Let’s start my Mumbai experiences so far with details of my flight from London which was an experience to itself! Everything was going swimmingly before boarding the flight some 4884 miles from Mumbai in the shiny new Terminal 5 at London Heathrow. I was impressed by the new terminal and its facilities despite penning a damning report about it for college upon its opening some years ago (That report obviously made them put their act together!).
We boarded the flight (and the whole plane smelled like cumin), all was well, and then the Indian man sitting beside me on row 34 realised his seat was in row 33. Up he got, apologising, hitting his luggage off our heads, jumping into row 33 before leaping up again 2 minutes and saying his seat was actually in row 34 all along. We all laughed, he apologised and the seating dance was redone. He really was very apologetic so you can imagine his face when a short red faced, blonde haired lady stood beside me and asked why he was in her seat. This time I checked his card and he was in fact in the wrong seat, now completely flustered he forgot his luggage, fell over us a couple of times, hit his head and once again settled into row 33. Every now and then he’d look around and mouth ’sorry’ at me, he did this for about 6 hours.
I thought this guy was the strangest person on the flight. I was wrong. My new seat-neighbour (another middle aged Indian man) wasn’t the chatty type, in fact he may have been mute, and from his quiet persona I didn’t foresee the drama that would later ensue.
After a few hours of flying, a nice meal and some complimentary bottles of whiskey *hiccup!* the cabin settled into a nice late night nap. I was a little later nodding off as I was right in the middle of Transformers 2 – Revenge of the fallen (which was better than the first movie but had a terrible finale) and a movie which I’ve forgotten the name of with Jack Black and Micheal Cera… when they’re cave-men… Hank Azaria is there too… and the guy that plays Tobias in Arrested Development (BEST TV COMEDY EVER)… Anyway, after these I nodded off and suddenly I hear screaming! “Hey! Hey! Hey!!” I opened my eyes and saw my seat-neighbour climbing all over the short red faced lady in the window seat! She was screaming and he was all hands and madness so I grabbed him and threw him back in his seat (I may have punched his arm…) only to realise he was fast asleep. She then hit him and also realised he was still asleep! Then she stared at me as if I was to do something, or it was my fault… I couldn’t quite read her glare, but glare she did. It was awkward. So I ignored her and went to sleep.
In my next entry I’ll be talking about day one in Mumbai – it promises to be a cracker!
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