Literary Yard

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Non-Fiction

By: Shruthi Vatsyayani

Mumbai at nightIt’s a good feeling, flying back home, to the warmth of the familiarity, something you have known all your life, after a tough semester. The small interval of time before boarding the flight and after collecting the boarding pass is quite obscure. The two hours in the aircraft looking at the clouds, the darkened sky, a mixture of joy and expectations races marathons in the mind. Accustomed to taking the evening flights I always looked forward to those fifteen minutes just before landing. The city of Mumbai, my home, was at its brightest then. The incandescent lights brought a smile immediately.

As the aircraft would wade through the skies at an alarming rate, I would be pulled by the magnetic power of the city’s charm.

Plethora of lights, some real bright while others dim and flickering and plenty forming hoardings but somehow pleasing would pass by in a jiffy. Holding on to the handles of my seat with a little curve of the lip impersonating a smile and my pupils reflecting yellow, green and iridescent lights from the ground below, I would wait with bated breath for the flight spoilers to open up bringing me one step closer to home.

Touching ground would always seem like a post climax of a beautiful scene. Flashes of the beauty presented in aerial view would occupy every inch of the mind. An inexplicable and sudden closeness to city would somehow creep in. Following the trail of my tired co-passengers I would leave the airport to merge in and become one among the huge crowd the city breeds.

With every travel back home I would without monotone be enchanted by the same 15minute stunner. Something magical about the lights and that particular ten minutes of the flight filled in zeal and hope and limitless blithe. There is something about that transitory happiness, something about those aureate lights.

 

 

 

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Talk about being hit by a wave of nostalgia! Your article had me reminiscing about all those late night flights back to Delhi from Chennai when I used to live there. There’s something absolutely mystical about those flickering lights forming mesmerizing patterns on the ground below… I was always enthralled by those same 15-minutes of flight-time that you have described. It felt magical back then and it still is even now! 🙂

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