AYRA

Chapter

1

: ON VACATIONS:

I still remember it vividly, The not so very warm midnight of Delhi, when My Flight 6A-501 landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport around 1:30 Am or so, early morning of 24th August in the year 2015.

The passengers of My flight were quite supportive but were absolutely tired from the 24 long hour Journey straight from Florida. Their tired faces and lull body postures were reflecting from the cockpit’s camera witnessing their frustration.

That evening, after I had a safe landing at the airport, and addressed my fellow Passengers in the flight, As their co-pilot “Anirudh Sharma”.

Soon after, doing all the formalities to the passengers by thanking them for making Air India as part of their Travel plan and giving worm goodbye to the fellow cabin crew members and to my colleague turned captain. eagerly waiting for the passengers to leave peacefully,at last It just took a while for me to recognize

the Trolley amid various ones in the last section of overhead bins in the flight.

coming out from Airbus and eventually from the Flightline.

after a wait in the airport standing at the front in a crowd of half exhausted people in a queue behind me and giving a quick order of coffee at cafe coffee day, although I was dog tired from such a vast nonstop journey of flying, but everything seemed to be almost ignorant for me, these small -small pain was turning into pleasure because I knew that the day was meant to be so much special and dearer to me.

Holding the worm cup of coffee in between the fingers, sipping it slowly my mind was bombarding thoughts in the head ,forcing me to ignore the surroundings around me.

Today,I will be meeting with “Ayra” for the very first time.

The whole time on the flight, I was thinking about her, living with her all the way through my imagination she was with me, The feeling was so intense that I even forgot a few hurtful scars from my past be it in relationships or work struggles and to my severe Mental health issues which were definitely the worst condition which I faced in my early flying days but, unfortunately, they still sometimes visit once or twice in a month, Those panic attacks still persists and still haunts me, it makes me way more vulnerable, it makes me feel like a mannequin who can only see people around him without any emotional feelings.

I used to feel like an empty canvas but she makes me feel different as if I’m alive just for her. Nothing makes me happier than her. Nothing makes me more safe in my own skin than her.

Sometimes I feel as if she is the one who can color my empty life canvas with her soft kindful hands from a plethora of glittering colors of her heart.

Everything seems to be alright and just perfect when “you strive to find and eventually meet your other half”, the special one in life who heels all your pain and give you the ultimate joy and happiness in your life, and teaches you that It seems okay to fail sometimes and okay to be not okay at some instances in life.

In my career of 5 yrs. of flying, I had met tons of people, some are good and some are not so into me. Some of them I had built a strong connection of love and care with but never get the same affection in return, that’s what I felt soo.

I use to care about my loved one’s a lot which was good but the worst part of love is that it makes you so much weak and blind that people whom you care takes your care for granted And even worse when you open your blind eyes you

feel cheated., the emptiness pouring in your core makes you feel just like a used toy that takes all the love, hate andall tidal emotions from kids and in return get nothing but scars of pain when the kids are done by their old ones and grab their new ones.

“Anirudh....it’s a new day and a new chance for you, do not spoil it thinking about the irreplaceable past” my mini self-talk came in defense and consoled me, taking a deep breath shifting the attention instructing myself “This day is a special day for me, No more crap from past I want.”

Ayra and I, we will both be going to see each other face to face for the very first time. We had been in a relationship for almost 6 months for now.

We had those insane late-night video calls with each other every single day. The nights were the most pleasant and lovely time for both of us.

She and I use to chat from late nights till early mornings, starting to ask each other “How was the day or did we have dinner and lots of personal and professional stuff “and ended the conversation with a bunch of laughter, which most of the time melted my heart..

Ayra was working as the junior field design artist and coordinator for the wedding company named “Seven Steps” and dedicatedly was working on her extravagant upcoming next project in Pune.

We both use to experience lots of mental stress and mental health issues in our professional lives, But every rough patch in our lives seems to vanish all at once when the night comes and we connect to each other once again through the Digital medium of love on skype, the most beautiful thing about Love is that it heals all the pain no matter what it how big or small, just by having a glance of her.

Her almond-sized blue eyes were like a never-ending deep ocean whose beauty never fades and those light blue eye-balls were like a sunset on the beach which makes me wonder how lucky I was to have her with me.

After Dumping my finished coffee, I Immediately booked an uber from the airport, the cab took 10 mins or so to reach. It was heavily raining outside the airport, the winds were blowing at a very high speed,

It was very tough to talk within the fast-blowing winds to the cab driver on the phone, but thank god, I managed to do so.

The winds were some unusual that I could sense, but ignoring all those instincts. I continued to look for my cab, luckily I found my cab situated near pillar no.6 of the third arrival gate.

I ran towards the open area near pillar no.6 holding the trolley with my hand and navigating the cab’s direction from my left hand, painting so heavy after a run I took a pause to breathe in some air, reaching there.

“Bhaiya ji........Anirudh”, asking the driver to down the window, I confirmed my OTP keeping my half wet trolley, I sat on the back seat with the small luggage trolley beside me.

Eventually, as we begin to move, I could sense My heartbeats were increasing inch by inch at a very higher rate as I was reaching near to the destination, Each passing moment in the cab was giving me the flashes of our chat were bombarding in front of me, and definitely forcing me to start sweating, nervousness was making me feel stomach heavy, the pressure of us meeting for the very first time was about to give me a nervous breakdown.

Luckily, the soothing cold winds coming from the half-open window along the way made me calm and lowered the body temperature.

We both had decided to meet at the Leela Hotel in Gurgaon, luckily this dazzling city was situated near the airport.

I reached the destination in about 20 minutes and could see the huge building standing tall, from the window surrounded by tons of big and lots of palm trees, clear roads, and the humongous entrance.

reaching inside, The aura of the hotel was very warm and luxurious I could see lots of big chandeliers on its roof, a bunch of saplings and spotted the reception area from very far away, the smell of the extravagant rose fumes for the freshness was making me more romantic the more I was getting inside.

Soon after the receptionist gave me the keys to the allotted room, this lady with a huge smile had guided me in the direction to reach my assigned room.

After opening the room’s door, I could see all the spectacular opulence belongings of this hotel but as being hell tired by then from the long journey, so I thought a quick bath from cold water might give a relax. I had always enjoyed taking baths in cold water since childhood. It brings some good memories from my past.

After freshen-up I was starving to death, so decided to order something from the nearby restaurant I was about to call in to place the order,Then suddenly an important thought crossed my mind. Ayra and I had decided to have dinner together as soon as we met each other in Delhi.

, asking myself “How can I forget such a thing, that too she must be also starving in her flight from Gauhati,after-all, it’s a long journey from Assam to Delhi too.

Shifting my attention from food and being an absolute geek since the college days I completed my unfinished book with an ordered bottle of red wine from the hotel after all I needed some sort of antidote to turn my hunger into something else, This time I choose reading as the substitute.

I sat on the leather couch situated near the window of the room and started reading, but the natural water shower outside the window was still pouring in form of rain, deep diving to the pages one after the other I kept on going with the flow of the book intensely, turning the chapters reaching almost the end of the novel.

until all the wine in the empty glass, I engulfed through the throat, but I continued to read my novel in between an hour or soo in reading.

I watched the wall clock hanging over the window. It said 2:30 AM in the early morning. until now I didn’t get any text or call from her with almost no information about her flight.

Number of questions were starting to revolve in my head, and I had started worrying about her.

In our 6 months of relationship she had always called me around 11 itself, but today it was different. Maybe she is still in flight? maybe due to the rainy climate there, flight may have gotten delayed? or maybe she is on her way to the hotel but if so, then why didn’t she call?....and the questions were shooting one after the other.

so, I decided to call her to get any updates on her journey, but her phone was switched off. I tried several times but the response was the same.

I was getting more and more anxious about her as the time was passing by, for more confirmation about her flight, I called the help service of an airline for inquiry if the flight is on-time or not. One of the executives from Air India picked the call, speaking in the husky tone,

“Hello, Am I speaking with Air India?”

“Yes, Sir how may I help you?”

“Could you please let me know the current flight status of Delhi from Guwahati”

Guwahati? May I know the passenger’s details or their flight number”

What?O god….. who remembers the flight number, spoke my mind .having null information about her flight details, so I only gave her name in the response and letting me wait for 20 minutes or so the executive finally spoke

“Sir, thanks for waiting but I’m sorry to say there has been no flight scheduled from Guwahati to Delhi which was scheduled to land at IGI airport at 1:45 in the early morning for today...”

hearing after what the executive said, left me under blue and a full bag of confusion. I wanted to extract as much information about her.

the executive continued, “but we had our flight from Guwahati to Delhi in the evening around 7:00 and yes, the passenger named by Ayra was there in the airbus”

“ok.., can you tell me when exactly it landed”

“sure sir, it had landed at 10:15 at IGI airport”

gulping the air inside I continued, “ohhh....ok, thanks for informing”, what the airline executive said left me under shock, his words still revolving into my mind, forcing me to raise a plethora of questions about Ayra, “God......Is she fine or in serious trouble? “or “will she come to meet?” or “maybe she had some work to complete before the meeting.... But then why didn’t she tell me about her work? The more I was trying to calm my emotions down , the more the questions were popping up in my mind.

It had left me with so much confusion and I didn’t know what was happening to her.