A red eye flight is so aptly named. It actually gives you red eyes. Today when I left for the airport at 3, my eyes were bloodshot. It made me look menancing. Like a villain from an old noir film set in the 70s Bombay, moustache and everything. But alas! I was just me.
A red-eye flight once in a while is a necessary pill. It helps you to appreciate sleep so much more. Every moment that you spend in bed scrolling through your phone instead of going to bed, in hindsight seems like a monumental waste of precious sleep time. When you take a red-eye, you know sleep will be compromised, your regular routine will go for a toss and life’s predictable moments will become hazy.
However, there is one advantage to it. You get to observe the world through a different lens. The whole world is asleep and your phone is not buzzing with calls or messages. The silence is perfect. So when at 3 am as the cab hurtles down Hosur road, you wonder how amazing life would be if that was the pace at which traffic moved at Hosur road during regular hours. The still air, pure and untouched by the din of the day, both past and incoming makes you get up from your slumber. Sleep dissipates, you are awake and also partly because you want to ensure the driver is not falling asleep at the wheel. A morning trip to the airport, while a sombre experience, reaching the airport at 430 am confuses you.
Take the Bangalore T1 for instance, where everyone seems bright and fresh at all points in time. Maybe it’s the filter kaapi, maybe it’s the majboori. Service industry staff members are just pure resilient. It always perplexes me when someone is genuinely kind, without an incentive. Like the lady behind the counter who doesn’t mind checking in my trolley and even offers a window seat when I ask nicely. Or the kind attendant at the toilet who wishes me a good day when I exit. Oh, even the digiyatra promoters are fresh and not grumpy at that hour. And of course, the server who serves you expensive tepid machine made chai. Have only coffee, lesson learnt.
But as soon as I board the flight, the reality of the my biological clock catches up with me with vengenance. And even as they make many announcements, sleep comes and plonks down heavily on my eyes and the roar of the engines lulls me into deep slumber. A few nice moments later, a kind voice wakes me up saying “Mr Kulkarni, your (junglee) sandwich”. I grab the meal and doze off again politely declining the complimentary beverage with it.
The lights go out and come back again, the pilot makes awkward small talk and is invariably just rushing to say thank you, but I sleep through it all. Piercing pain in my ears wakes me up as I find myself circling over the barren fields of Haryana as Delhi comes into view. And before you know it, the red-eye lands, the network returns and I am seamless merged with the day that is about to begin, arriving just in time for the madness, with bloodshot eyes.
