cannot compensate for the lack of space in front by stretching my legs out towards the side, and if I’m in the one near the aisle, my legs tend to obstruct traffic. I get equally dirty looks from the cabin crew that say “Every passenger around him is going to curse him, and I’m going to have to deal with it”.

And that is precisely what happens. Everyone does tend to curse me. The person sitting in front of me can’t recline, because my knees are jammed into the back of his seat, the person sitting beside me near the window cannot get out without having me get up and out into the aisle, and whenever that has to happen, the person sitting beside me toward the aisle has to get up too. When my knees begin to hurt, I have to shift around in my seat, and the rest of me is usually at odd angles after that happens, bringing my face uncomfortably close to the faces of one of those beside me (usually the one at the window, I get to see the view).

And don’t even get me started about what happens when there’s turbulence. That is a nightmare. For the poor bugger next to me.

If I’m lucky, I get a seat near the emergency exit, with a polite woman beside me who has a son as tall as me who also has to put up with similar discomfort and so she can completely understand the position I’m in and is willing to shift her legs to the left to give me some more leg space. If I’m unlucky, I get a window seat, with this gruff corporate man who is already in a foul mood because his company didn’t give him a business class ticket and is now placed beside a lamp post who will make clicking sounds with his tongue every time I have to move and wishes he could kill me with his stare when I ask him to get up so I can go to the loo.

But my troubles are not limited to sitting. While I’m standing waiting for a place in the queue in the aisle to exit the plane, the overhead bin is an obstruction, and I find myself bent so far that my head is either hovering precariously above the heads of those in the aisle already, or it dangling dangerously close to the person standing waiting in the seat in front of me. Either ways, not the best place for a head to be in.

So when I finally get off the craft, there is a sigh of relief on my part, and a greater one from my co-passengers. Apparently, tolerating me is a greater ordeal for them, than tolerating the craft’s dimensions is for me.

It is usually in the taxi ride from the airport home, when I’m nursing aching joints and a battered ego that I begin to wonder how much it would really take an airline to increase the distance between two seats. An inch here, a couple there, and life is so much simpler. And then usually my thoughts go on to higher planes, and more abstract notions, of how over-standardization never did anyone any good, of how people who don’t fit aren’t really allowed to say anything and what a helpless state that is, and of how best I should fire Sir Geoffrey de Havilland if I ever met him.

I finally get home, I’m greeted by my family, and in case there happen to be visitors who haven’t seen me in a long time, there are the usual expected comments about how tall I’ve gotten and how they have to crane their necks to see me and how that is uncomfortable for them. Really, someone’s got to start putting themselves in the shoes of the outliers and look inwards, and take a good look at how easy life is for them. Really.