Turning Forty and flying high.

Well some days back i came across the news of a new movie by Gul Panag a favourite actress of mine named Turning thirty, which set my thoughts into my turning forty last year.

It was a bag of mixed emotions when you turn forty, you dont want to go there but you are pushed there. Thats why its also called turning thirties and then Pushing forties.

Forty appeared so distant when we were in our twenties, we never imagined we would be forty one day.

Our twenties was just fun,fun and more fun. We were not so responsible and focussed as the youth nowadays . These guys plan for an Infosys or a Wipro to pick them up paying a vulgar salary or will go to US for higher studies. All this they plan by the tenth standard and achieve it somewhat in the end.

They have more money at their disposals thanks to their parents , Fun means hanging out in the mall, coffee day , bowling etc. Everybody has a girlfriend/boyfriend at his/her disposal . And my thinking is that they also change quite a lot like they change their clothes . Our definition of fun was something else.

But these guys are also not seasoned to be as tough like us when it comes to some crunch situations in life...

Anyway i vividly remember my teen and twenties which just appear to have got lost behind the corner , but whoa where did the thirties go??

Its like a blur, Never realised the thirties could travel so fast. Marriage, kids and a career never made you aware of the fact that thirties were flying by..

In my college days i remember a forty plus Jeetendra advertising for thirty plus capsules.I dont know why they have stopped the ad , Jeetendra with his numerous facelifts can still advertise for forty plus i think.

Now coming back to the point, As you enter the forties you are like entering the twenties again , Forties are the second twenties ,you feel the same zeal and enthusiasm at life. You search for long lost old friends and connect with them again reliving your thoughts and youth..
You are at the twilight zone , you are not old like the fifties, nor are you very young like the twenties and early thirties..The pretty gals in their twenties cant call you uncle as you have not yet reached fifty and dont look so old, neither can they make you their buddies, poor things they are the most confused .

Most of the fairer sex think that you are a safe by now, and will flirt a lot assuming that you arent dangerous anymore.
The younger generation of the fairer sex is smarter too.

Recently in December i had to fly to Mangalore from Bangalore as i had to rush after attending a meeting in bangalore. Now though i am not a frequent flier i have travelled some in all types of aircrafts to faraway places, but this was the first time i was travelling to Mangalore from Bangalore by air and recently there was a major accident at the airport.

I wasnt bothered by this until i sighted the plane i was about to board. It was an ATR,very small, slightly bigger than the volvo bus.This happened to be my first time in an ATR too.

The only consolation was it was Vijay Mallyas and i beleive the airhostess are chosen to his taste.




Well i wasnt disappointed as the airhostess greeted me either. Even for an ATR,Mallya has the best he can offer. No pun intended.

My next seat was taken by a young girl who might have been just about twenty. She had already settled in her seat. I could find a family pack of cadbury Silk chocolate peeping out of her handbag as i sat down.

I just gave a smile and settled down in my seat still attending a call in my phone. As soon as i finished my call she introduced herself that she was a engineering student and had to rush to Mangalore to attend a function like me. i just mumbled my name to her and she dint ask me for more about myself then.

After an awkward silence for about 2 mins, the floodgate of questions opened from her side. It was her first time in a plane and she was travelling alone. She was both excited and scared .She bombarded me with all types of question about the takeoff , flight and landing. When the plane picked up speed she started saying she was very scared and it showed in her face too and i was afraid that she might let out a scream which appeared highly likely at that point.
I was sure that now my copassengers might suspect me for some mischief.

Luckily nothing of that sort happened and i told her take off was cool when compared to the landing which also depended on the pilots skill as if i knew a lot.

But once we were airborne she was enjoying the ride, but the questions just dint stop coming, Now she went further and was asking all things about wings , fins , altitude , air pressure etc and For a moment i cursed myself for taking up mechanical engineering instead of aeronautical engineering. Not that i can answer much in Mechanical either,But i was answering them all.
The Pilot surely would have had an heart attack if he would have heard some of my answers.

The questions and her chatter about the flight, clouds outside etc, just dint stop even after the giant sandwich served by the airhostess and the giant Cadbury silk from her bag got compeletely devoured . She even had doubts about lightening striking our plane in December.Her reasoning was that as we were among clouds something might just happen.
There was an young kid about 3 asking his dad similar questions and his dad was just mumbling something which nobody could hear. I bet he was using similar tactics like mine.

Her questions now veered around landing, Now about the landing part ,I wasnt very confident as well as the ATR was feeling like a volvo bus by now and given Mangalores table top airport it wasnt comforting to think about landing in darkness as it grew dark pretty fast in December. But nonetheless i informed her everything will be cool and the plane was behaving well according to me.

But as i said the young in the present generation are a lot smarter , she might have sensed my discomfiture about the situation and her questions , she stared at me for some time and suddenly out of the blue asked me whether i was married?
Now this i was totally unprepared for, and i was stunned for a while. I looked at her face but her expression gave nothing away. Now From all angles i look married with kids and she certainly wasnt dumb., Beleive me guys, All women can smell a married man from a mile.
I asked her to guess and she replied that she wasnt sure as she couldnt guess my age,
I then told her yes, i was married and that i have two kids, and then she went on to ask about my kids and if have pics of them in my mobile etc. She just did this to make me feel good about myself and also to take the conversation away from the plane and the landing part.

To cut the story short the landing was uneventfull as by now i had now grown accustomed to her nonstop chattering and questioning and also comfortable as she had made my day by now.

She made sure that there was never a dull moment in that flight or the fact that i was about two decades ahead of her. She will fly many more times in her life and she might find the truth about altitudes and airpressure but will never ever forget her first flight either.