Part - I
Raghav quickly placed his bag in the luggage compartment of the airline and took his seat. He always preferred to book a window seat and didn’t hesitate paying extra for it. He knew airlines were taking advantage of people like him and making some extra bucks by asking people to pay for window seats. Nevertheless he preferred to watch the majestic clouds hovering over the tiny landscape below. From the airplane, everything looked so small. It felt as if the buildings, the roads and all didn’t mean anything in the grand scale of our world. He liked drawing parallels to the problems in life. They seem very big to us but in the grand scheme of things, they don’t matter.
The plane was yet to take off. Passengers were still boarding the plane. He quickly opened his phone to check the football scores. It was a cup final and his favorite team was playing. The score was 0-0 and there were some 60 odd minutes to play. He cursed his luck that he was missing the final match because of an unnecessary meeting with a client.
Just as he was lost in his mind cursing the client, his fellow passenger occupied the seat next to him. Raghav gave a sideway glance at the person sitting next to him. He seemed to be a tall guy with a lean physique. He wore a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie. He was impeccable in his dressing. He wore what seemed like a mechanical watch. The watch was oddly shaped and Raghav couldn’t stop looking at it. The man noticed Raghav looking at his watch and smiled back at him. Raghav smiled back awkwardly. He wasn’t good at these situations.
“I see you’re watching the match”, the person said.
“Yeah, my favorite team is playing. Unfortunately I won’t be able to watch the entire match”, Raghav replied with a low voice.
“Bad time to book a flight”, the man chuckled.
“Hahaha, yeah”, Raghav laughed.
He felt a warm connection to this stranger. He was about to introduce himself when the stranger interrupted.
“Before we begin with introductions, why not stop doing the same cliche stuff. We got some 45 minutes of flight and after that there is a very low probability that we will meet again. So why not do something interesting”, the stranger suggested.
Raghav was taken aback. His facial expressions changed a bit.
“Ohhh calm down dude, I am not suggesting anything bad. I played this game with a fellow passenger a couple of weeks back and it was really fun. I thought we could do the same. Only if you’re okay with it”, the man said.
“What game?“, Raghav said
“So we basically don’t reveal our identities. Instead we fake our identity. Like last time, the person with whom I was playing said he was a boxer and we had a laugh talking about it. At the end he told me he was a software developer”, the man laughed.
Raghav was a little suspicious.
“Why on earth, this guy wants to make this conversation complex, ” he thought.
“Or we could not play any game at all and spend the 45 minutes in silence”, Raghav replied meekly.
“Absolutely fine with me. It was just a suggestion from my end. I tend to get bored on flights. That’s all.“, the man replied with a smile.
Now Raghav felt bad. He felt that he was unnecessarily rude. The man seemed nice.
Silence swept between the two passengers.
It was broken by a voice from the mic asking the passengers to take their seats as the flight was about to take off. The plane started moving. Meanwhile air hostesses were busy explaining the belt mechanics and emergency procedures.
Raghav couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying and instead abruptly said, “I am sorry if you felt that was rude”.
This time the man was taken aback. He smiled,
“Absolutely not. I can understand why you declined. A stranger asking you to play a game that involves masking your identities can be a warning sign for some people. You can relax, it’s absolutely fine”
“Hahaha, thanks a lot. Just curious, when you played the game a couple of weeks back, what did you introduce yourself as”, Raghav asked.
The man was looking straight at the air hostess explaining the emergency procedures.
“I said, I was a time analyst”, he replied.
“What is that?”, Raghav asked
“It means I travel across time”.
