Mumbai to Goa by Air.

They say experience teaches you much. In my case, I learn everything through making mistakes. I’m quite an expert at that, make new ones every day. Or so saidShri Husband and Bai Goanna once. I’m going off-track. Let me tell you about what happened recently. We were going to Bombay (sorry-sorry, Mumbai… just tells you how old I am) by aeroplane (I refuse to say ‘fly-by-air’ like some people do.)Shri Husband and Bai Goanna were discussing the nitty-gritties of how kitty (rememberlittle ‘Maows?’) was to be taken care of in our absence. Fish had to be bought, cleaned, sliced and frozen in meal-sized packages. Maows eats only fresh bangde, sans innards, heads, fins,tails. A packet of cat-biscuits (dry, stinky stuff that comes in sturdy plastic packets) was fetched from our friendly neighbourhood ‘supermarket’. The latter is neither ‘super’ nor quite a ‘market’, but keeps essentials. These days, pet food (for fish, dogs, cats but not cows/buffaloes/goats) is listed under essentials. We bought it just in case the bangdefell short (growing kitties have surprisingly big appetites). Introducing her to the insta-food was easy. Like humans, cats figure out that all things fresh and healthy aren’t as tasty as the made-from-scraps, full-of-vitamins, dehydrated-first and reconstituted-afterwards, well-advertised titbits. One sniff and Maows fell in love with the ‘niblets’. Sigh. Poor local ‘bangde’. Going by aeroplane is a big deal for me. I recall reading about pilots who bought their licences and were candidates for crash-adventures. My ears pain. I feel like vomiting. If I get a middle seat I have elbow-stabbers on either side. If I get a window, it’s either above the wing or on the sunny side. As for the aisle… either the trolley gets stuck just where I am or the others in my row have enlarged prostates/undersize-bladders. Or the flap of the luggage-bin above my head keeps snapping open, threatening to allow a heavy knapsack or five to descend upon my skull. (“What’s to fear?” Shri Husband wants to know, “When there is nil grey matter to spill? Nothing to lose.” Harrumph, I snort, but only in my mind.) I worry about picking up someone else’s bag from the carousal and (the consequence of seeing a mystery-movie in college) being the innocent victim of a murder. “Paranoia,” Shri Husband insists.“Without reason.” “Crazy,” Bai Goanna agrees. I say nothing. They won’t understand. No one understands. I let it go. Anyway, we didn’t get tickets on the same airlines, but the flight-timings were identical. Considering only one aircraft can take off at an instant from Dabolim… it didn’t take me long to figure out how they worked it. One flight took off on time, the other was delayed, naturally. Also, the timings indicated that the flight-duration was over an hour and a half. Goa-Mumbai, I read, takes, or should take, fifty-five minutes. So, even if the flight is late for technical snags, security reasons, VIP movement, quarrelling crew, when it lands, it’s mostly ‘punctual’ and gets some rating for the feat. Neat trick.(The next time Goa Today’s editor asks me how long it will take me to write a piece for him, I will say ‘six months’. Won’t he be impressed when I mail it in as many weeks? Ha, am I a good learner or am I a great learner.) FYI, Goa airport food outlets can compete with airlines’ meals, so bad is their fare. We didn’t suffer. Like good(read ‘kanjoos’)Goans, we carried with us water (drank it up before Security) and sandwiches (half were finishedon the way, well before we reached Vasco), wafers (same as ‘chips’) and curd (later mixed with aforesaid water and a packet of homemade masala to get instant buttermilk.) At the airport, as we moved towards our respective gates, our ‘cheerios’ turned to ‘oh-nos’ when we realized that although we were headed to Mumbai, one flight was landing at T-1, Santacruz, the other at T-2, Sahar, a distance of 30 mins. (In India, lest you be unaware, we measure distance in the time covered by taxi. We in Goa measure distance by fare; like, my home is twelve-hundred bucks from the airport, and it’ll shock you to know how little that is in kilometres.) Railway stations have no such complications. Tivim or Carmali stations may force you to ‘land’ on the tracks because the platform is shorter than the train (has happened!), but it’s not Mapusa at one end and Margao at the other. My village mind is imagination-deficit; when I heard this T-1-T-2 thing, I gave up wondering how big Mopa airport was likely to be. No connection, just my wandering mind a-wondering. Through the journey, we pondered what Maows might be doing. The moment we landed-- two on-time and one delayed by an hour-- and until we met again, yet another hour later, we phoned our neighbour to check on her (Maows, not the neighbour). Over the weekend that we were away, the ‘wado’ kept an eye not on our property (jungle, really) nor possessions (no self-respecting thief would covet them), but our cat. V, who had the key to the house and access to cat’s food, told me Maows wouldn’t touch a morsel unless she stood by. She had to wait until Maows’ meal was over. In spite of the fact that we had trained Maows to use a particular window to exit and enter, she made V’s life miserable by wanting to use the ‘human’s’ door. Cats have intelligence, don’t let any dog-lover dispute that. Mumbai has its charm. The Metro-digging is going on from Andheri-Seepz to beyond Churchgate, which means more than half the city is semi-paralyzed. The very-slow-moving traffic reminded me of the Mandovi-bridge jams over holiday weekends. But none was seen pouring beer-froth over another’s head in the middle of such a jam: tourists in Goa give us entertaining moments, don’t they? Back home now, with Maows on lap and laptop on table, I’m making a list of ‘lessons learnt in the first month of 2018’. 1. When you leave a cat at home, alone, keep out only those clothes you don’t want shred. 2. When you have forgotten to switch off a light or fan, keep aside extra money for the electricity-bill of the next month. 3. …(word limit up, more next time.)