Thirty-five minutes remaining — I have never missed a flight in my life. I inherited the traits of my father — a duty-bound man, who sits in the porch waiting, with well-oiled, neatly-parted hair, a perfumed handkerchief in his trouser’s pocket, wearing polished leather shoes, with all luggage packed two to three business days before the travel date.

I am usually on time, but today’s different. I have just managed to reach T2 in Delhi — an airport that doesn’t deserve a whole integer for its name. It could have been a T-1.5 or something. It’s just a food-court with an attached runway. It always feels like it’s evacuating citizens in an emergency.

I don’t really like flying. The only bearable part about flying is when you are 35,000 feet in the air, casually sipping something. Everything before and after that is miserable. It starts with the queue to enter the airport. The Digiyatra line is longer — a sign of our times — and hence I join the usual one. A couple is ahead of me, probably going for a honeymoon. Such couples are almost always a bottleneck. The girl has an understated air of the........

© hindustantimes