The Odyssey: Dum Dum to Down Under

Whoever first said that the earth is flat must have been Austraaylian, maite!

The reason for this sudden revelation is: On the the 30th day of October, 2005, I woke up on a plane and peered out of the window. I saw a brown, dirty green-turning-to-brownish expanse of land below me, looking like a badly patterned gift wrapper wrapped real tight on a package. Strange bit of land, this. Well, this is the North-Western to Central portion of Australia. We'll get back to it later.

Right now, lets start from the beginning.

2350 hours 29th Oct, 2005: I slink off without telling almost anyone about the move. I see the immigration official looking at me, and I feel like running away. They won't let me through! They'll throw me into prison! Dark images of me being tortured in a damp cell fill my mind. But that does not happen. The guy is bored and probably pissed of at having to sit at 12:00am in the night, and he lets me through really quickly. The images in my mind pass, and the heart decides to stop drumming really loudly in the vicinity of my throat. It gets back to its normal location. I get on the flight, and my heart tries its best to jump out through my throat once again - this time its the air-hostesses. (No, they didnt scare the crap out of me. Good looking ladies in good looking uniforms really rock, man!)

0100 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I can't get enough of the movies on the KrisWorld screen that they have! Pretty ladies serving food & drink at regular intervals, a screen with a TV, Audio and Games, a comfortable seat - all these add up to a near-perfect couch potato making machine. And I'm a prime candidate, as everybody who knows me would know...

0400 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I'm hogging up the movies. 'Batman begins', 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', some cartoons with pigeons in it... my brain is shouting 'SLEEP! SLEEP!' my heart is shouting 'WATCH! WATCH!' Me, being the ever diplomatic type, fall asleep watching the movies.

0530 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I sense a flash of bright light. My bleary eyes slowly open and I notice that the headphones are hurting my ears. That problem is taken care of quick. Outside the window I see small twinkling lights afloat somewhere in the darkness. Singapore has arrived! Cities look great from the air at night, and Singapore is a good example of that. I can see ships in the dock, and mirror ships in the water below. Then I see the city like a giant roadmap whose highways have been highlighted with small lights. Looks a lot like Mumbai, or maybe Mumbai looks a lot like Singapore (whatever...)

0545 hours 30th Oct, 2005: Travelling through time zones is like time travel. It is 5:45 am in Singapore, but the flight has taken only 3 and a half hours - its still around 3.30 in India. The airport is huge. It is beautiful. Most of all, it is a shopping mall... And no hassles at all. This is great! I'm loving it!

0900 hours 30th Oct, 2005: After 3 and half hours of waiting and seeing the same shops again and again, the "I'm loving it!" feeling has worn off, and the "worn down" feeling has set in. I'm not the shopping kind anyway. My flight is still 55 minutes off.

1000 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I'm in the air again! Now seeing Singapore (and LOTS of other islands) in the daylight! Well, it was a good place, but 2 hours staring at the same shops, the same duty free signs, the same wine bottles, the same cigarette packets (strictly through the display - no cigarettes for me please) is injurious to mental and emotional well-being.

1500 hours 30th Oct, 2005: Have been seeing the same 'badly patterned gift wrapper' effect since the last couple of hours. No new movies on this filght. Same old ones. To make it worse, Willy Wonka has started talking in some strange language now that sounds like a series of short sighs and sharp shrieks (Chinese, is it?)

1845 hours 30th Oct, 2005: Feeling woozy and light-headed after waking up from a forced slumber. When I look out of the window I see something like a light purplish cotton covering a huge part of the land. It looks like a giant fungus has grown over all over this part of Australia! I stare again and realize I was looking at clouds. (Phew! For a few minutes I thought 'War of the Worlds' had begun in real life!). I also realize why the most UFO sightings have been by pilots flying their planes.

2015 hours 30th Oct, 2005: With a sigh of relief I set foot on terra firma again. For the first time on land that is not Indian. I look around expecting to break into 'One small step for man, a giant leap for Chintan', but nothing that grandiose really occurs to me (until now, when I'm writing). Deja vu! I walk out to the customs and get another of the O-my-God-They-will-put-me-into-jail bouts. But they let me through too... another sigh of relief. Outside it still looks like India... till I see the taxis. And the BMWs, and the Audis, and the BIKES! WOOOOOW! CBRs, Ninjas all let loose on the roads! This must be heaven...