On the flight to New Delhi

By A. Singh

Sometimes in life the journey is as important as the destination. This is how I feel about flights to New Delhi. Growing up in the UK of course I feel completely at home there, but even though I left when I was very small going back to India always feels like coming home. I can still remember the feeling of seeing the land of the birth through the aircraft’s window, looking at the vast sprawl of New Delhi.

I was 7 years old and it felt like for the very first time I really knew who I was. I will never forget that trip. The sights, the sounds. The Smells! Most of all I remember meeting so many people. Family members whose names I had heard, but whose faces I had never seen. So many cousins! It was a very magical time for me.

Looking back, it’s like most of the significant events of my life when I look back are marked out by that flight to New Delhi. Bad as well as good, happy and sad. Funerals and births, great personal tragedy, and immense happiness. Whenever I have taken flights to New Delhi I have always felt very strong emotions. The associations that that journey has for me are very strong. When I am on the flight to New Delhi it is not like taking other flights, to America or other places. So many memories, so many feelings – on the flight to New Delhi I don’t watch the in-flight movie or read a book, just sit and think.

Well like I said at the start sometimes the journey is as important as the destination. As well as all the serious events in my life that a flight to New Delhi has signified there have been a lot of funny moments. You cannot get so many Indians in one place without something happening! As I have gone through life and got more prosperous (and more fussy about legroom, I’m a tall man) my flights to New Delhi have become first class. Aside from the legroom, in first class you meet a different type of passenger. I have sat next to celebrities- cricketers and film stars. Some of them were very nice, some less so, but of course, my lips are sealed!